Carving legends on stone

Nivas Kondeti, the commercial artist, who taught himself stone carving has taken upon himself the challenge of carving famous portraits of legends on stone. Currenly on display at ICCR Gallery, Ravindra Bharati, he wishes his art to travel across the country, especially New Delhi. In a freewheeling chat, he shares about his journey into this unique art.

When did you take to stone carving?

I have been doing this since 16 years, I am a commercial artist, I used to paint sign boards for my livelihood. Since my 10th standard I was very interested in art. I used to write my name on a granite stone. I started carving potraits on the stone and slowly got into stone carving. And ever since, I carved around hundreds.

Tell us about yourself?

I am from Nalgonda and I did my M.A, B.Ed, and since I did not get any job, I started working on my art skills commercially.

How did you learn to carve?

I come from a commercial background; there are lot of artists like from Nalgonda like Shankar the cartoonist from Sakshi, Venkat from Andhra Joythi who happens to be my brother, and we all are from the same artist group. Being in touch with them and our guru Venu Sankoch, who is a famous poet and writer and meeting poets kept me in good company. My guru happened to tell me to get my own identity and I started thinking about portraits on the stone, and began practicing.

How many days do you take to sculpt one portrait?

It would take round two days and if the size is bigger ,the days keep increasing.

Do you have any favourite ones?

I have done carnatic singer M S Subbulakshmi's portrait on stone, which brought me a lot of fame and after that I have carved Sachin Tendulkar. When our chief minister KCR was taking oath, I gifted him the stone carving of his face and I have done the former president Pranab Mukarjee's carving also.

What is the most challenging part of the process

There is no painting used on the stone. It is just a block of granite stone, which is carved. Since it is a block, when I engrave, it changes the shape. Its all about taking out parts of the stone carefully, which is a lengthy process.

How do you want to take this art forward?

I want to show my works at more such exhibitions. I have done two exhibitions so far - one was that of the worldwide legends and now we have done the legends of Telangana. I would also like to take workshops for people, who have interest in this art.