What is useless for others is useful for her. What people throw away thinking valueless is valuable for her. She is Abhipsa Swain, daughter of Ratnakar Swain, a resident of Mugupal village in Jajpur district.
Abhipsa fancied being an artist when she was a mere child. With time, she went on honing her skills. Now she is a Plus III Science student.
What was her pastime has become her passion. Now she is not only striking a balance between her studies and passion, she has also added a new dimension to the latter.
In her locality, she is known as an ambassador of a clean environment by turning discarded and waste materials into beautiful decorative items.
She is using discarded plastic and glass articles, medicine packets, coconut cells, earthen lamps, kauris, cowrie, areca nuts, and peacock feathers to make beautiful home décor articles. Most of her items carry Lord Jagannath’s image. They are so beautiful that anyone can fall in love with them even at first sight.
There is a message inherent in each of her artworks and that is ‘Save Environment’.
For what she is doing in her capacity to encourage a cleaner environment, she is lapping up praises from different parts of society.
“I love drawing but I couldn’t continue it due to my studies. For the last five months, I have been doing this. Artists are using large canvasses to draw. But I am using waste articles. Using them, we can do two things at a time-get beautiful home décor articles and make the environment clean,” said Abhipsa.
“She has shown that beautiful things can be made using what we call waste materials. We think we will encourage her to take this forward,” said Ratnakar Swain, Abhipsa’s father.
Heaping praise on Abhipsa, a villager Laxmidhar Panda said, “The government should invite her to exhibitions where she can display her talents.”