Her art comes from the very soil where she found her calling. When Gifty Bright speaks about her love for terrariums, you can see the amount of love she puts into each individual grain of sand that she adds to them. A lover of all things aesthetic, she represents a brand of art that is relentless and finds itself through new cities and mediums.
After graduating in a subject she didn’t relate to out of her family’s pressure, Gifty ran to Bengaluru the first chance she got to chase her dreams. There, she worked as an art curator and trainer for a number of reputed galleries. “I had this urge to create things at every point. Even when I was studying other things or working at a place that didn’t support it, art was always on my mind.”
Whenever she got the time to do it, she would conduct workshops on the things she loved to do. She poured herself into creating sculptures and colourful dreamcatchers. And she felt most comfortable with herself when she passed this love on to others. She says, “People are always so open to new things when they are learning for the first time.”
She went on to travel across Delhi to understand art and the elements of it better. “I learnt from people who had dedicated their lives to art and that’s where I was introduced to terrariums for the first time,” she says, adding, “It’s such a beautiful thing to practice because it takes patience and dedication. That’s the first thing I learnt when practising it myself.”
In 2016, she moved back to Kerala. Back home, she was surprised to learn that people barely knew about the terrariums, let alone know how to practice it. So she decided that she would use her love for teaching and introduce her hometown of Trivandrum to terrariums and all that they had to offer by introducing workshops called On The Soil.
She says, “When I started teaching people here, they seemed so sceptical about being able to do it. But I always push them to try because the only thing you need is a desire to practice it and the patience to do it right,” says Gifty. She explains that what draws her to the art is the sense of completion it gives her and how it calms the artist. So register for a workshop now, if you’d like some peace.