The French windows of this charming cottage serve as perfect frames for the splendid view of Lake Vadivali in Maharashtras Kamshet,85 kilometres from Pune. However,the air inside Shut Up at Calmshet,an art residency,is charged with a flurry of activities as it gets ready to play host to a group of visual artists from Canada. With Shut Up at Calmshet,Karthikeyan Ramachandran,a 34-year-old graphic designer and owner of this property,offers what an artist seeks the most silence. He opened this in October to give artists an inspiring work station and to collaborate with them. When an artist applies to stay here,we look at his or her portfolio, he says,adding,We also look at the possibilities of an art collaboration where artists can display their work at my gallery. The concept behind Shut Up at Calmshet is not unique in India. A good number of such residencies have opened in the recent years. The list includes the Bengaluru Artist Residency One (BAR1),which holds a non-profit exchange programme,Lemon Grass Hopper and Studio Verve in Ahmedabad,Gowry Art Residency in Thiruvananthapuram,Global Arts Village in New Delhi and Kala Bhavanam near Alappuzha. These residencies are turning out to be a huge draw for artists. In March 2011,Center for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP),located at Goas Calangute,hosted its first residency a two-month-long ALTlab Photography Residency in collaboration with India Foundation for the Arts. We received 80 applications out of which we selected four, says its owner,Edson Dias,who experiments with analog media. Delhi-based artist Manisha Parekh spent a week at Ahmedabads Art Reverie in a paired residency with Lin Holland from Liverpool. Asked about the challenges of such a set-up,she says,At times it is a bit of a rush,but mostly it is stimulating and gives a lot in a capsule of time. In Guwahati,an art residency founded by Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya,called Periferry,floats on the Brahmaputra. Established in 2007 on an old ferry,this provides a space between a studio and a lab. Its a month-long collaboration where we get artists from varied backgrounds. We get artists from all over the country and even from places like Bangladesh,Indonesia and the UK, says Madhukaillya.
