Hufreesh Chopra- ART ROCKETEER

 These magnificent eyes are devoted to revealing the unseen.

Hufreesh Dumasia Chopra was born and raised in India, and has faced many challenges in her quest as an artist. Her father passed away when she was young, and her mother had to work very hard to support her and her brother. She had to learn to overcome adversity from the beginning. Her mother saw to it that Hufreesh was well educated and received formative exposure to art and dance, which she still loves and lives today. 

 Hufreesh has traveled and painted all over the world, even Huntsville, Texas!

She has traveled all over the world, showing her works and gathering friends, and inspiration for her paintings. With considerable delight she explains how she met her husband, and came to this country and began the inevitable adjustments to her new environment. But it was all worth it. Her husband Praveen brought her to the Silicon Valley of California, where she has found acceptance and encouragement; a place where she can continue making her art. Hufreesh has found a nurturing environment, with convenient art centers, museums and galleries, and more importantly, people who understand her. Still, she is committed to break new ground, and grateful for the opportunities in front of her. Today she is painting with skill and passion, always evolving and looking into the future. She is enjoying the taste of personal fulfillment. 

 There are unmeasured lifeforms under the sea...

That fulfillment has been a long time coming, and the result of blessings from above and hard work. She has endured because she was conditioned early in life to deal with adversity, and now she is a woman with a mission. She sees herself as an “adventurer,” and finds fulfillment in trying to express herself through her paintings. It is an other-worldly mission. “Life is more than what we can perceive by our senses” she says with conviction. “When I make a work of art, it is like shooting a rocket into space...”

From her friendly eyes and ready smile, we can rest assured her “rockets” are missiles of love and altruism. Hufreesh loves the spiritual interaction which happens between her art and its audience. She hopes to help connect her viewers with their own exploration of those powerful intangibles beyond our senses. Her art is not merely self-expression but, in her mind, truly finds its purpose when it reaches others. “If art is not seen, it does not exist!” 

 Hufreesh had to lay out her most recent quad on the floor so it could be pieced together... she likes to make diptics and triptics  and quadriptics?

Hufreesh is not so caught up in themes or particular messages. They take care of themselves as she puts down what she feels at the moment. Sometimes others add to her experience by interjecting their own interpretations of her works. Once an 11 year-old boy explained what a particular painting was about... “It shows me the chaos caused between the energies of love and anger,” he confessed. There is no doubt this was no ordinary 11 year old, but then this was no ordinary art.

Still, connecting with art lovers is not the same as financial independence. Hufreesh has had to learn the hard way about the importance and the difficulty of selling her works. “When you are an artist... you are struggling.” She stated as a mathematical equation. She did not want to have to worry about the art market, selling... the commercial side of her vocation. “I thought it should come to me...” Hufreesh enjoyed success in her native India, and soon was responding to invitations to exhibit her works all over the planet. She has traveled extensively and exhibited all over Europe, and found Italy, especially Rome, to be her spiritual home, as if she had been there before. She was amazed at her sales in Germany, where the German people proved to be amazingly open to her spiritual rockets.

 The Inner Sun

But after all those miles, Hufreesh has discovered a deeper truth; She never needed commercial success to find fulfillment or happiness. She believes that a person can find joy in whatever they may do. True happiness is a choice.

 Finding new ways to express eternal truths.

Hufreesh is working on her paintings and also envisioning her next body of works. She folds a painted canvas into a lovely accordion, to show the sculptural quality of the folds... which come alive with her strokes of color. She feels herself moving away from the traditional rectangular canvas, and talks about adding metal forms to her latest painting, to create depth and visual and tactile stimulation. 

  This short video shows some of Hufreesh's experiments to break away from the age-old "box"

Hufreesh does not believe that an artist is straddled with just one style for his whole life... the opposite of the insistence of many art galleries, who bank on consistency from their artists. Hufreesh will never yield to that kind of restriction to her adventure.

 Hufreesh is sort of an "art pioneer."

Hufreesh will soon leave Navasota, Texas and put it all behind her. She will gladly return to her love and her new California home and her evolving art. It has been a time of challenge and growth, tempered with disappointments and delightful serendipity. But she had hoped to exhibit and even sell her works more, and to have some teaching opportunities in the community. Although she is humbly grateful for her opportunity here, there may have been opportunities lost on both sides.

That dysfunction has been no biggie. The greatest kind of rejection, or even contempt, is being ignored. But most artists run into this daily. And she feels far from ignored.  Moreover, her Eastern upbringing makes her resilient and philosophical. Being in a solitary habitat has helped her appreciate what she has, to better know herself, and to foresee where she must go and what she wants to do next. 

