How it all began.

I longed for my mother as a child. She was a busy college professor in a megacity at the other side of the world. After school, I’d be taken to my mom’s college, and wait for her in an office room. Her colleagues would check on me from time to time, but for the most part, I would be left alone. In my loneliness, I used to ask for paper to draw.

I would draw ice cream.

Mother.

Going out with parents and my brother, which seldom happened, because my father was so busy with work as well.

I’d draw us all in a car, going to grandma’s house in the far city of Chittagong.

I’d draw the beautiful city by the Bay.

I’d draw the sea.

Then mother would come.

Hugs and kisses.

We’d go home.

A new day would begin.

Same as the day before.

I grew fond of my paper and pencil friends. Sometimes, I’d talk to my pictures. Before I knew it, I loved to draw.

When I was in third grade, we had a cousin’s wedding in family. The pre-wedding ceremony, where the bride is blessed by her family and friends, was arranged at our home. There I first saw “Alpana” being painted on the floor outside the front door of our house. The intricate pattern of traditional design continued through the stairs up to the roof of the house, where the ceremony was held. I saw the elder girls using chalk first, to sketch the pattern on the surface, and then paint on the chalk with thick brushes. I wanted to help. They didn’t mind. I loved it. The night before the wedding, all the girls had similar intricate patterns painted on their hands with henna paste (a kind of plant). After waiting what seemed like an eternity, I could wash the smelly stuff off my hand, and wow! The design on my hands looked so…beautiful! I liked it so much that I picked it up as a hobby and became very good at it. I learned to appreciate Bengali traditional design that was two thousand years in running.

In my middle school years, I shared a room with my eighty something grandma who was incapable of doing almost anything. I helped taking care of her, and kept myself busy. I also started helping cleaning and decorating our little house more and more. A big change in my family came after my grandma passed away. Everything around the house reminded my mom of our grandma. We decided to move.

I got a whole room for myself in the new house. I was beside myself with joy, and immediately decided to re-paint and decorate the room. After I was done, mother was impressed and she let me design and decorate the whole house. I enjoyed shopping for things with a tight budget, and always got an extra kick when I could save money for us. After decorating and arranging our house, I didn’t stop. Every time I needed to clean my room, I made a conscious excuse to rearrange my room. So, in a way, cleaning my own room was my inspiration for decoration. To me, the room was like a tree, which, over time, hosts plenty of bird’s nests during winter (common occurrence in Bangladesh). Then the eggs hatch, and by springtime, all the birds and birdlings leave the tree, all that stay behind are clutter of twigs and empty nests. Then a strong springtime air rushes through and flies all the nests away, and the tree becomes renewed, ready to host the birds for another year. This is how the most boring job for my weekly schedule became fun and a renewal.

Eleven and twelfth grade in Bangladesh is called college years. That was a time of freedom, and I was busy, busy busy.  With my studies, as well as with art, sculpturing and pottery design courses outside school.  I participated in some local combined exhibitions that hosted various artists.  As an experiment, I also did some dress design with one of my friends. It was small boutique in my bed room in my high school life for my pocket money. That involved shopping for raw materials, design block making, directing seamstresses, and selling the final product. That was a lot of fun to see beauty unfold in front of our own eyes. We sold all of them to my friends and family. It was nice to see people appreciating what we designed and made.

When time came to go to the university, I wanted to pursue a career in Interior Design, but nothing was available. I had to take a different major. But my love for design and decoration stayed in my heart.

I came to US, and rekindled my love of design. I did a staging course. I decorated and designed a few friends’ house only to satisfy my cravings for creation. A realtor in the community sought me out after seeing some of my works and I staged several houses for him and others, and started to have a few clients of my own for decoration. Then came the housing market fall and everything kind of stopped. An opportunity came for me to go back to college and be formally trained in the profession that I loved so much, and I took it. This is how I came to take this course in Design at OSU.