Whenever we think of an art gallery, our minds is flooded with the images of Venkatappa Art Gallery (Bengaluru) or Prince of Wales Art Gallery (Colaba, Mumbai). These galleries are housed in heritage buildings that have their own aura. Now even Mangaluru boasts of one such gallery, Kadri Rocks, which has an old world charm and also offers a glorious artistic space.

The D’Souza family has lived here for nearly a century. “The space has many memories associated with it, which is why I wanted to convert this house into something that everybody, art lover or otherwise, could enjoy, says Harsha D’Souza, proprietor of Kadri Rocks. “Hence, it was turned into an art gallery.”

At a time, when many have sold off their homes to make way for multi-storey buildings, Harsha wanted to use his home to promote art as he once dreamt of being an artist himself. “But life had different things in store for me.” Harsha chose to dedicate a large chunk of his land and the family home, in the uptown Mangaluru to art.

The brick red walls, red oxide floors, tiled roof, long corridors, spacious halls and verandas and wooden grilled windows give a perfect setting for an art gallery. But it is not the art on canvas alone that Kadri Rocks is looking at, Harsha is even open to letting out the space to basket weavers, potters, mural makers and so on.

“I learnt that basket weavers in coastal districts are a dying tribe. During a visit to Naravi, Hebri and Moodbidri, I discovered that basket weavers were disappearing by the day. Their children had gone to the city in search of jobs. We have a treasure trove of art, which is handed down for generations and it can be turned into an entrepreneurial venture.”

In another of his expeditions, Harsha came across a community of potters in Nilambur in Tamil Nadu who specialised in making clay murals. “Kadri Rocks will showcase their work,” Harsha says.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by M. Raghuram / February 25th, 2019