Two women I met and worked with during the year, were responsible for my Cultural Safari. While the artist experience was what we did for my ‘work’, these two Shona women taught me WHO they are and shared with me their family centered culture and the traditions on which it is based. A deep lesson in community. Tecla and Viola escorted me to the homes and villages of friends and relatives.
nyanga, africa
One of my tourist books mentioned a native craft center in the highland area of Nyanga. On one of our early trips out of Harare we went to Nyanga, a landscape of great beauty with mountains, forests, magnificent rock formations, and vast sky with fluffy white clouds. However, the weekend we were there was rainy and cloud shrouded. We decided to see what was going on at the Craft and Culture Center. It was meant to be that the young manager, Tecla Mashenu, adopted me as Art Advisor immediately. After working there for six years, now 24 years old, she was ready to move on with her life. She had ideas for developing the Center into an economic business that would support the traditional crafts being made throughout the region by women earning school fees for their children. During the year Tecla organized two big community workshops combining ceramics and rock carving (known worldwide as Shona sculpture).
Tecla and her British husband live in England with their three children. Tecla finished her education and went on to earn an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Manchester. She has worked in clay, textiles, mixed media, and recycling art, while also raising a family.
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shona culture
Viola Makoni was sent to me as a housekeeper by one of David’s colleagues. She was my guide to Shona culture and contemporary life and culture in the heart of Africa. Zimbabwe was blossoming as a tourist destination in the late 90’s. However, the tour books had no reference to traditional art work. I didn’t see any traditional articles being used or displayed around Harare. When I told Viola that I was hoping to learn about traditional ceramic pots, I assumed they were no longer being made. In fact, the tour books said nothing about traditional villages still existing. The next week, Viola had arranged to take me to the village where her mother, a respected potter during her lifetime, and several other potters lived. Her village welcomed me to work with them. We coiled and burnished and pit fired ‘African Pots’ many times during the year. Being a potter in Zimbabwe is very humble, though extremely accomplished work. It is women’s work, including digging and carrying clay and firewood. My greatest joy was giving these potter’s a sense of their own worth, of being respected for their craft by potters around the world. They were delighted to know their open fire cooking vessels were called ‘African Pots’ and prized for their form and beauty in European museums.
The village welcomed me to work with them when it was confirmed that I knew how to make & burnish coil pots, just like them! It was a thrill of a lifetime, while working alongside the most prominent potter, when she gave those watching approval of not only my technique but understanding of form. |