Before It Settles

Rangoli is a uniquely Indian art, a pattern drawn by hand on the ground in colored powder or rice flour. In the South it is called kolam. It needs no training and no studio, only a doorstep, and so in India everyone is called to be an artist.

In the early morning, someone crouches at the threshold of a home and lets the powder run from their fingers, drawing flowers, stars, and loops of geometry. Some are a few quick white lines before the day begins. Others, at festival time, cover the whole doorstep in reds, yellows, and blues. By the next day, feet and wind and rain have carried most of it away, and someone draws a new one.

I was born into a Christian family, and we never followed the custom of drawing a kolam in front of our house, though I have seen them all my life. Then one day a thought came to me. What if a rangoli could rise off the ground in 3D, floating in layers, one ring of color hovering above the next?

So I built it in layers. At the center sits a small rose-colored wheel, like the first point a rangoli artist sets down. Around it run white stars, then blue petals, then gold ones, each color strung on its own ring of nails and crossing over the one beneath. Every line is straight, yet together they bend into curves. Against the black board, the colors seem to float just above the wood, like powder caught in the air before it settles.

If you want to see how it was made, from a bare table top to the last thread, I wrote about it in The Making of a Mandala.