A MASTERSTROKE
Home, sweet home for the arts
RHODES University fine arts student Samkela Stamper is turning her late grandmother’s Peddie home into an art gallery that will empower rural women with skills to make mosaic art and manufacture their own ceramic tiles.
Stamper, 35, who grew up in Dabane village in Peddie, is passionate about urban renewal of local communities and public art development.
She said the gallery opening next month would be in honour of her late grandmother, Thandeka Stamper, and her initiative was her way of helping bring about change in her community.
“The gallery will be known as the Thandeka Stamper Art Gallery.”
Stamper, an independent producer and curator, who is also a poet and performing artist, and who calls herself a creative thinker and “arttrepreneur”, works with communities teaching art skills to young people and women.
She said opening a gallery in the rural community was aimed at exposing and equipping people with a skill that could transform their lives.
“Galleries in the big cities are a bit problematic because artists from rural areas and the township do not have access to them.
“That’s when I decided to use my grandmother’s house as a tool to train and also expose rural women,” she said. Stamper makes mosaic art and ceramic tiles.
“I am self-taught and share what I’ve learned with other rural women and the youth.
“It’s time that we go back to our villages and change the lives of those people there,” she said, adding that it broke her heart to see so many shebeens opening in villages. “People study and leave their villages. Those that are left there are uneducated and have nothing else to do but drink.
“Imagine now if we would equip them with a skill that can change their lives. That would bring about positive change,” she said.
During one of her many trips to showcase her work, Stamper said she met a woman from Jeffrey’s Bay who used to make tiles and work with ceramics.
“She gave me a machine that I can use to manufacture tiles and some material to work with. Instead of me keeping those things here in Grahamstown I thought: ‘Why not take them to Dabane and uplift my community?’”
With her ceramic tile-making machine, Stamper recently won R10 000 at the Seedbed of Transformation Conference, held in Cape Town recently.
“I don’t have anyone funding this project. This R10k came at the right time. I will use it to buy paint and brushes for this project.
“We will also have an indigenous garden there and this will all benefit the community,” she said.
Stamper said it was time that people started taking art seriously.
“The younger generation needs to know that art can make them a lucrative career. There are many children who are gifted, but do not know where to go and are forced to pursue careers they are not passionate about,” she said.
To get in touch with Stamper, people can e-mail her on: