‘We don’t want the tradition to die’
IFAM announces winners of Living Tradition, Community Impact awards
AGhanaian beadmaker and an Indian textile nonprofit were awarded the International Folk Art Market’s One World Awards in a ceremony Thursday night kicking off the annual market weekend’s festivities.
IFAM’s Living Tradition and Community
Impact
Awards are now in their third year.
The first is for artisans who preserve timehonored art forms and the second goes to those using their work to make a difference in the lives of others.
Living Tradition winner Ebenezer Nomoda Djaba is based in the city of OdumaseKrobo in Ghana and comes from a long line of powder glass beadmakers.
“We don’t want the tradition to die,” said Djaba, who simply goes by “Cedi,” said about being nominated for the award in a phone interview last month.
He learned his craft through his grandparents when he was 7 years old and has had a workshop in Ghana for more than 20 years. Cedi travels to other African countries, Europe and North America — 2018 will be his eighth Folk Art Market in Santa Fe — to share his skills.
In his home shop, he teaches international guests about Krobo beadmaking, a process he described as taking several
days. The name comes from Ghana’s Krobo people.
The process involves making molds from clay, filling the molds with broken-down glass, firing them a kiln at 1,000 degrees Celsius and then allowing the beads time to cool.
Cedi said he helps visitors — last year, the Queen of Denmark was among them — design their own bead.
“It’s very nice for me and I love to do something with my hands, to teach other people and to share ideas, to learn from other artists,” he said. He said he employs more than 20 local artisans to help him in his workshop, so they too can learn and continue the craft.
Cedi “epitomizes” the mission behind the Living Tradition award, according to IFAM’s Artist Selection Committee chair and award judge Mary Littrell. She cites his commitment to the local market in his home country while also helping it to evolve and reach an international audience.
Littrell first met Cedi 15 years ago as she was traveling internationally to film folk artists with small businesses.
“What impresses is he is so engrossed in his own culture ... but he’s innovative in moving it forward, which is also keeping it alive,” said Littrell, a professor of design and merchandising at Colorado State University.
She noted Cedi’s use of recycled glass in most of his beads. It comes from homes, restaurants and government buildings. Cedi said the free glass provides him with colors like green, brown and white, and he buys other, less common, colors.
In the future, he wants to continue teaching about beads in schools and open a bead museum in Ghana to better spread the history of the art and artists.
Cedi said the craft’s history includes the beads’ use as currency and as a way for chiefs and other important figures to show off wealth or status to the community.
“Some of the colors have their own meanings and the symbols have their own meanings, and people want to learn more,” he said.
Second award
The winner of the Community Impact Award is Self Help Enterprise, or SHE India, based in Kolkata, India. Shamlu Dudeja, SHE’s founder, says it’s not her that deserves the credit and that it’s SHE’s 800 artisans that make the organization thrive.
“They are the talented ones,” Dudeja, 80, told the Journal.
For the past 30 years — after Dudeja had to retire from her career as a math professor for health reasons — she and her daughter Malika have been helping women in the villages surrounding Kolkata sell kantha textiles.
Dudeja described kantha as a centuries-old “poor man’s quilting stitch” in which several layers of fabric, sometimes from old clothes, are held together by a running stitch to create saris or wall hangings.
With the help of eight team leaders, SHE has a goal of providing economic opportunities for women, to give them independence and a “sense of pride” through their work.
“My theory is if a woman is empowered, the household is empowered,” said Dudeja. “And if the household gets empowered then the village gets empowered. And if the village is empowered then the whole country is empowered.”
But it’s SHE’s focus on helping not just the artists, but also the villages in which they live, that made the organization a Community Impact Award winner for IFAM judge Paola Gianturco, a Bay Area-based photographer and author.
She said the Dudeja’s organization replaced old well pumps in one of the villages where its artisans work and this year has plans to run educational campaigns about breast cancer and other issues. SHE also helps fund eye-care camps and entrepreneurship classes for the rural artists.
“They are doing all kinds of things that reach far beyond the craft,” said Gianturco.
Dudeja did not go into this business for the financial gain, she said — she makes her own money through royalties from authoring math textbooks.
She said that as a SHE artist sends her a sari for $100, half goes directly to the maker, $25 goes to operational expenses for SHE and the rest goes toward any project Dudeja feels will help the women artists and their communities.
That could mean educational opportunities for kids or helping pay for a daughter’s wedding. This year, SHE is also planning to spread the word to the villages about how to properly dispose of plastic.
“Whatever is useful for the villages or the girls, whenever they need some help, we try to help them,” she said.