Who is Pritesh?

Hello All,

At the outset, thank you, for spending your time reading what I have to say about me, which is precious little (I talk a lot, so take this one with a pinch of salt!).

I come from a Defense background (my Dad was in the Indian Navy) and a second child (of four) to my parents. With an elder brother to look up to, I always grew up.....umm......in a bit of a masculine atmosphere. Tree-climbing and not Barbies were my childhood specialities.

From my mother, I've received this Art gene which kept me dabbling with one form of Art or the other all my life. After doing my Class XII from K. V. No. 2 ASC, Bareilly Cantt, I went on to study Chemistry Honours at Miranda House, Delhi University (yes, you heard it right, I love Chemistry ;)). A chance meeting with a College senior made me aware of the existence of Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. On a whim, I wrote the exam, made it through a series of interviews and went on to my M.S. and PhD from there. I finished PhD in Materials Chemistry from Materials Research Centre in July 2008.

Within two weeks of leaving Bangalore, I headed out to Gent University, Belgium to do my post-doc in Centre for Microsystems and Technology under Prof. Jan Vanfleteren. A conference publication, a USA patent and a Europe patent later, I quit the position, got married to Ananth (whom I'd been seeing for 4 years) and moved to Stockholm.

Then ensued the first REAL break from studying, I was without a job for 10 months and at the end of that period, I was working a post-doctorate yet again at School of Information and Communication Technology. My son was born in October 2010 and I took a long parental leave from June 2011 to August 2011. It was then that I started quilling.

Quilling was a revelation, an Art I had never heard of before. My sister introduced me to it and persisted in making me attempt it seriously. With lots of time at hand, I thought, ok, it doesn't hurt. Two months later, I was hooked and booked too! :D My friend, Deepa Bharti, put her faith in me and asked me to make her anniversary gift. From then on, I have had the good fortune of bumping into people who have a hunger for the unusual, for the untried. This is where I started:

and this is here I am today :)

Seattle skyline - the painting registered for a Guinness Book of World records for the largest beehive quilling painting in the world (4850 square centimetre of beehive quilling). Co-creator: Richa Kapre

In the larger scheme of things, the one I am terribly proud of is the work I've done on the paper jhumka. After numerous trials (and errors!), the jhumka is in a state where it withstood my weight (I fell on it) and survived, unscathed!.....

It has been a journey where I've taken leaps of faith, learnt a lot of lessons, the biggest one being:

If you don't push your boundaries to achieve excellence, they will shrink to accommodate your mediocrity

I can be contacted at:

artzire@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/Artzire
+91 8884643192