Sudarsan Pattnaik (born 15 April 1977) is an Indian sand artist from Puri, Odisha. Self-taught, he began by shaping figures on the beach as a boy, and has since won prizes at sand sculpture championships around the world. In India he is known to millions for the sculptures he makes on Puri beach to mark festivals, anniversaries and the news of the day. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2014.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Sudarsan Pattnaik |
| Born | 15 April 1977, Puri, Odisha |
| Age | 49 |
| State | Odisha |
| Occupation | Sand artist |
| Known for | Sand sculptures on Puri beach; international sand art championships |
| Founded | Sudarsan Sand Art Institute, Puri |
| Awards | Padma Shri (2014) |
Early Life
He was born in Puri, the temple town on the Bay of Bengal, into a very poor family. He was brought up by his grandmother, whose small pension supported the household. He could not continue at school, and as a child worked as a domestic help in a neighbour’s house.
In the early mornings, before work, he went down to the beach near his home and made figures of the gods in the wet sand, with his hands and no training. People stopped to look. He was about seven when he began and went on every day.
Career
Making a profession of it
Sand sculpture has an old legend in Odisha: the poet Balaram Das, it is said, shaped the chariots of Jagannath in sand when he was turned away from the festival. As an occupation it did not exist. Pattnaik persisted, was noticed by tourists and then by the local press, and in the 1990s began to be invited to hotels and events.
Abroad
He first took part in an international sand sculpture event in the late 1990s. He has since competed in more than sixty championships and festivals, in Europe, North America, Russia, China and elsewhere, and has won many of them, among them a world championship event in Berlin and competitions in Russia, Italy and the United States.
Puri beach
What made him a household name is the stream of sculptures he makes at Puri and posts each day: greetings for festivals, tributes on the deaths of public figures, congratulations to sportspeople, and messages on public issues. He has made works on climate change, the protection of the olive ridley turtles that nest on the Odisha coast, plastic pollution, HIV, polio vaccination and voting. Organisations of the United Nations have used his work in campaigns.
Records
He has set a number of records listed in Indian record books. In 2017, on Puri beach, he built a sand castle nearly fifteen metres high, recognised by Guinness World Records as the tallest in the world at that time.
Teaching
He runs an institute of sand art on the beach at Puri, open to the sky, where students from India and abroad learn the craft. An international sand art festival is held each December at Chandrabhaga beach near Konark, with which he is closely associated. Several of his students have gone on to compete internationally.
Method
He works with ordinary beach sand and water, compacted in layers and carved from the top down, using simple tools. Colour is sometimes added. A large piece takes a team several days; the sea or the wind removes it soon after. He has said that the impermanence is part of the art.
Honours
- Padma Shri (2014)
- Awards and medals at international championships over more than two decades
- An honorary doctorate from a university in Odisha
Personal Life
He lives in Puri with his family. He is a devotee of Jagannath, whose image, with those of his brother and sister, is the subject to which he returns most often, especially at the time of the chariot festival.
The beach where he works lies a short distance from the temple town’s great monuments, among them the Sun Temple at Konark.
Featured image: Sudarsan Pattnaik in Bengaluru, September 2011. Photo by Subhashish Panigrahi, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
