Art is a worldwide language and expresses our own feelings in a beautiful and attractive way. It must have emotion and it should be near the truth of humanity. So, art is weightless if it is without beauty and emotion and creation.
From among the arts, there is a rare practice of conceptual idea of arts from roots called Root Arts.
In Nepal there is remote district called Sindhuli, with the village of Dhakalgaun. Here there is a rare museum of Root Art that delights local tourists.
The works of art are made by Mr. Bishwomver Lamichhane, a 58 years old man, and are located in his house formed over almost 3 decades, that is since when he started making them.
What is Root Art? Why is it called root art? How it all started?
Even if it is a new art to come to light, it was a kind of art that was been there for centuries. But has always been effectively underground both metaphorically and literally.
Roots are the parts of trees that lie below the ground invisible to humans.
You can find them when you cut down a tree - which is against nature earth in every way - or when you go into the woods or rivers or landslide areas in search of dead trees with roots that are not decayed yet.
Bishwomver Lamichhane has been doing this for years now. He goes out there trying to find roots and he is helped by family and friends. Then he tries to see what the root can possibly symbolize and he brings them home.
The artist himself is a lawyer by profession but his passion is finding those dead roots and giving them a meaning according to what he saw. He says the beauty of knots in the roots that were left as useless - or probably were waiting to be found - attracted him.
In these roots he saw a medium to express his feelings and desire and that is how it all started. Without any prior knowledge and study about root art it is like a miracle of Lord Buddha getting enlightened about life without a guru.
His first art was named antlers which looked like a deer’s head, the second was a white mountain with black inside implying the effect of global warming on beautiful nature.
After few more works of art he was motivated by his family and friends, so he wanted to find more and also wanted to know more about the history of their origin.
In that remote place with no internet and very few books, all he could find was that root art was an ancient practice in countries like Germany and China for centuries.
The roots have also been used as furniture and some as art, but he could not find any museum for such works of art. There are no known famous artist and this gave him more motivation such as, what if he is the only one who has started practising it solely as art made only from roots.
The roots are simply carved, they are mostly just given the final touch.
We can see social life in his arts, it has been a good way to reflect the draw backs, hindrances suffering in the art, culture, politics around the world as well as beauty in the world of love and religious goodness.
In this kind of art, the spiritual form of the matter is displayed in the place of drawing visual physical form of the matter according to our own experience.
What makes the works of root art unique is that a wood artist or a painter can duplicate his arts as much as he wants but every piece of root art has a peculiar shape just like thumb print that cannot be matched to another.
The museum is a simple museum as the artist has blended two room from his residence home for storing his art and it is free to visit to any art lovers anytime of the day.
His works of art are not for sale because he believes that one legacy he wants to leave behind is that he helped somehow to promote root art in the world.
If he were to sell his art, those pieces may give him good money but will end up being room décor. In future, if someone wants to study about that piece of root art it will be impossible.
The appeal of the artist is for a donation to create a real museum for this more than 300 plus works, where people can come and visit. A museum promoting Root Art and tourism. And for that I believe such rare art are to be promoted initially and possibly helped by the art enthusiast.
His root art also can be seen on Instagram on ID: Rootartgallery
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