Arts
Soaring high with childhood memories
It’s a gleaming silver white Christmas tree, glinting with dazzling rainbow hues.Take a closer look and you will see that the tree is, in fact, made of a number of shimmering kites.
Standing tall at Galle Face Hotel. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
The tree of kites which stands tall at the Galle Face Hotel was conceptualised and created by two young designers Sasha Pinto Jayawardena and Charith De Silva – from the advertising agency Triad and the decor consulting and production agency Maic – respectively. Given the task of designing this year’s Christmas tree at the GFH, the team came up with this futuristic creation.
The design symbolises an experience which most anyone living in Colombo (and even many living out of Colombo) would be familiar with – flying kites on the Galle Face Green. “When we tried to fly kites in other places they would get caught in telephone poles and street lights so going to the Galle Face Green meant freedom to just fly our kites with so much space,” explains Sasha. “The kites were always there. I lived in Mount Lavinia so when I was small, I used to have the feeling that the kites at Galle Face Green flew from Mount Lavinia and went back in the evening,” laughs Charith. The Galle Face Hotel, which got its name from the Green, has always had a view of the kites and so Charith and Sasha felt it was a great connection to create a unique tree.
They also felt that the emotions associated with kite flying and Christmas are similar. “The joy and happiness of flying a kite is close to the joy and happiness we feel during the season with Christmas,” says Charith.
Conceptualizing a tree of kites was exciting and inspiring, but making the tree was not easy. The team first designed and created one kite with an iron frame, metal sheets (thahadu), holographic material and rope. As the General Manager of the Galle Face Hotel Robert Hauck is German, the team wanted to create something which was inspired by the Baroque style of architecture and its colour theme, deciding on the ornate pastel hues blended with white and gold embellishments associated with the Baroque style.
Holographic material would work best they felt because while it has an elegant silvery hue, it also reflects light, creating rainbow hues that capture the lightness and magic associated with flying a kite.“We also took into consideration the interior colour theme of the hotel we needed something contemporary but which would also retain the grace and elegance of this historic hotel,” explains Sasha.
Choosing the material and actually working with it were two different things, the team soon found out. “It was a challenging material to work with –transporting it, pasting it. It’s a sensitive material so it could easily scrape and get damaged,” explains Charith. This is when they decided to attach the holographic material to metal sheets. All of the material used to build the tree was sourced in Sri Lanka.
Charith De Silva
Sasha Pinto Jayawardena
The team then worked on a frame which could support the kites and settled on an iron rod structure. A team of metalsmiths at Maic worked on the structure and then each kite was placed on the tree, the team working on the angles and manually figuring out how each piece fitted together. “The biggest challenge is that you can’t make a computer generated image and fix it accordingly. We had to see how each piece went and how it looked to the eye,” says Sasha. The angle of each kite, which kites to place frills on and the angle at which the frills should stay etc. were all carefully thought out. The team also placed kites in different layers on the tree, creating depth.
This they felt would give the effect of a tornado of kites moving in the shape of a cone. A silhouette of a kite was placed on the top of the tree in the place of a star and a strand of light snakes around the entire tree to complete the look. The tree is backlit so that the soft light brings out the shimmer of the holographic material without making it too jarring.
“This is probably not everyone’s cup of tea,” comments Charith. He feels that Sri Lankans don’t push themselves in terms of design, one issue being the hesitance consumers have in choosing anything unconventional, which is why he and Sasha are happy to note that Galle Face Hotel was supportive of their idea.
“Sri Lanka is not known for these things. We are not known for our design or installation art so it was important for us to show that a little island like this can also do work that is world class – that Sri Lanka actually can produce things like this,” says Charith.
From the initial design sketches to the moment they placed the final of about 80 kites on the 13 foot tree this took a lot of ambition and effort to make.
“When we finally saw the tree installed we felt the same joy as when we see a kite flying high up in the sky,” says Charith, and it is clear that both he and Sasha hope that this unusual Christmas tree will evoke the sense of wonder they felt when creating it.
Kite by kite a tree takes shape