Eight years ago, Sara Karis­sa Shankar, a res­i­dent of Fe­lic­i­ty, de­cid­ed to pur­sue her pas­sion and be­come a pro­fes­sion­al hen­na artist. With no for­mal train­ing but by con­sis­tent prac­tice and hard work, she was able branch off in­to hen­na-in­spired pot­tery, ran­goli de­signs and re­cent­ly added hen­na-in­spired face masks dur­ing the on­go­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. She now of­fers both in­di­vid­ual and group hen­na work­shops for all ages.

“I have al­ways had a pas­sion for art and this was just an­oth­er form of ex­press­ing my­self and cre­at­ing some­thing I am proud of. I love that I’m able to show­case part of my Hin­du cul­ture while main­tain­ing a cer­tain lev­el of cre­ativ­i­ty and in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty in my de­signs.”

The ex­act ori­gins of hen­na tat­too­ing aren’t clear, how­ev­er the tra­di­tion dates back as far as An­cient Egypt. Nat­ur­al hen­na stains nor­mal­ly last an av­er­age of two weeks be­fore it starts to fade from the skin. Us­ing acrylic paint to com­plete hen­na de­signs on pot­tery al­lows a lev­el of per­ma­nence that would not be pos­si­ble us­ing nat­ur­al hen­na.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, Shankar can con­tact­ed at hennabykaris­sa on Face­book.