Experiment with pottery and screen printing in this Chennai studio

Some of the locations are aptly known as Studio Serendip. I walk around the airy inside-out space and follow the sound of laughter across a lush lawn where a group of adults are creatively getting dirty, spinning pottery wheels. The garden is in full bloom with bananas, ginger blossoms and Heliconias, a pond with splashes of more color offered by brightly colored fish.

Pottery students are the latest of more than 280 adult learners who have enrolled for short, but focused, art courses at Studio Serendip in Kotturpuram. Classes are all conducted by artists, and courses that come in the summer include pottery, screen printing, 3D sculpture, and cyanotype.

Sarah Waiteth started Studio Serendip in early 2021, after the first lockdown, as a way to restore some creative balance to the city. Waiteth is an art entrepreneur who founded the Rainbowfish Studio, in-school and after-school art programs, and the non-profit Indian Art and Design Educators Association.

For Studio Serendip, Waiteth is clear about its DNA – no one-day courses or art birthdays, for example. This is a venue for adult enrichment classes that provide intense artistic engagement, not a one-off experience. “Studio Serendip belongs to the artist,” says Waiteth, who designed it as a safe space where artist-teachers and adult-learners come together to explore their creativity.

Each course is 10 sessions long, either once or twice a week, and costs around ₹1,200 per session. “At the end of the course, learners will have the skills and confidence to further their education,” says Waiteth.

This is true for independent artist/graphic designer Srishti Selvam, who enjoyed learning “the whole process of screen printing, down to the last detail, in my five days there”. He has since purchased the materials needed to continue printing at home.

The reason for taking an art enrichment class is often just to relax. Dr. Vignesh Srinivasalu, who works at the ICMR – National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis, says pottery classes are “extremely therapeutic and help me take my mind off everything else.”

However, during classes, “in a strange way, I transferred a lot of the techniques and skills I learned as a doctor to my pottery and sculpture.”

Pottery is one of the most popular courses here, currently in its 32nd opening batch with ceramist Thiagarajan. He says, “I have benefited greatly from teaching here during the pandemic; This gave me a chance to maintain my art practice when the school was closed. ,

Artistic collaborations inside and outside the studio are the unplanned but pleasant outcome of this creative hub. Studio Serendip’s manager Niranjana Jawahar mentions how an interior designer and textile maker ended up in the same Screen Printing 101 course. Their shared interests inspired them to talk, and they are currently working on a design project together.

Waiteth is pragmatic about the project: “Classes like these are only viable if you don’t want to ‘make money’ from them. In Serendip, two-thirds of the fee is paid to the artist, the rest is used just for running the place.” .” Vetteth Studio owns Serendip’s premises, and does not charge artists any fee for using the space.