By Tajudeen Sowole
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Founder,
Harmattan Workshop, Dr. Bruce Onobrakpeya; Director,
Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Paul Sacaridiz; and Harmattan Director, Mr.
Sam Ovraiti at Haystack Summer 2016 conference
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Stressing
these factors, for example, was a recent venture of master printmaker, Dr.
Bruce Onobrakpeya, who took his 18-years experience of organising local art
workshops to a conference in the U.S. The event themed ‘Craft Thinking: Ideas on Making, Materials, and Creative Process,’
was held at Haystak’s Summer Conference 2016, a convergence of professionals
for exchange of ideas.
Onobrakpeya,
founder of Nigeria's oldest informal art gathering, Harmattan Workshop,
is currently back home and steering the 18th edition's second section, which
holds at Agbarha-Otor, Delta State. The workshop is a reference point in
informal art education, within Nigeria and abroad.
On his
return from Haystack Mountain Summer Conference, in Maine, U.S, with the
director of Harmattan Workshop, Sam Ovraiti, the octogenarian disclosed
the mission of their visit and shared his experience. The 2016 edition of
Haystack Summer Conference, he recalled, was not the first time for him, having
experienced it in 1975. In fact, Haystack, Dr. Onobrakpeya explained, added to
the factors that inspired his founding of Harmattan
Workshop.
The goals of revisiting Haystack, he stated,
were "to get more ideas about informal art education as well as to boost
the prospects of Harmattan Workshop." Informal gatherings, across
cultures, are not without some issues to contend with. For Haystack,
"apprenticeship and internship," as well as the incursion of
"digital technology into art" according to the master printmaker,
were two crucial areas focused by the workshop.
If
anyone was still in doubt of the blurring lines between art and craft, courtesy
of contemporary contents, Haystack appeared to have confirmed such. Mr. Ovraiti,
who has been directing activities at Harmattan Workshop since 2011 could not
hide his excitement about what he described as merging of art and craft.
"For example, painting and sculpture were no longer the traditional way;
lot of exciting changes." He noted that the resource persons at the
Haystack event "are artists who came to share the craft in their
art," particularly enphasising the state of craft currently and in the
future.
More
importantly, the gains of the Haystack experience for Ovraiti, is the community
value that informal art and craft education brings. Hoping that such value
would be stressed at subsequent Harmatran workshop, Ovraiti added, "We
need to use our art and craft more for our community than before."
The community factor, according to Dr.
Onobrakpeya, is not exactly new to Harmattan Workshop. He stressed that since
the event started almost 20 years ago, the people of Agbarha-Otor have been
beneficiaries, particularly in mentorship and apprenticeship.
"Dr.
Bruce has always been preaching the relevance of art in affecting the
community," Ovraiti added, but with the Haystack experience, the emphasis,
he stated, should be stepped up to include "using art and craft to solve
problems."
Beyond
art and craft, Haystack, Onobrakpeya has used the yearly summer gathering tolift
the place into a national heritage site in the U.S. "Whether the event
holds or not, Haystack is recognised by the U.S. government as a
heritage."
More
importantly, Onobrakpeya is hoping that the recognition given to Haystack by
including it in the academic programme of some select universities and colleges
would be done in Nigeria with Harmattan workshop. He, however, recalled that
there was a time Harmattan Workshop used to have similar understanding with some
schools in Nigeria.
The 2016 Haystack Summer Conference featured
professionals from a variety of creative disciplines in art, design,
architecture, and writing. It focused on thinking through craft and how
creative processes, audiences, and materials informed the works that were made.
Excerpt on Haystack's website: Craft is a place where innovation and tradition,
skill and intuition, exist together. Whether making a mobile oven for baking
bread, rethinking a museum collection, programming machines that can print
objects, or choosing to work in vernacular tradition, the very definition and
scope of craft is constantly shifting.
"The
conference is intimate in scale and allows ample time for informal
conversations with presenters and attendees. Conference presenters give talks
and either lead discussion groups or studio based workshops that provide a way
of exploring ideas through materials. The workshops and discussions are
repeated so that attendees can take part in multiple activities. Registration
for these is done each day of the conference and no previous experience is
required."
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