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A Thousand Words

by NEHA SINGH GOHIL

Nine-year-old Navjeet Singh came home from school every day, finished her homework, and then headed right back to class. From 6 to 8 every night, she attended S.G. Thakur Singh's School of Art in Amritsar. That's where she learned to revel in pastels, paint in watercolor and draw inspiration from other artists around her.

Today, more than four decades later, as Navi Singh, she is using the same artistic passion she honed back then to bring Sikh art to a new world thousands of miles away.

Navi recently completed a series of 19 prints illustrating saakhis (stories) of each Sikh guru, Sikh symbols and articles of faith, and a few Sikh festivals. Each print is the result of weeks of preparation, illustration and coloring that Navi has been working on since 2000. Along with an expression of her own identity, the work is a tribute to all the Western-born Sikh children who "make such immeasurable efforts to weave their Sikh traditions with the culture in which they grow up," she says.

Her ultimate goal is to use her art to spread awareness about Sikhs and their heritage. Last year, she was invited to do just that. The series was on show at the Elkins Park Public Library near Philadelphia, in an exhibit entitled "My Sikh Heritage." For two months, the public was invited to view and discuss the pieces, and to learn about Sikhism in events held at the library.

At the receptions, Navi remembers talking to mixed groups of Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Jews "about what is common between us instead of what is different." Her art had finally found its purpose. It was written up widely, and even featured in the "not to be missed" section of Art Matters, a monthly magazine for local artists.

It was a proud moment for Navi, who is now in her fifties. For the last two decades, she had been busy with a booming private practice in neurology, teaching classes at Drexel School of Medicine, and raising her two boys. Although that took up most of her time, Navi always looked forward to indulging in her art again.

She finally got the chance in 1999, when she started taking courses at Cheltenham Center of the Arts and learned printmaking for the first time under internationally renowned artist, Merle Spandorfer.

That's also where she first started using her art to teach about Sikhism. As her artwork made its way out of the manual press, she would peel the print off the plate and reveal the illustration she'd made, to the delight of her classmates. They would gather around and ask her to tell them the saakhi behind the piece. "It was a very good feeling for me to share my history with others," Navi says.

But spreading the word about Sikhi isn't this artist's only cause. Her non-Sikh art is making quite a splash as well. In 2002, the Epilepsy Foundation auctioned one of Navi's prints at a gala event and used the money it raised to buy essential drugs for children with epilepsy. Since then, Navi has donated pieces to be sold for Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the Israel Fund, and the Safe Home Project. One of her prints sold 20,000 copies in the form of holiday cards for the Philadelphia Committee to End Homelessness.

The charity work, she says, has sparked the idea of giving of herself through her art. "I had so much fun creating the piece of art, someone else has fun hanging it in their home, and a third person can benefit from it. What could be better?"

Although the pieces that sell in these auctions are not necessarily depictions of the Sikh faith, they're deeply linked to her culture, Navi says. It may not be about Sikh history, but this work is what the Sikh spirit is all about.

[Images: Details from paintings by Navi Singh  -  Front Page: from "In Babur's Prison". This page, top: from "Basant".  Bottom: from "Amaru Nithaavan". Third image from bottom: from "Under the Cobra's Shade".]

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