Scrap to sculpture

with metal scrap,especially auto parts and kitchen utensils,to covert them into “scraptures”.

So,he’s made a chair out of iron rods—the seat and the back of a chair are your usual soft upholstery but they are held together by stylishly bent iron rods. He’s also made a “ram head” wall hanging—the ram’s face is made of the cover of a carburetor,its horns are made of iron rods and together they are fixed to an old tawa which hangs from a nail in the wall. Then,there’s the “exhaust fan lamp”,the base of which is an old exhaust fan. Or a brightly-painted old trunk that can serve as a wacky bench.

Verma also likes to make figures out of scrap. His scrapture called “bad pole dancer” is the figure of a dancing girl-its head is made of the nuts and bolts of a car,its face of ball bearings,its hands of construction rods and its skirt is made of several keys.

Once a month,Verma visits the neighbourhood kabadiwaala and sources in bulk anything he can lay his hands on-old keys,utensils,auto-parts,hand tools,rods. In fact,he now has clients who provide him with discarded pressure cookers,tawas and pipes to turn them around into sleek home décor,for anything between Rs 500 and Rs 35,000.

Verma then sits down with this scrap inventory at his workshop in Noida and welds them into whatever he can think of. “Sometimes,I have an image in mind and then look for objects which can be used to make it and at other times,it works the other way round,” he says. But Verma makes sure that he doesn’t “mess with the shape of the original scrap”. “The USP of my works is scrap,and it must show,” he says. No wonder his works have a rustic,antique look. “People who buy my stuff are those who want exclusive,one-off pieces not found off the shelf,” says Verma whose clients include young,urban couples setting up new homes and interior designers.

He also displays and sells his works at his store,Creativegarh at Shahpur Jat in South Delhi. “When I wasn’t able to find space for myself at the various art galleries here,I created one myself,” he says. So,there isn’t much demand for his kind of work? “Art in India has a long way to go,within it,sculpture has a longer way to go. And within sculpture,scraptures have an even longer way to go,” he says.

Perhaps,that’s why he makes scraptures only on weekends. Otherwise,his dayjob is that of running his company—Arun Verma Design Studio—that offers branding and marketing solutions to companies in India,UK and US.

Of course,when the marketing solution includes making a scrapture,Verma offers that too. For instance,he created a 75-kg,eight-feet high watch out of 140 kilos of discarded watches for Titan.

Verma works by welding,which he studied as a production engineering student at the Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College in Aurangabad. He never worked as an engineer though. He spent six years in advertising and another three in IT before turning entrepreneur. It was when he was making “something he can’t remember” with empty after-shave bottles at home 10 years ago that he thought of making furniture accessories out of scrap.

Today,Verma calls himself a “serial creative” and is writing two books on what he calls “everyday creativity”. “Why should just artists be creative? Anyone-from bankers to homemakers-can be creative in what they do. My books will explore that,” he says.

No wonder,Verma doesn’t like being called an artist. He’d rather be called an entrepreneur.