Arts bring hope to Nkoyaphiri group
Chippa Legodimo | Friday May 29, 2015 17:21
Along this dusty path lies a spacious yard with a few buildings.
It is here that a young woman uses her artistic talent to carve a life.
Patricia Khutshwane, a 21-year-old woman from Gabane is renting a small room in this spacious yard and from that crowded room, she produces various items, which she sells to earn a living.
The young woman has also mobilised a group of residents who specialise in different art forms to produce works for sale from which they share profits. The idiom one man’s trash is another man’s treasure fits perfectly into Khutshwane and her group operations. They used a lot of commonly known waste materials to create attractive art works while a fraction of their materials are bought from various suppliers. They use beer and beverage cans, bottle caps, broken floor tiles and dried tree pods to make their pieces. They include earrings, knobs, necklaces, arm wrists, penholders and paper mash bowls mostly used for interior deco.
“I started a small company called Patricia Smiley Design a few years ago while I was still residing in Selebi-Phikwe. I did art at school but most of these I learnt from my mother who then stopped after she broke her arm. When I moved here I continued and decided to invite other people because I believed we could bring different ideas to the table,” Khutshwane told Arts & Culture. To prove that most waste materials come as treasure to them, the group for example uses Chibuku containers to create earring storage boxes. The containers are cut into different shapes and covered with different German print (leteisi) fabrics to give them a colourful look and better strength. The same technique is used on beer and beverage cans which are also covered with the colourful textiles. “These cans we just sell as containers. It is up to the buyer to decide what to use them for. Some prefer to use them as penholders, some as toothbrush holders or jewellery container,” Khutshwane explained.
The popular German print material has several other uses. It is also used to wrap bottle tops, which are used to make earrings.
Khutshwane and her partners use beads to create some attractive necklaces as well. But while it is clear that they use their imagination well to come up with different items any viewer would appreciate their lack of skill when it comes to making paper mash bowls and other such items.
In some instances an unsuitable paint is used to cover some of the bowls which makes them less attractive. The woman who is a specialist in that area, Shale Masife said lack of resources is hampering their creativity.
“There are others which are off-shape but most are well moulded, but they would have been more attractive with good paint,” she said.
Despite challenges such as lack of appreciation of their items by most locals, the group is unrelenting in their quest to use art to better their lives.
“We shall fight on. It is important for us to improve our craft so as to convince the customers to buy from us,” Khutshwane said.So it is not all doom and gloom for the impoverished Nkoyaphiri location.
Khutshwane and her partners are living prove that art can bring hope to the oppressed souls.