Staring at a blank canvas, Pushpika Thoutireddy ’27 selects a pencil and lightly sketches diagonal lines that, soon, are intersected by parallel and perpendicular lines. The thoughtfully placed graphite strokes act as the foundation of the mandala she’s creating — ensuring that the geometric patterns to follow remain symmetrical. Concentrating on the canvas’s center, Thoutireddy lets her thoughts carry the flow of the drawing and repeats various shapes until a small circle has formed. From there, Thoutireddy expands the drawing’s layout until the canvas is filled.

“You’ve got to trust the process and see where it's taking you,” says Thoutireddy, who will eventually apply two to three layers of paint to the mandala. “You start with an idea but end up with a completely different product.”

An international student from Hyderabad, India, Thoutireddy’s artistic talents run in the family. From her mother, who does embroidery and hand painting, to her grandmother, who was a tailor, the women in Thoutireddy’s life surrounded her with colors and patterns — which she used as inspiration as she began exploring art mediums like pen and ink, acrylic paints, colored pencils, and watercolors.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, she turned toward mandalas — noting that the art form helped improve her focus and allowed her to feel productive. Mandalas, which are complex circular designs with intricate geometric shapes, are instruments of meditation and can represent different aspects of the universe. Noting that a singular mandala could take her up to 70 or 80 hours to finish, the result leaves Thoutireddy with immense satisfaction.

An International Business major with a Global Supply Chain Management concentration, Thoutireddy is following her passion for the arts by pursuing the College of Arts and Sciences’ Arts and Creative Industries minor. Offered as a major as well, Thoutireddy is spending the next four years learning about everything from “Introduction to Adobe Creative Cloud” to “Design in Contemporary Culture.”

Having taken “Introduction to Arts and Creative Industries” last year, Thoutireddy is now completing “Art and Design Studio” with History, Literature, and the Arts Assistant Professor Valerie Carrigan.

“Professor Carrigan has been an amazing support. She encourages me a lot, and she's the one who gives the best advice if I ask her about an idea I have and how I could work on it,” Thoutireddy says.

Inspiration for each mandala can come from anywhere — with Thoutireddy noting that people, clothes, jewelry, or even dreams can offer a flicker of an idea. She notes that when people look at art, not just hers but others as well, she hopes they appreciate the effort as much as the product.

“The outcome might not be the best when it comes to art, but the effort that has gone into it could mean everything to the artist,” she says.

Thoutireddy is not just a talented visual artist but also a musician. At the age of five, she began studying Carnatic classical music — an Indian style of classical music — and has since given multiple concerts in the Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Additionally, she has been studying Western classical music on the violin. In 2022, she performed at the Indian Embassy's 75th Independence Day celebrations and with the Indo-European Youth Orchestra in Budapest; she is currently pursuing an online diploma in Carnatic music at the University of Silicon Andhra.

Looking to the future, Thoutireddy hopes to bring art into the lives of others — whether it’s through art therapy or a way to help individuals and their mental health.

“People connect with art in so many different ways, and it's a blessing to have the ability to move someone with something you do,” Thoutireddy says. “I want to get people to explore various mediums of art, different kinds of art and see how it positively influences them.”