NEW DELHI - Eleena Banik, a Kolkata-based contemporary artist is often dubbed the girl with Husain’s brush.

Her world changed one day in 1998 when M.F. Husain came to Kalabhavan in Shantiniketan in West Bengal to receive the Deshikottama award. Eleena was then a sixth year fine arts student.

“He was moving in a group of senior artists and black cat commandos. The artist was carrying a huge brush that was as big as a walking stick. It was a German brush. I walked up to him and asked why he was carrying such a big brush. He gave me the brush and said ‘keep it’, Eleena told IANS at the Visual Arts Gallery in the India Habitat Centre Thursday, where her solo exhibition, My Voice, Against Violence as a Woman, opened Wednesday.

Husain autographed the brush and subsequently visited Eleena’s studio in Kolkata later. He told my father, ‘you have a talented daughter’ and my teacher, artist Jogen Chowdhury that ‘Eleena has grown up’. Later he mentioned me as a budding talent to the Kolkata media, Eleena recalled.

Husain and his brush proved the midas touch. That year, the art fraternity rained its bounty on Eleena with three awards, including the President’s award, a gold medal from AIFACS Gallery in New Delhi and a silver medal by the West Bengal government.

“I was very young and he was like a king, Eleena said.

Eleena, whose works are influenced by the great European masters and the 19th century modernists, draws her experience of being a woman, sensuality, everyday trauma, violence, street rage, hospitals and social turbulence.

She often picks up her themes from the compositions of great romantic poets like John Keats and William Wordsworth and scribbles stray verses in her works.

Her mediums are diverse from monochrome oils to conte (crayon), charcoal and tempera on papers, plywood and canvas. Eleena casts her sculptures in bronze. Her figures are stark conveying death and decay in almost every frame. But the women are strong.

The show ends June 29.

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Crafts shop

Nearly 45 traditional arts and crafts people from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Kashmir and Uttarakhand Thursday found a permanent place to showcase their traditional art wares at a trendy address in the capital’s Khan Market.

The ‘Dastkari Haat’ - the retail outlet of the Dastkari Haat Samiti headed by Samata Party veteran Jaya Jaitley - opened its doors at the Mauve and Pink, a lifestyle store owned by Poonam Bahl.

The shop, though cramped, is funky; offering a diverse spread like trunks painted with Madhubani motifs, fridge magnets inlaid with Kashmiri designs, assortment of hand-crafted ethnic bags, home-made food products, crafts maps of India, ceramic bric-a-brac and metal craft.

“The idea was to present traditional Indian arts and crafts with more skill, utility and innovation. We are targeting two kinds of people - people who travel abroad and want to pick up a gift that is traditional yet modern and foreigners who crowd Khan Market looking for Indian art and crafts,” Jaitley told IANS.

“It required courage to set up this shop. I might set up a similar outlet in Mumbai,” the Samata Party leader said.

Jaitley, the brain behind the Dilli Haat, has been working with art and crafts people since 1967.

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Art Connect

IndiaArtConnect is the latest art magazine to hit the stands.

It has been published by the organisers of the India Art Summit 2009.

As the India Art Summit (Hanmer M and L) team says, it is the first step to connect the international art fraternity in the run-up to the country’s official art fair in August.

“Our aim is to bring the latest developments, highlights and updates on the Indian art market with expert comments,” the editorial team said in its note.

The first edition features write-ups on the art market like “The Rise and Recalibration of the Indian Mark, “Understanding Value in the Indian Art Market” and “Art Fairs: Museums for the Art of Here”. It also has updates on the art summit.