BASIC INFORMATION
SANJHI is a festival mainly celebrated in rural Punjab and Haryana. SANJHI is the name given to the images of mother Goddess moulded with Clay and Cow dung.
There are various beliefs for the origin of word “SANJHI” one opinion is that the word SANJHI means decoration (“SAJAVAT” in hindi). The Word also refers to Hindi word ‘SANJH (Evening) ’, the time when the worship of the Goddess is carried out.
CONCEIVING THE IDEA FOR THE PROJECT
We had seen Sanjhi art in the craft fair at Kalagram, Chandigarh. It was very attractive. When we came to know that the theme of Kala Utsav 2016 is “Living Traditions of Art”, we decided to focus on folk art Sanjhi.
SELECTION OF THE THEME
Our teacher told us that folk art Sanjhi is attached to the special occasion of Navratri in the month of October. As Kala Utsav also starts around the same time, we selected “Sanjhi” as our theme for the project.
Folk art Sanjhi is a traditional living art form. This is a relief art work moulded with clay and cow dung.
RESEARCH
• Meeting with the expert:- We went to Kalagram, NZCC, Chandigarh to know more about Sanjhi. There we met Sanjhi artist Mr. Bishan Lal who demonstrates Sanjhi art in Suraj Kund and other craft fairs. He guided us about the procedure of Sanjhi.
• Meeting the people who practice Sanjhi:- Not many people have heard of Sanjhi in the urban areas. So we moved to the rural areas (Kansal Village in Punjab) . People there were familiar with this tradition. Women were making beautiful objects with clay. This attracted us to learn more about this folk art and tradition related to it. So we stayed there to learn all about Sanjhi. We also searched on the internet.
CONTENT (brief description)
We came to know about the background, beliefs and rituals related to the Sanjhi festival in the village, we observed the process of making objects with clay ,colouring them and pasting them with cowdung. We also offered aarti to Sanjhi Mata with people there. This whole activity made us more interested in the theme of our project.
PROCESS OF MAKING SANJHI:-
We brought raw clay from the potter. After grinding it with stone we soaked it overnight in water and It was ready by next morning.
 MAKING OF OBJECTS
• We started making various objects like stars, moon, sun, different birds and animals.
• As clothes of sanjhi Mata are designed according to different cultures-“salwar suit” or “Ghagra Choli”. We chose to make Salwar Suit for Mata and Ghagra Choli for her “Goli” and Dhoti Kurta for “Pedu”.
• Then we made various ornaments like necklace, anklets, Bangles and accessories like comb, mirror ,purse, Jutti etc were also made for Sanjhi Mata.
• We made Mata’s hands, legs and face.
• All the objects were left to dry.
 COLOURING
We applied white base colour prepared with soaked rice paste on all the dried objects. Then we mixed turmeric(haldi) ,blue(neel) and Sindoor in water to be used as colours (To keep our project original and close to nature). We also used some painting colours to give our Sanjhi a bright look.
We used cow dung to paste all these objects on the clay coated board and decorated it with mirrors. Making Sanjhi gave us all immense pleasure. We learnt a lot as a team.