DNA sculpture finished

Click to enlarge images
The last 3 weeks are upon us. Time here has flown in, with its ups and downs, this has been a great trip. I am sitting listening to the Lonesome Boatman on the computer - Good man Steven, your CD has been played many times.

Last week we traveled to Agra, Dehli and visited The Taj Mahal. An amazing place to visit, it took 22,000 people 20 odd years to build. Afterwards most of the trades men had their hands cut off so that they could never repeat the same job again. We would put a few images up only Dara deleted everything off the digital camera. An Indian fella took her photo on the sly and she seen him so in the process of her trying to delete that one pic we lost the lot. Such is life, but I have loads on the 35 ml, so all is not lost. One more trip out of Calcutta/Kolkata, we hope to free up a four or five days to travel to Darjeeling, and visit the Himalayas as real tourists before flying home...

The Sculpture
I delivered the big sculpture to Loreto Sealdah School yesterday, and today the kids painted pictures and wrote their hopes for the future underneath the paintings. These images will be hung from the bars joining the DNA spirals. This pic shows some of them posing with their pictures. We are having an official launch on Saturday 21st. at 2pm. We hope to make it a bit of an event. The Head of the British Council in East India will make the main speech, Sister Cyril will say a few words and some one from Khoj Arts Calcutta, will also be in attendance. A traditional Bengali group will play some live music. Hopefully some of the local press will turn up too.

There was a near disaster transporting it from the workshop to the school - the top caught in an overhead electric cable and nearly toppled it out of the Matador truck. The strands cracked and loads of the clay work chipped and broke off - which we then spend most of today repairing. How we are going to immerse this in the River Hoogli still remains a mystery even to me, but it should be an event! Nothing is easy here.

This wee series of images show the final piece of clay work going onto the base. Dara doing a bit of painting when she claimed to have a sore stomach to get off school. The hands on the base painted up. The children in the school painting up images and finally posing with them. That's Dara on bottom right holding her painting in front of her face. Toraigh had run off at this point.
The two girls and Shona are all keeping well. Although Toraigh and Dara are always checking their email addresses for news from relatives and friends and any stories from home - hint hint.. We all hope to see every one soon.