The Earth Laughs in Flowers

 Wallpaper Giveaways

My last week has been beautifully flooded thanks to the INK talk going on ted.com.
So much love :) Thank you all for all the comments, the feedback, the joy and understanding.
If you haven't already seen it: Do watch it on : http://www.ted.com/talks/shilo_shiv_suleman_using_tech_to_enable_dreaming.html

It's been overwhelming, with over 240,274 views in just over a week! :) 
do download Khoya here as well.

"The Earth laughs in flowers" is an old favourite by Ee cummings. It's been whispered and scribbled in notebooks for the longest time and this December, while taking a digital detox of sorts in Goa, I found myself back to nothing but a paper and the same watercolours that have be friended me for over 5 years. Infact I think I want to spend a large part of this year just painting again. So if you know anyone who you think would be interested in an exhibition, let me know :)
The original watercolour piece or a print is available if you email me

This wallpaper is a special response to all the people who have sent in emails and comments after TED. :)  Thank you fellow stargazers and dreamers.

'I know nothing with great certainty but the Sight of the stars makes me Dream' - Van Gogh

What this set of Wallpapers has inspired though is a 2 week long search for 2 beautiful quotes that I can illustrate and give out as wallpapers,

Leave a comment either on the blog or here and your quote could be illustrated :) 

Love.

My INK talk is on TED!

Click here to download the Khoya app for the iPad by Shilo Shiv Suleman

Today at 23 years old on 22022012 my talk is out on TED.com on the stage that I designed!!

Forget stomach, my entire body has been taken over by big beautiful butterflies and I am a flutter.

I started my journey with Khoya in search of magic, and this magic found me.

It found me in Love, in Work and in myself and for this I am grateful.

Download it here! 

The labour of love, and many sleepless nights.
and a constant reminder to :

Thank you TED, Thank you all of the INK team and Lakshmi, Shanna, Nilofer, Avijit, Gayatri, Arfaaz, Anders, Inkoniq and everyone else that's part of the big Khoya journey.
22022012
Love
Shilo Shiv Suleman

All the World's

...A Stage

and this was mine. my private universe upon which dreams unfolded, chariots took off

and like water moving through a river, it never remained the same.

I designed this stage over 3 months while working on Khoya for the INK conference this year in Jaipur. As their featured artist of the year, the stage, the book and the entire conference became my canvas, a fertile bed upon which my dreams could take root.

Ofcourse, I had never designed a stage before. But we all start somewhere!

and I started here. A lightbulb, a meticulous cutout in paper, and an idea.  

An intricate web of laser cutouts, layers in wood and mdf all hung and studded across the sky with a back projection with constantly changing backdrops. There would not be a moment of static on my stage, the cutouts were silhouetted by two large animations, and over the span of four days, the colours changed, forests were born, clouds gathered and rained upon it, giant butteflies took over the stage and constellations twinkled.

this was the sketch that I'd made of the stage. and saw it come to life. 

and so it was, white cutouts, open to being transformed with light. (and some love).

And it changed, it morphed from the deepest purple skies like you see below, complete with shooting stars and rockets.

to golds and ambers and blues.

here's a close up of the cutouts in silhouette. 

and quite by accident or fate, while watching it I would see beautiful coincidences, as Julie Taymor, director of Frida and Across the Universe (the namesake to this blog) spoke about a setting sun and the Source of all Inspiration, a sun rose over her head. There she was, source of my inspiration talking about her source on my stage. Tears rose and spilled over.

And by my side, helping me along as I designed my first set were Raghava who brought me in and took me through :) Hilary of bubbles and great bouncy ideas, Paddy of crafty solutions to anything and Anil who laboriously got these produced and dusted. Avijit and my mother and more for moral support and Team Oktopus for endless tracing.

 More from the Stage and INK coming soon. :)

Love,

Shilo

Magical Mystery Tour

 The Magical Mystery tour is coming to take you away!
I count my lucky stars that I can make a living doing things like painting buses.
 I was chosen as one of 5 artists from India along with 5 from Germany to work on a Street Art Project in Bangalore curated by Archana Prasad and Robert.  It's called Urban AvantGarde Bangalore and we're going to be painting all kinds of wonders around the city this week! Next in line is painting an old train station here which I'm quite excited about.
One of the many dreams I've harnessed since I was a wee girl was to paint a bus! At one point I was pretty certain I wanted to live in a bus and replace all the seats with a giant bed!
The giant bed bit is yet to be realized but I did get to paint a bus!

Such lovely interactions with the local workshop guys there, one of whome came to me and said 'yeh to sukoon ka kaam hai' (this is a job of great peace and contentment). And it is.

 Click here to see more pictures 

And now onto the next wall. I feel very small :)

Love.

Shilo

We two ours One.

My mother Nilofer Suleman (illustrated by me above) started her artistic journey as a cartographer, and perhaps that's where my journey began too. As a child I'd spend hours watching her pour over those maps and each word would become a gateway into a world full of pirates and shipwrecks and images that lurk in my imagination.

