In a recent Gettysburg Art talk called “Street Art & Imagination,” Sneha Shrestha introduced her artwork and career.
You can view her work and profile on Instagram: @imagine876 or on her website: www.imagine876.com
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Shrestha is a 2010 Gettysburg Studio Art major graduate from Nepal who is currently experiencing success as an accomplished artist, educator, and social entrepreneur.
After graduating from Harvard with graduate-degree in education, she was able to establish a Children’s Art Museum in Nepal. This art museum is connected with Gettysburg College and has a yearly summer internship available through the Center for Public Service.
Her artwork consists of large-scale graffiti paintings (some scaling 60-foot walls) done with a paintbrush rather than spray paint. Her lettering is based on her “native letters,” i.e. written in Nepalese and Sanskrit. She doesn’t translate these messages for the viewer because she wants to facilitate acceptance and appreciation of cultural difference. Inspired by New York City’s graffiti movement, Shrestha’s work started out as stylized classical graffiti, but has since developed into her own particular style. She is known as “Imagine” in the street art world.
Image Via: meimagine.squarespace
Image Via: meimagine.squarespace
Her compositions feature a lot of orange with blue contrasts due to an admitted influence from Gettysburg, she joked at the talk. But she clarified more seriously that the orange color in particular reminded her of a particular flower that grows widely and popularly during the Nepalese festival season. She translated the flower name as “the one with a hundred petals,” and said the dense orange color reminds her of home, which she said also translates to mean “community,” “sharing,” and “way-of-being.”
She has done multiple collaborations with big companies and institutions, from designing a shirt for Rebok (worn in the image below) to being the artist in residence at Facebook. She also designed a gift box for the company Neiman Marcus, writing the brand in her handwriting, her only stipulation being not selling shoes with that box. She explained her reasoning as that text is considered sacred in Nepal while feet are considered dirty, so its highly rude for shoes to come into contact with text. This stipulation is highly characteristic of Shrestha’s careful control of the message communicated through her art.
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Shrestha has also recently had a show of her work at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, which is the 5th-largest art museum in the nation. Her exhibit makes her the first living Nepalese artist to have a solo show in an institution.
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At the end of the talk, she introduced the Nepalese word “ash-char-ya,” meaning both surprise and wonder. She encouraged the audience to take this idea with them to inspire their lives and work in the same way that she encouraged the pursuit of passions and creation of meaningful work.