Weave A Real Peace's blog

This month, November, I was the guest blogger for Weave A Real Peace, writing about my craft micro-enterprise experiences in West Africa, and how these experiences influenced my work. Here's a copy of the post. 
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Textiles and Economic Development in Ghana
NOVEMBER 13, 2016 
This month Jackie Abrams is our guest blogger. She writes about her work with textiles and economic development in Ghana and how it has impacted her basketry.

My earliest recollection of being intrigued with Africa was in 3rd or 4th grade. I built an African village as a class project. I remember one of the huts – cardboard wrapped with raffia. I kept that hut with me for many years but somewhere along the way it got lost.
 
In the 1970’s, I started to collect African baskets, and books of West African painted mud homes. They spoke to me in so many ways. Both the colors and the designs started to influence some of my work. One piece in particular caught the eye of a good friend and fellow WARP member, Steve Csipke. We recognized our mutual interest in Africa. He was the man who helped my dream of working in Africa become a reality.

2008 - with some of the crocheters

​My first trip was in 2005. I had the incredible good fortune to make eight trips to Africa, most often to Ghana, primarily for the purpose of helping to develop micro-craft industries with women. My last three trips, in 2008 and 2009, were in the town of Pokuase, Ghana, teaching women to crochet bags using discarded plastic bags. The goal was for their crocheting enterprise to be sustainable and for them to be able to sell their work without being dependent on me. This project was possible because of the existence of Global Mamas, a wonderful organization that supports women making handmade products. I would say we were moderately successful in achieving our goal.
 
I learned an enormous amount about fair trade, cultural mores, and how much I will never understand about Ghanaian culture. These trips changed my life and my (art) work. The word, “simplify,” best describes these changes. I could plainly see that having any kind of joy in one’s life was not dependent on ‘stuff.’ We need enough, but we don’t really need more than that. (Who can define ‘enough’?) I feel the same about my work. I have moved away from complex forms and techniques, challenging myself to express what I want to express with more simple / straightforward techniques and materials.

Himba woman - in Namibia - Photo by Dani Abrams

“Tange, a Himba Woman” – the Himba coat themselves with ochre and rendered goat fat. This piece was created with sand from the Kalahari and an acrylic medium (not fat). The beads are traditional Himba beads.

I was most intrigued by the women I worked with. Informed by their lives, fabrics, and stories,  my “Women Forms” series began to develop. Each vessel tells the story of a woman. Some of them stand alone, either in strength or in sorrow. Others rejoice in the company of other women – daughters, sisters, mothers, friends. The forms contain and are shaped by the woman’s layers of experience. The inside of each piece reflects her inner strengths – strengths not always visible, that may require careful looking.

“Standing in Strength” – group of five women

“Akosia” – made of batiked fabric from Ghana. Akosia is an ethnic name for Ghanaian women born on Sunday

I went to Africa with the hope of enabling the women I met to create better lives for themselves and their families. In the process, they did the same for me.