“BRILLIANT IDEAS HAPPEN WHEN SOMEONE DECIDES TO BE PASSIONATE OR PERSISTENT”

Jenny Pinto, 58 lights Designer, bengaluru

EXPLORING

different materials to work with such as clay and pottery, Jenny Pinto, lights designer, chanced upon paper-making in 1998 which was an unexplored craft beyond usual factories in Sanganer and Pondicherry till then. Since having a child puts the whole world into a new perspective, that is what drove Pinto to give up producing television commercials after 20 years, and go the eco-friendly route. “I became a mother in 1989 and I think that’s when one begins to think about the legacy we are going to leave for our children, the kind of air they will breathe, whether the oceans will be polluted by the time they grow up and what impact of consumerism will be on the planet,” she says.

The green route

As the paper she uses is made from plant and waste fibres, either from agricultural waste or hosiery manufacturing, she tries to give waste a second life. Through paper-making, she creates a range of translucent and textured paper lights using waste fibres of banana, sisal, mulberry and pineapple. But deciding to make handmade paper from agricultural waste wasn’t easy for Pinto. “Since agricultural waste is an informal, unorganised sector, it was hard to source. Also, I struggled to get my hands on raw, scaled down paper pulp machinery,” she says. As the most important part of her creative experience has been sustainability, she has unfolded faux cement material from quarry waste and cork sheets from waste cork, to turn them into a range of interior lights. Her artwork has found space in the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru.