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Articles
about Prakash
Chandras
From desert dream
of Georgia O'Keeffe to a career of teaching and
making art.
- Jessica Lyons
Willow Glen Resident,
05.05.99, cover
Prakash Chandras points to an oil painting of a Seattle cityscape hanging in
his studio, a.k.a. "the garage." The Space Needle looms in the forefront
brightened by city lights and evening sky, a sky composed of purple and blue parallel lines.
"This is my own style where I simplify everything into lines," the Willow Glen artist explains. "I call it my
'linearism.' All the buildings, everything is made with parallel lines."
Nearly finished, the Seattle painting hangs in the studio among
other works-in-progress, including oil paintings, sketches and geometrical sheet metal
sculptures, Chandras' "visual wind chimes," he calls
them.
About 20 sheet metal sculptures occupy the backyard garden. Some are mounted against the fence, some
act as planters and some as chimes.
"I've been making these for 10 years now," he says, showing me the different variations in the white,
black, red and silver pieces of sheet metal welded together. "They don't make any sound. They're purely
visual. They last in the garden because they don't rust."
Chandras' sheet metal chimes and planters will be sold at the Willow Glen
Farmers Market on Saturday, May 1.
Today's his day off, so he has some time to work on his paintings. Until he has to pick up his daughters,
Jessica and Emalie, from school, that is. On Tuesday and Thursday, he teaches painting and design classes
at DeAnza College. And on Friday, between 4 a.m. and 11 a.m., it's off to the sheet metal shop. In these
early morning hours before the workers arrive, Chandras has free rein to build and create with the
metal scraps.
"I paint, I teach, I'm Mr. Mom, I pick up my daughters, I cook, I clean, but I don't make any
money--but I'm happy," he says. "I do what I love to do."
His patron/muse/biggest fan is his wife, Karen. "She is the greatest patron an artist can find," says
Chandras, who received an MFA in painting from San Jose State. "Karen's support is the most important
part. One can't just do this by oneself."
Before he could pursue his art, Prakasho (rhymes with Picasso), as his family affectionately calls him,
had to take care of one minor detail. Under strict orders from dad, he had to get an MBA, which he did,
from the University of New Mexico in 1975.
"I took the degree back to my father [in India] and said 'okay, this is for you,'" he remembers. "I have
never held a job with my business degree. I always wanted to be an artist, but my father believed in a
business education."
As we walk through Chandras' Willow Glen home, we see that every room is decorated with his signature
linear paintings. The linearism came from a dream he had in New Mexico, he says. He dreamed Georgia
O'Keeffe was showing him her paintings in her studio. One painting had dark blue parallel lines for
the mountains.
"I woke up and realized that she had never painted anything like that," he says. "It was my dream and my
imagination. I woke up and painted it." Now it hangs in the bathroom.
A linear San Jose cityscape hangs in the family room, one of San Francisco hangs in the dining room and
Yosemite is in the hallway. In sharp contrast to the vibrant colors in his other oil paintings, a white
portrait hangs in the living room. Chandras says he painted it after he received a letter saying his mother
had died. It's a tree with white flowers, and sunlight is shining through the tree, but the painting is entirely
in white.
"I didn't paint anything to show the dark, the white was just as good." It's one in a series of white floral
paintings he did after his mother's death. The final one hangs in the bedroom. But in this one, streaks of
bright color infiltrate the white flowers.
"The colors started coming back," he says. "It took two years after my mother's passing for the colors to
come back."
Chandras' sheet metal sculptures, chimes and planters will be featured at the Farmers Market, Saturday May 8 from a.m. to
noon at Willow Glen Elementary, on the corner of Lincoln and Minnesota avenues.
The article can be read at:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/willow.glen.resident/05.05.99/cover-9918.html
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