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Incoming Class

GHANAIAN COFFIN MAKER AMONG MARKET NEWCOMERS

By Sandy Nelson

Getting his work in front of art lovers might be harder for Ghanaian Eric Adjetey Anang than it is for most first-time vendors at the International Folk Art Market.

This year's freshman class includes ceramists, jewelers and textile artists, but Anang has heftier handiwork. The 34-year-old African makes decorative, personalized coffins known as “proverb boxes,” carrying forward a tradition started by his grandfather Seth Kane Kwei in the 1950s, when Ghana was a British colony.

“It's truly been a struggle to get them here,” Anang said of moving unfinished coffins to Wisconsin, where he lives much of the year with his American wife and their son. Anang paints the boxes in a Madison studio that functions as a gallery and a workshop for university students who want to learn the craft. “I'm going to come [to Santa Fe] with smaller ones that I'll sell during market.”

Anang's family remains the foremost customized coffinmaking business in Ghana, operating from Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop on family land in Teshie, a suburb of Accra. But at home, his creations are valued for their utilitarian purpose rather than their artistry. “In Ghana, people see me as a coffin maker. Arts groups don't see it as art,” he said.

But in the United States, “I'm accepted as an artist here.” That acceptance is something Anang hopes his exposure at IFAM will amplify.

According to Anang's website (kanekwei.com), his grandfather didn't set out to build fancy coffins. Kane Kwei's first custom creation was a palanquin shaped like a cocoa pod that was built to carry a Ga chieftain during a tribal festival. When the chief died before the festival, he was buried in the pod.

The fantasy coffin trend evolved into a practice that spread beyond the Ga to other ethnic groups in Ghana.

UKRAINE Ivan Bobkov

When Kane Kwei died nearly 30 years ago, the family business languished as Kane Kwei's former apprentices left to start their own businesses.

At the age of 20, Anang took charge of the shop. As Ghana's economy grew, so did Accra. The rising value of land sparked internal family debate over selling the farm and the shop, but that pressure abated as the business revived.

“It's not a dying art, but only a few people are doing it now,” Anang said. “It's so hard to get land in Accra to do something like this.”

When Anang isn't there to supervise, his father and brother lead a small team of apprentices in building each form and sanding the surface to a smooth finish. After two coats of paint are applied, the box is sanded once more and then shaped and embellished by local artisans to express the personal or professional identity of the deceased or a cherished aspect of that person's life.

Most coffins are built with soft, pliable wood like wawa (Triplochiton scleroxylon, also called African whitewood) or nyamedua (Alstonia boonei and cost less than $1,000. But those destined for display in a gallery or home are made from ofram, or African mahogany, and cost thousands of dollars. Just a few of the 100 coffins produced each year are shipped to Ghanaians who live outside the country and to collectors.

Anang plans to drive to market with one large coffin and a few smaller ones produced in Madison. Since he's already in the United States, he won't face the coronavirus-related travel restrictions that might hamper the efforts of other artists making their market debuts.

These artists include Ivan Bobkov, a Ukrainian potter and ceramist; Bakhtiyor Nazirov and Diyorbek Nazirov, father-and-son ceramists from Uzbekistan; Maki Aizawa and Tsuyo Onodera, mother-and-daughter kimono makers represent Japanese textile traditions; and Olinda Silvano Inuma de Arias, a textile artist from the ShipiboKonibo tribe in Peru (facebook.com/OlindaSilvan).

UKRAINE IVAN BOBKOV

UZBEKISTAN BAKHTIYOR NAZIROV AND DIYORBEK NAZIROV

Indigenous cultures of Central Asia perfected the pottery making techniques reflected in the cookware and decorative ceramics that Bobkov and the Nazirovs display at IFAM. Bobkov's creations are shaped from the same reddish and light gray clays the Indigenous Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians used thousands of years ago. The

Nazirovs have dedicated their working lives to reviving the 800-year-old Uzbek art of hand-painted pottery that made Rishtan a center of ceramic crafts.

JAPAN TSUYO ONODERA AND MAKI AIZAWA PERU OLINDA SILVANO INUMA DE ARIAS

Plant-based dyes infuse the colorful, distinctive textiles of Japanese kimono makers Tsuyo Onodera and Maki Aizawa, and Peruvian Olinda Silvano Inuma de Arias, whose canvases include clothing, skin, wood and fabric.

Onodera derives the indigo for her kimonos and her haori and hanten jackets and coats from farms in Japan. The traditional clothes are made from denim, linen, paper and cotton, and many pieces are finished with embroidery. Hundreds of kimono makers have apprenticed with Onodera over the past five decades.

Inuma de Arias and her mother, sisters and three daughters support themselves designing and embroidering clothing and making bracelets and necklaces in their home near Lima, where they migrated from Pucallpa, a village in the Amazon rain forest that is home to the Shipibo-Konibo people. “I make dyes with caoba bark, mango peel, guayaba bark, acushapana, avocado beans and almonds,” Inuma de Arias said in her artist statement. “I gather them myself.” Kené, the geometric patterns that adorn her art, are derived from her experiences with ayahuasca and piri piri, two plants with psychoactive properties used in tribal rituals and medicine.

Even if artists from coronavirus hot spots can't obtain entry to the United States in time for the market, they can send their artwork and volunteer “artist partners” will operate their booths and sell the art for them, said Adrienne Murray, associate director of marketing and community engagement for IFAM. “We are doing this for any artist who is planning to send their work in lieu of attending.”

Sandy Nelson worked as a writer and editor at “The New Mexican” and “Pasatiempo” magazine in the early 2000s. She now lives on the Western Slope of Colorado but considers New Mexico the best place to live of all the Four Corners states.

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2021-06-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://enewmexican.com/article/284159338959838

Santa Fe New Mexican