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(L-R) Christine Styles, Nek Chand Foundation
trustee and widow of Tony Rajer with daughters,
Victoria and Sarah Davitt |
About six months ago, I met with
Christine Styles, the widow of Anthony (Tony) Rajer, Nek Chand Foundation trustee, and
vocal advocate for the preservation of the Rock Garden, to discuss
whether or not
I was a good candidate for the international volunteer program.
Two things she said stuck in my
mind. The first was that the program was a little like camping, and
the second was that in addition to mosaic making, there was also the need to go through all the
items in Nek Chand’s office and archive all the gifts, awards and
other items.
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| Nek Chand holding the oil portrait I painted for him prior to coming to the Rock Garden |
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| Hey, who took my bread? |
I ignored the camping comment, though
it did come to haunt me later on when I realized I could have
benefited from a few ropes, hooks and other rappelling equipment for
climbing and walking up, over and on 12 ft walls after drinking a
little too much cheap Scotch whisky,
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| Poisonous snake in our bedroom |
as well as field guide to wild
animals, reptiles and insects of North India, though that is for
another story.
What I did think about over and over
again was going through the stuff in Nek Chand’s office. From a
very middle aged, selfish and lazy point of view, I kidded with my friends in the states that if I
couldn’t hack doing mosaics, I would find my way to a desk job
for four weeks to avoid having to do any real work.
Boy did I get that one wrong.
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Learning to cut tiles the easy way by
banging on them hard |
In retrospect, it would have been much
easier to sit with a little cement placing tile after
tile around a cement column in a random design, taking regular breaks
for the fresh squeezed orange, pineapple or pomegranate juice or the
fresh little Indian snacks that seem to me like little baked dough
balls with spicy vegetable mash inside them.
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| (L-R) Adam gets a lesson on how to apply cement |
(Not that doing mosaics is easy work. It
is darn hard work. You have to sift the dirt, mix the cement and then
rotate your body in positions that the yoga gurus would never approve
of. You have to reach spots your body was never meant naturally to reach to
slap on some cement that may or may not stick a small tile to a
cement column, in a pre-determined pattern that should have been
designed while I was being a slacker.
And the real shock (if you have never
actually done a mosaic on a column or exterior or large surface
before) is how long it takes to actually fill up the space! Now, I
work slow, but it took me three days at four hours each day to finish
about 12” up and totally around the column. (The rest of the time I
was drinking juice, having chai tea, eating dough balls or having my
picture taken as a celebrity white person who they want to photograph
and talk to because you are such a novelty.)
I watched my companion
volunteers toil away, committed to learning the craft and completing
a column.
I realized early on at the rate I
worked, it would take about three months, which would put me into the
summer season at 120 Fahrenheit, at which temperature I melt. My
two daughters would be very distressed to learn I actually melted in
the Rock Garden and no trace was found of their mother. All that
would be left would be a few random t-shirts and stretch pants from
Goodwill, 20 bottles of iodine tablets that I never opened and a few packets of freeze-dried eggs and ham, which even the
monkeys refused to touch.
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| John Maizels and Nek Chand at press conference for unveiling of Tony Rajer's memorial sculpture |
(What I didn’t realize is that I was
trading the frying pan (literally) for the fire. But really, I have
to credit John Maizels, the other Nek Chan Foundation trustee and founder of
Raw Vision magazine, and the world bible to art brut and outsider
art, for throwing me into the fire.
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| At the end of a hard days work - tired but happy |
One night at dinner he asked if I
would help Alan, this filmmaker from the UK with a broken foot, since he
knew I was a photographer. That is actually how I ended up
doing something that I will remember for the rest of my life as a
highlight and pinnacle of my short and mostly insignificant time on
earth. Like you read all the time and never believe – things happen
when you least expect them.
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| Alan arranging items for photography in our outside studio |
The next thing I knew, Alan and I were setting
up a makeshift photography studio in the stone courtyard of Nek
Chand’s office, trying to remove and clean pictures and
enlarged photographs of Nek Chand with international dignitaries to take a digital record of them.
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| Lokrum packing up items we removed from the office |
Alan and I would take
them out of the office and Lokram, Nek Chand’s gatekeeper for years and years
watched us in disbelief. No one had touched that
office since 1978 when it was built. There is such tremendous respect and awe for this world renown artist, that no one would dare make the decision to remove an item without his express consent...that is until the crazy American woman and the anal retentive filmmaker showed up.
