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| Sunday, 6 April 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Arts in the provinces : Two Cultural Centre concerts by V. Basnayake One of the objectives which President Kumaratunga had when in 1997 she started establishing Cultural Centres all over the country was to utilise western music (along with other arts, crafts and sports) for community development. In pursuance of this objective, the Western music panel of the Arts Council of Sri Lanka has endeavoured to hold workshops at the centres, or joint concerts between local performers in the area of the Cultural Centre and performers to the Centre from Colombo. The 7th and 8th of this series of joint concerts were held this year at Mahagama and Dompe. The joint concert at the Cultural Centre at Mahagama (20 km from Kurunegala) was held on February 13. An audience of about 100 persons filled the hall. the local contribution to the concert consisted of the Cultural Centres theme song (in Sinhala), followed by two Western music items - My Bonny - sung by a group of 8 boys with accompaniment of guitar and piano, and a piano solo, and then by two oriental music items - a raga-based composition with oriental instruments including sitar, and a song by 10 girls and a boy. The Colombo visitors' contribution had been organised by western music teacher Mrs. Shirani Weerakkody and consisted of piano solos, piano duets, a classical guitar solo by a young man from Ranaviru Sevana, a violin solo and a vocal solo by her pupils. In between the local contribution and the visitors' contribution there was a speech by the District Secretary Kurunegala, Mr. T. Ranasinghe, who expressed pleasure at the nature of the event in which there was a joint meeting of local performers and Colombo performers, with representation of both Oriental music and Western music, and the attempt to perform popular Oriental music as well as classical oriental music, and the same for western music too. The joint concert between performers from the Dompe area and from Colombo was held at the Dompe Cultural Centre, Pelahela, on March 14. It began with a short talk (in Sinhalese) by Mr. Dayananda Fernando on western musical instruments. Mr. Fernando then played three instruments - violin, flute and bassoon, with piano accompaniment by Mr. Rohan Joseph de Saram. One of the bassoon pieces was a baila tune and it had a drum accompaniment by a teacher at the centre. The local contribution consisted of two songs performed by a group of six singers accompanied by drums and serapina. There was no western music item from them. The audience included Mrs. Olga de Livera, and officials from the Cultural Department. Most of the audience consisted of a group of young mothers with their infants. There were also a few music teachers. The aliveness of the Cultural Centre was shown by many dance and drama activities which were seen before and after the concert - they were practising for a concert to be held at the Centre on the next day. ########### Pictures out of wood shavings An exhibition of pictures using wood shavings by Upul Saluwadana opened on April 3 at the Alliance Francaise de Colombo and continues till April 7.
Upul's hobby is making beautiful pictures out of different types of wood shavings. Be it ebony, jak, teak, mahogany, red wood or white wood. Upul turns out some very attractive pictures, sometimes straight out of his imagination or out of some striking book illustration. Twenty three years old, Upul first got the idea of his pastime about five years ago. He once watched some builders constructing something and noticed hundreds of wood shavings and small or irregular pieces of wood which would be thrown away later. He racked his brains about what could be done with these leftovers and finally got the idea of making pictures with them. Upul's talent in making such pictures was heightened by his experience. Of course making such pictures does not simply mean cutting pieces of wood in thin strips and pasting them. It needs patience and skill, says Upul. First of all the wood has to be boiled, wrapped up in a piece of cloth. This softens the wood and makes it easy for cutting into thin strips and turning it out to get various effects in a scenic picture or the effect of clouds. The wood is also varnished, and before this there are various techniques which are tried out by Upul to make the wood long lasting and to prevent it from getting warped. But, these are secrets of the trade, says Upul and cannot be divulged. His wooden characters of scenes are pasted onto a dark cloth background and together with his techniques for highlighting the natural colours of the types of wood, some very striking pictures are the result. Upul's dream is to exhibit his work internationally, he says. He would not like to do it on a large commercial basis because of the great effort that will be required