The art of Kolam

I just stumbled upon a blog post from Chennai Metroblogging. They posted a blog about the recent Mylapore Festival in India that sparked my interest.

Mylapore Festival, an annual feature in Chennai in the month of January is sponsored by Sundaram Finance and organised by Mr Vincent D'Souza of Mylapore Times. This year the festival took place from January 3rd to 6th. The 4 day festival comprises of concerts in Parks at Mylapore, Folk Dance, Kolam contest, heritage walks, Kokkalikattai Aattam and so on.

Kolam is a decorative symmetric design drawn in a variety of sandpainting using rice powder by female members of the family in front of their home, especially near the threshold to bring prosperity to their homes. It is widely practiced by Hindus in South India. A Kolam is a sort of painted prayer -- a line drawing composed of curved loops, drawn around a grid pattern of dots.

It also turns out that Kolam is beneficial to your health. Since the artist has to bend down for long periods of time, it is said to help the digestive system, reproductive organs and to help with overall stretching of the body. Kolam also requires the artist to be well focussed and improves the concentration with which the artist begins her day.

About Kolam: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolam

Slideshow: bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php?id=42384

Video:

posted by katiek on 1/ 9/2008 2:44 pm | COMMENTS (0)
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