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Some of Ria Sharma’s earliest memories from her childhood in India are of helping her mother, aunts and grandmother with their handicraft projects, from embroidery to crochet to stitching clothes.
“My mom would give me small, small tasks to help her,” Sharma recalls, adding her mother taught her how to cut, how to stitch and how to hand embroider dresses and blouses before advancing to more complicated projects.
“Playing with my mom’s fabrics, sarees, stitching, embroidery, it really gives me pleasure,” she said.
A couple of years ago, the San Jose-based artist was inspired to begin incorporating some of those traditional fabrics into her art, combining the textiles with geometric forms to create paintings exploring themes of rhythm, transformation and cultural memory.
Fifteen of those works are now on display in “Sari ki Saree, The Whole of Saree,” a solo exhibition at the Firehouse Arts Center in Pleasanton.
The free show runs through Dec. 19 in the building’s lobby, with a reception set for 1-3 p.m. Nov. 21.
“My subjects are more like self-explorations, knowing more about me,” she said of the works.
Growing up, she said, she saw how her mother focused on sustainability, always “making use of our ample time to create something.”
She recalls sitting on the floor with one knee on each side of a loom, wrapping thread her mother had bought in bulk into round balls so it wouldn’t tangle as it was being used.
However, once she entered ninth grade and started thinking seriously about her future, she stopped focusing on that handicraft work.
“I just felt that going forward in life, a career was important, skills were important,” she said.
Sharma built her career in civil engineering and lived in Dubai for about 20 years before moving to the U.S. in 2020 with her husband and two daughters.
“We knew that, for their education and for their careers, either we needed to go back to India to give them that foundational education or take them to other countries,” Sharma said. She noted they visited the U.S. and thought, “this is a place our girls should come to for the opportunities.”
Sharma said she was enjoying her career and raising her family, but about 10 years ago found herself itching to try something new.
“I never knew I loved art,” she said. “It was just that when something happens in your life, you’re drawn to something that holds you, supports you and steels you.”
She found that in art, she said.
“The more I thought about it, I thought, ‘I want to do an activity which pulls me closer to what’s inside me,’” she said.
She created the pieces in the show over the last couple of years, starting with fabric from her own wardrobe. She noted how fabric can have cultural meaning. Sharma’s heritage is Sindhi, as her ancestors came from the region that is present-day Pakistan. The textile Ajrakh — featuring an ancient, intricate form of hand-block printing and resist-dyeing — is a celebrated cultural symbol, she said.
She said as she has exhibited the works, others have given her fabrics that have particular meaning to them. One of the pieces in the Firehouse exhibit was created using fabric given to her by a friend who lives in Pleasanton, she said.
“The fabric that I’m using, it has so much love,” she said. “People give it to me with hugs, they have tears in their eyes.”
She has drawn on her civil engineering background to develop a signature Cubist style, making use of shapes, forms and lines.
Using textiles in her work has changed her artistic process, she said.
Before, she said, she would get an idea that was connected to an emotion. Based on that emotion, she would decide the colors and composition of the work.
Now, she said, she typically lets the garment she’s using dictate the piece she creates.
“The fabric chooses me,” she said. “I have to do justice to what is in my hand. It could be as small as my hand size of fabric and as big as a seven-yard saree.”
After obtaining the fabric, she stitches it with a sewing machine, then layers, folds or pleats it as needed. Sometimes she also does hand stitching, beadwork or embroidery.
She uses the whole saree on each canvas in the exhibition, noting that when she started working with the fabric, “cutting them never felt right.”
“Every time I cut a saree, an inner voice made me pause, as if my scissors had stopped working,” she said. “I knew I needed to express this voice through my art.”
She also uses layers of acrylic paint to create texture. The resulting works, she said, are a mixture of abstraction and control.
“It’s something that’s fixed and controlled because of lines and the geometric sense of what I’m bringing to the canvas, but there’s a lot that is loose, also,” she said.
She called the process of creation “magical,” saying it becomes clear along the way what each piece should be. She noted paint interacts differently with different fabrics, and part of the process is allowing the piece to evolve as she’s creating it.
“The only way to enjoy it in this unknown territory is to learn to let go, learn to be open to the possibilities of what new things can happen,” she said. “Not everything can be controlled. You have to just see what it is doing, just exist at that moment and just be aware of it.”
She said creating the pieces featured in the show has deepened the connection she feels to her late mother, her childhood and her heritage.
She hopes those who visit the exhibit walk away feeling valued and more connected to their own heritage.
“I feel being an immigrant here from various walks of life, various cultures, it is very important for people to know that you’re accepted, you’re celebrated the way you are, the way you were born or the family you come from or the cultures or traditions you have or a different language,” she said. “You are celebrated the way you are.”