 Chopra is fascinated by the forces of nature... the powers in the universe.

As her rockets go off in the future, they will be fired by the soul-search she experienced while living in the Horlock Art Center, in Navasota, Texas. 

If you want to know more about Hufreesh, you can explore her art at her website:  www.hufreesh.com

Navasota plays a significant role in the development of emerging artists. The art community of the Brazos Valley needs to embrace these journeymen and women so that role has an especially positive and lasting legacy.

Woolscapes and Other Discoveries in Navasota: Horlock Gallery

There are three new artists occupying the historic Horlock House on Washington Avenue in Navasota, now dubbed the Horlock Gallery and History Museum. In an effort to make the house relevant to the community, the City of Navasota has transformed the house into an artist’s gallery and living quarters for three lucky artists who are selected every six months. 

Right now the house is occupied by Lisa Urban of Salina, Kansas, Catherine Kaleel of California, and Mick Burson from Waco. These artists were juried and selected from a large number of aspiring artists around the country, who applied for the opportunity. They recently hung individual exhibits of their artwork in various parlors of the spacious Victorian house where they now live and work. After their opening Saturday, two of them graciously agreed to talk some about their stay as artists-in-residence in a small town in Texas…

Lisa Urban speaks enthusiastically about her art and her stay in Navasota.

Lisa Urban is just a little excited about it all… Here is some video of our interview... (sorry, you have turn up the volume all the way!)

Lisa has entered into a journey uniquely her own, producing what I like to call "Urban woolscapes" from lighted set-ups which she creates...

The focus of Lisa Urban's studies is wool, weavings, yarn... arranged in dramatic ways, such as the still- life above...

The lighted still-life might inspire a major work of surrealism, such as this one, or the smaller studies surrounding it.

Lisa explains the steps in her artistic process...

Lisa talks about the Horlock Artists-in-Residence project...

Mick Burson was more laid back, and yet his message was very similar. Both artists seemed to be truly appreciative of the opportunity to work in this environment... 

Rather than focus on a family of related subjects, Mick is constantly looking for that element which he has not considered before, that which the rest of us might never consider, a path less taken.

Burson went on to explain that for him a main point or satisfaction of his art is this freedom… to explore and produce whatever he wants… such as the “obnoxious” timeline with paintings stacked one on top of the other, rendered with latex house paint, some of them partially made from concrete, nails and metal scraps... and then inserted into a minimalist twelve foot column reaching all the way to the ceiling. Mick Burson likes to explore boundaries and use the materials and the space, wherever it is, which he finds in front of him. This is a man who appreciates the little things in life...

Mick takes things as they come. He left (for instance) his studies at the University of North Texas in Denton to engage in this unique six-month program in Navasota.  He tries to use things which he finds in his everyday life in his art, and he does not let the business or commercial aspect of art affect his artistic journey.

Portraits by Catherine Kaleel

Catherine Kaleel has a couple of different forms of artistic expression. One is a stunning portrait technique, with a true gift for capturing a human likeness. The other is an almost photo-realistic approach to rendering studies of relatively obsolete modern objects, such as random cassette tapes or power tools. The contrast between the two is arresting; the nobility and power of the human soul juxtaposed against the ultimate refuse of planned obsolescence. She fittingly studies her humans with a fresh, lively, almost impressionistic style, and yet the manufactured items with technical precision.

Her portraits are exceptional. They might be called her "bread and butter" business, while she develops her artistic vision based somewhat on the story inanimate objects can tell, or perhaps the stories we subjectively attach to them. A little older than the other two, Kaleel has worked in the art world for a decade and welcomes the chance to get a change of scenery and the stimulation of hanging out in a new environment.

A stroll through the galleries at the Horlock House seems to produce a recurrent theme by these different artists from different places in the United States, and that is re-purposing, or recycling. The popular causes instilled by our American educators are surfacing in the paintings by their students, in paintings portraying discarded material culture, or paintings done with recycled materials, or paintings showing the intrinsic beauty of everyday craft and construction materials.

This is an old theme with an new look, truly reflecting the resourcefulness of the American spirit, hearkening back to when tramps made lamps from popsicle sticks and grandmas wove gorgeous rugs from discarded cotton rags. Now the latest generation of artists reminds us of that pioneer eye, then governed by necessity, which craved and created beauty and utility, and gave new meaning to everyday things.