BOILING SPRINGS, NORTH CAROLINA, June 14, 2006: It started almost three years ago when the Hindu community approached George Arnold, owner of Custom Laser Etching of Greer, to complete artwork depicting Krisha and Arjuna, famous characters from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Arnold decided to complete the work on six large white acrylic panels each measuring 4 feet wide and 8 feet high. After laser etching the depictions on the panels, Arnold was faced with the challenge of finding an artist willing to paint the images and at the same time capture the spirit of the project. A Greenville artist named Donna Nyzio came highly recommended. Nyzio comments, “This was an ambitious project, to create these images, and it was interesting to learn about the culture. I really like a challenge, and this project was a challenge.”
The news release explains, “Nyzio had to do several months of research to learn about the images. Members of the temple gave her a 75-year-old calendar depicting the images, but the colors were faded. She needed to see the actual color of the images. Another challenge was to determine what kind of paint was needed. Again, the paint had to be durable and transparent. Nyzio experimented for about a month with paints before she decided to use automotive paint. Her next challenge was actually painting the panels. They were so large and flexible that they kept bending. She solved the problem by standing the panels on their sides while painting them.”
Arnold adds, “They wanted the images to be dead-on exact, because they are sacred images. It is so easy to do something wrong when you don’t know the culture. This is the first time that I know of where someone came up with the ideas we used to get something like this done. We will be able to use these ideas working on other projects.” Ashvin Shah, temple president sums it up, “It is excellent. It turned out better than we expected.”