for his pictures. He has however undertaken a few orders. "Once you get commercial on a large scale it could be difficult to maintain the standard of the artwork", says Upul. He particularly likes making pictures which represent tradition. He enjoys doing dancers, tea pluckers on estates, peraheras and Sri Lankan wildlife too, including elephants and the various types of birds of Sri Lanka. An interesting feature of his work is that he uses absolutely no paint - just varnish to impart a shine to his work. ########### Kandy Music Society school choirs festival by Kathy Roper The Kandy Music Society arranged a very successful school choirs festival in association with the Arts Council, University of Peradeniya at the engineering faculty, Peradeniya University recently. Seven schools from the Kandy district participated in this event. The programme, which had a very international flavour, featured songs from Africa, America, England, Germany and, of course, Sri Lanka. The festival was opened by Mrs. Bridget Halpe. All participants observed a minute's silence in memory of Professor Cooray, the founder of the festival. Mrs. Halpe then introduced the members of the newly elected committee and encouraged members of the audience to join the society. The first school choir to take the stage was Kandy Girls' High School senior choir with an interesting selection of songs which they sang brightly and energetically. Peradeniya Central College choir followed the High School choir with some beautiful Sinhala songs dedicated to their parents. The songs were accompanied by a striking and very touching mime which depicted the devotion and dedication of parents to their children. Four instrumentalists accompanied the next traditional song whilst three girls performed a dance routine. Dharmaraja College choir, sang a rousing version of Grandfather's clock which was preceded by the more serene Music in the air while Hillwood College choir sang a beautiful African song which they followed up with an arrangement of the old favourite Swing low sweet chariot which they sang with great gusto and enthusiasm. The Girls High School Kandy senior choir chose Scarborough fair and country roads for their presentation, both greatly enjoyed by the audience while the Good Shepherd Convent choir were in excellent voice with their arrangements of Love changes everything, Any dream will do and Mallaka. They rounded off by singing a peace song. The CIS senior choir sang The Angel Gabriel then the beautiful Ave verum corpus, followed by the more boisterous Grandfather's clock and the Mermaid. The occasion was great fun and an opportunity to demonstrate the good work of the schools and the dedication of their music teachers. ########### Artist's message forged in metal In his latest exhibition of art and sculpture, the well-known artist, H. A. Karunaratne emerges in a new incarnation. Today, he is a mature sage in his chosen field of art and sculpture and is totally given to the probing of the essence of art.
The artist's soul has soared freely beyond the limits and confines of paintings. For the time being - I tend to think those familiar tools of his creative expression. - The brush, The palette and the canvas have been set aside. He has chosen as his medium an unyielding material that is quite challenging and relatively unmalleable. He has worked in the unsupple medium of metal, as the means through which he could communicate.
Working in metal, calls for a total involvement. In painting an artist, generally, exerts his imagination and his fingers to aid that peculiar creativity that has to be transferred to his canvas. But, metal as a medium of creativity is a totally different proposition. To wrest art and meaning out of the stubborn metal, the artist is compelled to exert himself physically as well. The bending, the cutting, the shaping of the metal, are activities that invariably begin to tell upon a person, specially on the artists who have been pursuing the mild vocation of painting. When he turned to the medium of metal, H. A. Karunaratne underwent an ordeal in his struggle to come to terms with his newly selected medium. His metallic sculptures, at the first glance, seem "out of this world." The shapes he has been able to extract and coax out of the metal he utilized, tend to jolt the routine, work-a-day sensibilities of the viewer into an entirely fresh form of perception. The metallic sculptures on display at H. A. Karunaratne's latest exhibition bear, eloquent testimony to an artist's capacity to infuse "life" into inanimate metal. Some pieces of metallic sculptures on display, possess a stray hint of life in outer space. Artist H. A. Karunaratne's way of commenting on his own works is detachedly, objectively, philosophic. - Edwin Ariyadasa |
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A talented hobbyist with an unusual hobby is Upul Ranjan Saluwadana
from Badulla.