Here we are when I was little. And as the source of my river and the tree of my apples, on her birthday here is some of her work below: and you can see more here: http://www.facebook.com/nilofersuleman

February

A still from the Creation Myth of Khoya- click to see details

"There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask the moon

to come and press its face against mine.

Breathe into me. Close the language door and

open the love window. The moon

won’t use the door, only the window"

Let me say this, I am not one for Valentines, red ribbons, cheesy songs and teddybears. 

the greatest lesson for me in Love has been :

Beloved.  Be-loved.   Be love   and Let Love be.

 And my two beautiful and best friends, depicted in the portrait above proved exactly this when they slipped into a marriage quietly and gracefully, without any show and pomp. As if they had slid from one room to another, with no change of costume. A simple and sacred thing. Letting Love be. 

 In other forms of Love, the cd I designed for Jai Uttal, 'Queen of Hearts', a collection of songs for Radha and Krishna was sent across the seven seas to me a while ago. Here's a picture of what it ended up looking like.

I also turned 23 on the 1st of this month, and spent the day alone with Rose wine and Vincent's thick beautiful blues at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where I went roaming post the DLD conference with my Beloved. Be loved. Be. Love.

We did Munich, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin as part of a Khoya tour of sorts and it was all that I dreamt of. More revelations and relics from the trip in a post that will soon follow. :) 

and in another form of Love altogether, here's Sufi, my bundle of love when he was a puppy a year or more ago. He's a lot bigger now but his love has not changed. 

and there's so much love to give. and there's so much love to give.

Khoya has arrived!!

The first book of Khoya, the labour of my ove,

has arrived in App stores.

Download NOW

Khoya is an interactive narrative for children that uses new technology- like the iPad to bring alive a magical experience for children and It's been magical indeed.

In this last year I have seen in transform from sketches on the back of used printed paper

to a breathing, glowing interactive piece of Art.

it's been presented and Launched at the INK CONFERENCE where I also was the featured artist of the year and designed the stage,

On one afternoon my fates let it be presented to Steve Wozniak!

co-founder of apple, who interacted with the app and said that Artists were as important to Apple as the technology. Coming from Woz the Wizard, it was a definite spark of magic  in my life.

and it was presented at the WIRED conference this year in the UK.

all before I graduated from University too :)

2011 has been a year of constellation making and starry skies.

And the Universe works in mysterious ways,  I am grateful for it always.

there's a Kabir poem that goes :

'The Redness of my Beloved is such

that I went out in search of Red

and became Red myself.'

I feel like I've gone seeking magic through my work, and have found it in my own life.

Thank you.

More posts from Khoya coming up this week with all the artwork,

.

but in the meantime: Download now!!!

And if you use facebook timeline: Do use one of these images as your cover photo!

Love Always

and Happy New Year :)

Shilo

Timetravel

Whilst in Jaipur this December, me and a cat called Ganjesh Meow Tikam Chand and Surendar by the side of the road outside of Hawamahal who had a camera from the 1860's as royal photographer of the palace.  His great grandfather had brought this camera down from Germany in the 

1860s and he proudly showed off an old Carl Zeiss lens.

what was most incredible though was that this camera transported you back to the 1800's too.

I became my own ancestor. 

  

and it was Magic.

I saw myself as a ghost, with Jugular Bean

as starcrossed lovers like pressed rose petals.

As sisters between yellowed pages.

with family portraits that will hang on my walls for generations to come.

I'm going to start finding ways to work on a project with this man and him 200 year old camera,

but in the meantime - if you're ever in Jaipur

go down to Hawamahal and ask for the man with the ancient camera.

he sits on the side of the road clicking pictures of happy tourists and taking us back into a softer world.

The Hero's Journey

 So this year, I was chosen as the featured artist of the year at the INK Conference

yay! :) its been so exciting keeping a secret like this for the last 5 months!

but here it is! twelve illustrations that I'd created for the conference about 

the Hero's journey by Joseph Campbell!

Campbell spoke about how every man and woman follows the same ancient archetypal journey,

be it in myth, or in real life. 

here is a glimpse of that magical journey!

available as prints as well

First is a call to adventure, setting off on a paper boat into a world full of 

unknown possibilities along a path less travelled

 Then one meets a mentor, a friend, a co-traveller and companion that influences the

way we imagine and see things.

Connections are Made

and Choices too

'She jumps in, to choose safe waters is the route of imposters,

those who love take on the mighty river'

Fears are faced

We set off into magic flights into other worlds of silver moon and shimmer.

Challenges are over come

We have a moment of Revelation

Until we come home, where the heart is.

Looking forward we find ourselves facing a vast ocean, on one hand rockets in the sky and technological marvel, but on the other rising tides and changing climates

It was a set of 12 illustrations, 12 animations, a huge stage designed and an entire book of doodles! :)

More from my journey to Jaipur coming soon!

Love

Shilo