Coconut shells: From dust bins to drawing rooms

Kottayam, Jun 3 (UNI) Who bothers and cares about tender coconut shells, which had always found a place on the roadside waste bins? But for this artist from Kottayam, these thrown away coconut shells are his favourite media for carving out beautiful portraits of various gods and other art works.

Though a large number of people were involved in making handicrafts with coconut shells, which was earlier seen as either as a begging bowl in the hands of a beggar or as a domestic fire wood, the work of P N Mohanan is quite different from others.

The amazing portraits of Lord Ayyappa travelling on top of a tiger and St George killing the dragon made of coconut shells were glaring examples of turning an unwanted thing into beautiful artworks.

''As the coconut shell is hard, a high degree of skill and patience is required for carving out portraits,'' Mohanan, a mason by profession told UNI.

He claimed he did not undergo any formal training in drawing and all that he created now had been developed by himself.

Mohanan said he used to draw pictures with pencils and make small items like table lamp with coconut shells while he was studying in the pre-degree classes.

On how he selected coconut shells as his medium of art, the 40-year-old artist said ''when I was a student I happened to see a key chain of 'skeleton' made of coconut shell. The work attracted me and I decided to make a bigger skeleton, which later turned my attention to portraits.'' Stating that 'sacred heart' was his first work, he said, the portrait of 'St George and dragon' was one of his favourite works, which he took three months to complete with about 50 coconut shells and the portrait of Lord Ayyappa took two months.

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