1,125-square-foot canvas | 850,000 bubbles | 211,500 volunteer-hours
335 litres of paint | 320 colours | 150+ volunteers | 1 devotional tribute
More than 150 volunteers from across the UK created a 1,125-square-foot portrait of Pramukh Swami Maharaj using bubble wrap, which has now been formally recognised as the largest of its kind by
Guinness World Records.
Pramukh Swami Maharaj, through his tireless travels, letters and personal counselling, injected joyous colour and meaning into millions of lives around the world – sentiments that were immersed in this gigantic colourful tribute.
The spectacular artwork covered a 25-foot high and 45-foot wide canvas using 886 metres of bubble wrap with over 850,000 bubbles. Each 5mm bubble was individually injected with colour using a syringe, ensuring the exact amount of paint per bubble. In total, the portrait used 335 litres of paint with 320 shades of colour.
To ensure that the correct colour was injected into the correct bubble, a special software programme was used to categorise the 850,000 bubbles. Each bubble was then painstakingly numbered by hand for 100% accuracy.
The portrait was the collective effort of 150 volunteers aged from 11 to 75 years, who worked tirelessly day and night for six months.
None of the participants had ever undertaken such a project before, and despite the manual and intricate process, and amid various challenges, their unity and determination to produce a devotional tribute made the final artwork possible.
When completed, the dry bubble wrap was glued to wood panels for support raising the weight to 4.5 tonnes. The completed devotional painting was then cut into 104 individual pieces so that it could be transported to the festival grounds of Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s centennial birth celebrations in Ahmedabad, where it was on display from 15 December 2022 until 15 January 2023.
Renu Depala, assistant head of marketing for a telecommunications firm in London, shared, “Pramukh Swami Maharaj coloured our lives with spirituality and compassion. This was our opportunity to create a kaleidoscope from hundreds of shades of colour in a humble recognition of his inspiration to humanity.”
Devika Patel, a bio-medical scientist, also from London, added, “We decided on bubble wrap to form the basis of the portrait because it’s such a low-key material and yet we can turn into a work of art – which is exactly what Pramukh Swami Maharaj did; he turned seemingly ordinary people into spiritual masterpieces. We were especially energised to complete this mammoth task because Mahant Swami Maharaj himself began the painting by injecting the first bubbles with colour in Surat and gave his blessings and encouragement to all us volunteers.”