Indian-born artist Ashwini Bhat has a general idea of what will happen during her two-part, interactive free performance “Earth Under Our Feet” on the front terrace at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

She knows that at this week’s 1st Thursday, she will construct a freestanding wall out of clay under the oak tree outside.

On Sunday afternoon, an autobiographical video will be projected onto the completed wall and live cello music will be performed while she silently and rhythmically creates large clay mandalas using the South Asian practice of foot wedging.

What isn’t certain is how the public will react — and interact.

“People can jump in with their feet or hands to contribute to the wall or the mandala,” Bhat says. “That’s the idea. The event is created by the energy of us inhabiting the space. The village is coming together, so there are no guarantees of how it will take shape.”

The title is from poet George Oppen, “The earth under our feet; we are not asked to begin nowhere.”

Born in India, Bhat studied the classical Southern Indian dance Bharatanatyam for 10 years beginning at age 8, and later became a professional dancer for Padini Chettur Dance Company. Yet, she credits poetry as her introduction to an artistic way of life. The youngest of three sisters, as a child she would recite poems that a sister transcribed.

“Even now, I have gone back to poetry,” she says. “Every morning, my day begins by reading a poem or two, and then taking that energy into the studio.”

A U.S. citizen since 2015, she is married to poet Forrest Gander, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner for “Be With.” When he gave a poetry talk at SBMA in 2022, museum education staffers Kristy Thomas and Patsy Hicks met Bhat.

“We were dazzled by her,” Thomas said. “We got to know her work and wanted her to do an interactive, participatory event for us.”

That can happen thanks to the Starr Siegele Fund for Performance and Dance. Siegele, a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other leading museums, is a dance and human rights advocate. Her husband is SBMA retired president Larry Feinberg.  

In August 2023, the fund underwrote “Dancing Out Loud,” a performance by deaf dancer Antoine Hunter and his company inspired by an exhibit featuring American artist James Castle, who is also deaf. Earlier this year, Vanessa Isaac and her company danced to works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, performed by Santa Barbara Symphony musicians.

Though Bhat’s upcoming performance doesn’t tie to an exhibit, Thomas says it references the museum’s Southeast Asian collection.

“The fund allows us to create access points for different audiences. It starts conversations and makes connections,” she said.

Bhat accidentally discovered clay at age 27, following the injury that ended her professional dance career.

“At that time, I wondered if I would have an identity if I stopped dancing,” she said.

On a trip through rural South India, she spent a week with a group that has made bronze statues for generations.

“On day three, a craftsman handed me a ball of clay, and said, ‘Hey, make something,’” she recalled. “My love affair with clay started there.”

She entered an apprenticeship in Pondicherry, India, with Ray Meeker, a Southern California transplant who had studied with renowned ceramicist and educator Susan Peterson.

“My first visual was watching him work on a 10-foot-tall sculpture, pounding the clay with a huge wooden paddle,” she recalled. “I loved the physicality of it; body involvement is what drew me in. Something magical happens when the body is no longer separate from the material.”

For this event, 1,000 pounds of clay was donated by Laguna Clay Co. after Bhat described the event to company president Bryan Vansell.

“His first response was, ‘I want to wear a three-piece suit and jump into the clay,’” she said. “I feel that the event’s openness and generosity has already begun, even before it has started.”

She suspects that people may be initially shy about participating, but that they will eventually take the clay and start creating with their hands. There will be no instructions.

“As with the sand mandalas made by Tibetan Buddhist monks, impermanence is part of the making,” she said. “We concentrate too much on what is going to remain. Once this performance ends, the mandalas are removed. The clay can be reused several times until it is fired.”  

Bhat is staying in town for several days to teach museum educators the process to prepare the used clay for their children’s ceramics program.

“It’s wonderful when you don’t know how an event will take shape. I am embracing that ‘not knowing,’” Bhat said.

“The Earth Under Our Feet”

Building the wall: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 6

Interactive public performance: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 9

Both events are free and held on the front terrace of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St.