Art for the Year-End Mailing

Each year at this time we create a special flyer which serves as an appeal for support for our most urgent needs. This year Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami chose The Garden Path as our focus. It is a special 8-foot-wide path surrounding Iraivan Temple that serves as a mud-free walking entry for pilgrims and also as a maintenance road for our electric vehicles, allowing the team to bring supplies to the pujari, maintain the landscape, and such. It's a big project, and costly, more than $500,000 due to the special engineering required for water control (so important on our high rainfall island) and the quality installation which will give the impression of a cobblestone path.
We commissioned Baani Sekhon, our artist in Chandigarh, North India. She just submitted the finished art, and we thought it would be interesting to take you behind the scenes to see the process, which takes weeks to complete. Follow the steps in the slideshow.

The finished art showing the Garden Path and the quartzie apron leading from the entry staircase to the temple steps.

Taking a recent aerial photo, we showed Baani the grasses and boulders that are in place. Notice that the temple is coomplete and the landscaping is rich on all sides, but there is a dirt swath that remains to tie them all together and make it a one whole.

There she is, in her home studio.

Then we indicated where the quartzite is to be installed and how it intersects the Garden Path.

Next we took the engineers\

plan and roughly outlined the placement of the path, adding images to show her the form and color of the entry apron (left) and the path design. '

A few weeks later, Baani submitted an accurate but rough sketch for approval.

Then she sent the path in position using photoshop.

We sent her this watercolor to give her the typical architectural style we were wanting to achieve.

She implemented our ideas and sent this partial canvas for approval before she completed it.

We approved and ten days later the art arrived, just in time to be the major graphic for the 2024 Year-End mailing to be seen by thousands of supporters.

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