Open-air Sculpture Park

Creative retreat close to Panna Tiger Reserve

A tree grows on a mound. When you walk by, the birds chirp. It has no flowers. No birds. Yet, it chirps. Two men sit on a bench. Branches growing out of their neck. A kiln top lights up a dark night with 1,100 half-watt LED bulbs. A room stands on stilts. A hurriedly hewn limestone block lets lotus grow on its belly. Faraway one can hear the whirr of a stone-cutter. And the ding of a hammer.

The air is redolent with the fragrance of mango inflorescence and under a large tree sits legendary sarod player Baba Allauddin Khan, cast in bronze and laden with a patina.

In Art Ichol, a creative retreat, close to Panna Tiger Reserve (Madhya Pradesh), art grows out of the brown loam.

Sculptures everywhere. Trinkets, iron grills, factory discards picked from scrap dealers brilliantly recycled for an unusual decor. An open-air sculpture park with residences for artists. Foundry. Kiln. Welder. Ceramic Studio. Raw materials. Help. All the artist needs to carry to Art Ichol is his creativity.

Mint-fresh and the brainchild of Ambica Beri, art lover and owner of Gallery Sanskriti in Kolkata, Art Ichol takes forward Maihar’s aesthetic thread that began with the arrival of Baba Allauddin Khan and later of Pandit Ravi Shankar who cut his musical teeth here and also found love (he married Annapurna, the daughter of Baba). Art Ichol sets new paradigms for design and art. Eminent artists have already taken to this haven which is about 3 hours by road from Khajuraho.

Art Ichol does not stand alone in the middle of a verdant patch from where one can see the temple of Sharada Devi, a Shaktipeeth. Maihar House is a 100-year old property with yellow arches and mustard/indigo tiles. At the entrance is a Devi made of scrap; in another corner, there’s a ceramic studio. The coucal flits in for breakfast and the koel sings the morning alarm. Roughly 7-km away is Amaria, a writer’s retreat which sits smug by the Tamas River. A hammock sways between two ancient trees and the placid river offers a silent friendship.

Art Ichol. Maihar House. Amaria. All laden with art and stories. All bathed in strokes of lilac. And strung sedulously in words. All borrowing from a dream – and determination – of Ambica who many summers ago, still in her pigtails and pinafores, first drew a fairy. Drew again. Again. And again. Until, the fairy looked pretty. And real. Perhaps art dripped from her little fingers then. Art spills from Ambica Beri’s fingers even now. As Art Ichol.

Preeti Verma Lal