Manil Suri was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He came to the United States as a student when he was twenty. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland (when not visiting Mumbai) and is a citizen of both the United States and India. Suri’s first published fiction in English was The Seven Circles, a short story that appeared in The New Yorker on Valentine’s Day, 2000. The Death of Vishnu, his first novel, debuted worldwide in India on January 6, 2001. In addition to being published by W. W. Norton in the United States and Bloomsbury in the UK, the novel has been translated into twenty-two foreign languages. Suri was named by Time magazine as a “Person to Watch” in 2000, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2004. In addition to being a writer, Suri is also a mathematician. He obtained his PhD in applied mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a tenured full professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).

As part of the Columbia Festival of the Arts, Manil Suri will be reading from The Age of Shiva on June 26, 4:30pm, at Historic Savage Mill. For more information about the Festival, call 410-715-3044.

Manil Suri
Columbia Festival of the Arts

So, who do you call when you are staring at a blank wall in your house — either in the backyard or up the stairwell — and wondering how to make it more interesting? Or you are living high up in your grand penthouse in the city but miss looking out on your old garden from the country? Or you've built an extension on your house and your scenic view is blocked? Or you never had a view to begin with — and just plain want one? Well, what you need to do is contact a Decorative Contractor like Tom Hickey and he'll work with you to make your "vision" come true. Tom has a company named Rising Tide Inc and he and his employees bring their talents to your home to create anything from a garden scene, as you'll see in our segment, or a stencil of geese flying up your stairwell, or a trompe l'oeil treatment of your woodwork to make it look like marble, or stone, or even a more interesting wood. It can all be done with paint and the artists' touch, and is oh so interesting to watch!

Rising Tide Inc

We tend to associate the DC area with serious, monumental works like the Washington Monument, Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. But the greater Washington area also has a lighter side. In this ArtWorks segment, we visit sculptures that have a sense of humor. Among the stops on our tour: The National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden for a look at Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, House I and Thinker on a Rock. National Harbor in Prince Georges County, Maryland, is the new home for one of the area's long-time favorites—a giant emerging out of the ground, known as The Awakening. Lesser known, but equally intriguing is a sculpture tucked away in Alexandria, Virginia's Trans Potomac Canal Center: The Promenade Classique, the jumbled ruins of a one-time great civilization, arrayed near the banks of the Potomac River.

Our Salon Artist this week is William Diggs. Mr. Diggs is a Baltimore native with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is a portrait artist that has been painting realistic renderings of Native Americans for thirty-five years. Much of the inspiration for his artwork comes from his interest in nature and in history – particularly that of the Native Americans. The portraits are set in a white background filled with symbols and figures in relief, suggesting the subject’s link to the spiritual world. Currently, Mr. Diggs has an exhibition at the Creative Alliance entitled, William Diggs: American Indian Paintings. The exhibit runs through June 28, at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21224. For more information, call 410-276-1651 or email Mr. Diggs at cbill618@yahoo.com.

Creative Alliance