A Unique Book About the Indian festival of Diwali
Little Lantern & the Dark and Moonless Night
A hopeful Writer. An inspired Potter. A scared Little Lantern.
And a festival of light on a dark and moonless night… in America!
Little Lantern and the Dark and Moonless Night is a book about finding your light and showing the way. The story follows a Little Lantern—made of earth, water, and fire—who doesn’t know how she can help the Writer celebrate Diwali, a grand and centuries old tradition from India. But with the Potter’s inspired designs, she learns that a tiny light has the power to bring color to the whole world.
With encouragement from my daughter, I decided to tell the story of Diwali focussing on what I’ve always loved about it. I started with my memories of creating Rangolis during my childhood in India, and placing the simple clay lamp in the middle of it. Then, I began to discover inspiration everywhere.
My potter friend Jeff’s beautiful lanterns which made me think about how I celebrate it differently now that I live in the US.
Folios of Persian calligraphy I studied in a museum and
A conversation I had with a woman on an airplane too.
I wove together these bits and pieces to create a storybook that celebrates the light we have in all of us. And learned that my favorite thing is how the light showed me colors, and colors brought me joy.
Here’s what some readers said:
“My granddaughter loves art and I loved pottery when I was in college. She will love this storybook.” ~ Anne, grandma, Orlando, FL
“I can see how my pre-school class will love picking colors for the pages of their books. And our Jewish school will love this story of light.” ~ Laura, teacher, Miami, FL
“I like how the Little Lantern—this object—is thinking of her journey and purpose just like we humans might think about ours.” ~ Rana, poet, Springfield, VA
“I like that this is a story for everyone and inspired by everyone.”~ Kori, educator, Washington DC
Photo above: I started making the books combining various papers in my collection and posting the photos on Facebook. People started claiming books which used colors they liked! I had 20 lanterns so was making 20 books then. Today, I have sold so many and at workshops we explore ways to make own paper lanterns as well.
Photo, below: A ceramic lantern by my friend potter Jeff Rogers. In a dark room the tealight inside casts beautiful shadows on the book which is itself a Rangoli made from paper.
2015:
In an amazing collaboration with the Washington DC-based family engagement organization Turning the Page (TTP), 100 families will get a copy of my book Little Lantern and the Dark & Moonless Night. Not only that, when Ellie Canter of TTP was approached by Imagination Stage, a children’s theater and arts education program based in Bethesda, MD, to apply for a grant from the D.C. Commission for the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH), she immediately thought of my book and upcoming visits to TTP’s partner schools.
Read the full story on my blog for my art studio, Studio PAUSE, here!
2018:
At a 2018 workshop I was conducting at the Freer & Sackler Galleries of Art in Washington DC, Ruben Villalta told me that it was unfortunate that this book was only available in English and the story would be unavailable to Spanish readers like him. So I invited him to translate it into Spanish if he felt like it. And he did!
2019:
In 2019 I did some more workshops at the Freer and Sackler Galleries. I designed a new smaller and wordless storybook called My Rangoli, for a workshop for families with autism. Participants got to choose their papers because of color, shape, and texture. Then we assembled them, stapled them, and added the cover and back labels. Then we put the tealights in the center!
The next workshops, over one weekend, were for families and they got to pick if they wanted to make a Spanish storybook or English. After the books were complete, we took them to the museum’s South Asian galleries and I showed them some ancient South Indian lamps. We put our Rangoli books with lamps on the floor there. It was an amazing feeling for me to realize how the museum had inspired my art and how as I taught others we could bring them back into the galleries.
2021:
During Diwali 2021 the Kennedy Center in Washington DC decided to re-open after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. It was their 50th Anniversary and all precautions were in place. They invited me to curate a 4-day Diwali event. I told them I had no idea about performing arts. They said they wanted to democratize curation and I just had to come up with ideas and they would make it happen. I called the program Celebrating Light & Life: Diwali at the Kennedy Center. I invited artists and performers to share how they tell stories of Light and Life through their work.
The first day I showed the movie Billion Colour Story by my friend N. Padmakumar. It would help people understand a little bit about how so many people of diverse backgrounds live side-by-side in Mumbai, India. The second day, I invited Prio Bangla, a local multicultural organization, to showcase the various Diwali stories of India as told through songs and dance. The third day I invited Indian American singer Rohith Jayaraman, who had just released an album of songs in Tamil in response to the recent unrest in America.
On the last day, I invited Studio PAUSE to share how my book had inspired others to create their own response. First, my daughter had encouraged me to make a book about Diwali; then PAUSErs made it their own like Rubén Villalta who wanted to translate it into Spanish so people who speak his language could enjoy it too; how making copies of the book inspired photographer Susan Sterner to explore light, paper, and color in her own way; and how musician Dena Jennings used her Rangoli book as her Advent wreath and created music for it. The audience then made a My Rangoli book of their own to take home to remember that inspiration is everywhere! Watch the full performance on the Millenium Stage YouTube channel.
2022:
At the Studio in the historic Buckingham neighborhood of Arlington, VA, the students in AHC’s After School Program visit the Studio to do art and participate in my projects. This year, I wanted to teach them about Diwali, the Festival of Light. So I cut our cardboard shaped which they could trace oin the sidewalk and make their Rangolis. We started just before the sun set so that we could add the tealights as it got darker. Children got to take the chalk and tealights home after. The Rangoli stayed till it rained next.
2023:
Starting in 2022 and going into 2023, we were curating a year-long exhibit called We PAUSED! Unbound at Arlington Arts’ Gallery 3700. The four instllation exhibit inspired by our pandemic time community book project We PAUSED! included a couple new artworks in response to the storybook Little Lantern and the Dark & Moonless Night! First, after the Kennedy Center event, LouLou was inspired to make her own Rangolis with the black and white art she creates. She brought these in. Then Dena said she was making little wooden ornaments for her advent calendar to decorate her Diwali book “wreath” with. She sent me a set. For our third installation, I created a new and larger Rangoli book for the wall. How big can it be? It was up to me! I added to it LouLou’s Rangolis and Dena’s ornaments making a Rangoli out of Rangolis!. Susan also made a new artwork called My Paper, My Color, this time inviting the guests at our Community PAUSE to pick a paper, respond to it, display it along with others, and make their own video. She also invited them to make sounds—what does Light sound like? She then hung their art in the exhibit.
In Oct 2023 Studio Pause opened a new location on Columbia Pike, where it worked to engage the residents of Barcroft Apartments, a 60-acre affordable housing complex entering a long-term redevelopment and preservation project. For our first exhibit there, I invited the PAUSErs to create or submit artworks on the theme “Me, Here:” Stories of People and Place. For this, Susan created a video, Light. Paper. Voice, using the video and voice recordings from our Community PAUSE earlier that year. She hung the papers on which the public had written in front of the monitor.
So when November came around and we started planning our Diwali Community PAUSE, I asked the residents and Sarita said she makes Rangolis at home too. So I invited her to create one at the Studio. She is from Nepal, and she and her friends made one, and we all learned that Diwali is celebrated in many nations. We also made the My Rangoli books, with a whole bunch of new people.
2024:
For our Exhibit 3, “Me, Here:” Stories of People and Place as told by the residents of Barcroft Apartments, we have printed and framed a photo of the Rangoli created by Sarita and her friends. Documenting all this makes me think the Storybook has been remarkable in how it has inspired so many creations by so many people. I look forward to seeing what it inspires next.
You can BUY this by visiting our shop. You can pick an English copy or one in Spanish. Thanks!