Literally, every piece of mail,
photograph, letter, request, award or document since 1978 sat in a
pile or paper bag behind, next to, around or under Nek Chand’s
chair.
The valuable documents were interspersed with newspapers,
magazines, utensils, bags of chick peas, rat droppings, and bits of
rope, fabric plastic containers, old electronics or anything else
that was given to Nek Chand or brought to the office that might one
day become a valuable part of a Nek Chand sculpture.
After two days of taking a few things
out and having Lokrum put them back, we had a Mexican standoff. I
started to remove a black cloth from a fabric sculpture and Lokrum started to wave his hands in the air and walk in fast circles shaking
his head as he spoke to us in Hindi, probably with expletives about
how westerners never understand their culture and how much he
couldn’t wait to retire and move to Florida to a small condo on the
beach. All I know is that after that scene, we never saw him again. I
heard he had blown out his knee, but I am betting he took the first flight
to Palm Beach and sold a few Nek Chand sculptures to pay for a flat and a fishing pole.
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(L-R) Helper, Alan, me and Nek Chand's current assistant
after a day of sorting and trashing |
I say it with sincerity that I regret
wholeheartedly if there was a connection between our arrival and his
departure, though it wouldn’t be the first time I have seen people
run when they saw me coming to get a job done.
The next day, without
Lokrum, Alan and I agreed we needed some help to communicate to Nek
Chand so he could instruct his staff to be cooperative. With help
from Sarah, who speaks Hindi (again Sarah to the rescue) and John
Maizels, we got approval from Nek Chand to remove everything we
wanted from his office, as long as we put it back again.
(Right...just try putting a sleeping bag into its original bag!)
The next morning, three helpers, and I,
filled up the courtyard with what looked like piles of trash, but
were actually, invaluable maps, architectural drawings, city memos,
award letters, fabrics, etc. until there was no place to walk. And
that was only 25 percent of the office.
Alan came in a little later
that day and I could see from the look on his usually unflappable
demeanor, a slight expression of astonishment and terror at the
devastation I had caused in about 90 minutes, while he was across the street buying basically a potato knish with hot sauce from a street vendor.
And that is when we really knew we were
in for a prolonged period of very hard work to sort,
clean and box what looked important so it could be put aside to be
sorted again by subject and date so that one day, there would be an
organized, digital record of what how Nek Chan achieved the development and near completion of his remarkable Rock Garden. The temperature in the courtyard was often over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes exceeded 120 degrees in the sun, so it was terribly hot as well.
And that is what we are still working on today. We have completed cleaning out all the bags and
boxes that we are aware of in his office, and initially sorted trash
from what could be important. We have set all the pictures and awards back in his office and are now going through flat documents.
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| The article in the Hindi daily paper about our archival process with photos of yours truly and Alan looking at a portfolio album we found with Indian stamps inside. |
We have found half rat eaten
architectural plans hand written by Nek Chand as well as speeches and
documents from the city outlining additional plans that have not yet come
to fruition. We have reviewed photographs of hundreds of well
wishers, volunteers, visitors to the park, other artists and
dignitaries who have visited the park and had their picture taken
with him. There are speeches, awards, marketing brochures, interviews and gifts
of art from adoring fans and well known artists from around the world. All of it now has a place back in his
office or will have a place in a box with a subject name by the time
we are done.
There is no way we can
complete such a monumental task as archiving a 30-year plus history
of anything in three-to-four weeks by two amateur archivists. And there must be a discussion about where the archives will be stored for their protection and access.
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| Three of the hundred of river rock sculptures at the park |
But for now, we have begun a process to protect and document the lifelong passion of a man started by being drawn to the
mystical shape of a river rock,. He chose to
carry that river rock by bicycle to a safe, secret place and began to build a world around it to honor its
creation.
Ultimately he graced that location with an entire world of
river rocks, sculptures and architecture that the world cherishes and
enjoys today and hopefully will be able to do so forever.
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Detail of the miniature version of village where Nek Chand grew up in
what is now Pakistan and said to be a major inspiration
in the creation of the garden.uu |
The least we can do is honor the man by documenting and protecting what inspired and motivated him to continue his journey for so many
years and in the face of such obstacles achieved such greatness to become one of the world's most recognized visionary folk artists.
Next....a look at the many faces and shapes of the more than 2000 park sculptures....
j
