Da Grace Salome Abra Kwami: 1923-2006.

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Grace Kwami was one of the first art specialists in the Gold Coast--now Ghana--an art teacher for more than thirty years, and a practicing artist all her long life. A compulsive maker, she is best remembered for her terracotta figures and in particular for her sensitive, up-lifting, often sublime portrayal of youthful heads. She was, as John Picton eulogized, "a lovely, kind, and generous lady, at peace after a long, rich, and productive life, [whose] intellectual and artistic legacy will always remain...." (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Grace Kwami's funeral tribute book.)

A thanksgiving service for Grace Kwami was held at Gbadzeme in eastern Ghana on October 28, 2007. Thinking about Da Grace (in Ewe, da is a respectful title for mother/sister) sparks recollections of her son Atta's spider-shaped tribute, Grace Kwami Sculpture. (1) This paper sculpture takes the form of a book--a spider book--composed of eight fold-out legs, each printed with images of his mother's life story, drawings, and sculptures. While "book" is a metaphor for formal education and Christianity, the work also references Ghana's national heritage in textiles, sculpture, and oral literature. It specifically denotes the tales about "Amanse the spider, who symbolizes ingenuity and skillfulness in Ghanaian folklore" (Kwami 1993). Like a portable mini-exhibition, Grace Kwami Sculpture travels in its own special, wax-print-covered box. The handmade box also reclaims a particular memory of Da Grace associated with her careful, artistic mothering: a memory literally about how she made boxes for Atta and his twin sister Attawa to carry their slates and other supplies on their first day at school. The poignancy of this reconstruction deepens with the fact of Attawa's untimely death at age 13 (Kwami forthcoming).

The ninth child in a Christian Ewe family of twelve children, Grace Anku was born in 1923 at Wora Wora, north of Ho in the Volta Region. Her family valued education; her father was a minister for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, while two of her brothers were teachers. She took up opportunities for informal learning and formal education. For example, at home the children played with clay while working as a cook for missionaries provided useful experience for learning European customs in catering and art and also for language practice in German. Grace started formal schooling early; one of her siblings recalls that "during class activities, she took a keen interest in modelling ... Grace, at the age of four and a half was able to model nearly all the vegetables and fruits that we ate" Another recollection marvels at her keen perception, that she recounted having heard "an ant's scream when water was poured into her ear to get the insect out."

Between 1942 and 1953, Grace amassed a number of certificates and diplomas in education, home science (including needlework and cookery), and art and craft: drawing, painting, weaving, pottery, and sculpture in clay and wood. In 1942, fifteen years prior to national independence, she completed senior school; her certificate included a subject remarkable in the colonial period: "Duties & Rights of a Citizen (with History and Geography)" Graces specific education in art started in 1951 at the School of Art and Craft, Achimota, which soon after transferred to Kumasi College of Technology (now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology). In 1953, Grace graduated, having specialized in painting and sculpture; she was already successful as a learner, teacher, and artist.

In 1954 Grace Anku married Robert Ashong Kwami (1913-1957) from a similar Christian Ewe family and also a professional in the expressive arts. A pianist, Robert Ashong was senior music master at Achimota, where they met and started their own family: Robert Mawuena (1954-2004; also a music specialist) and twins Georgina Attawa (1956-1969) and George Atta. When her children were young, Grace Kwami worked part-time at the fledgling national museum, where she undertook the restoration and display of artifacts, mostly ceramic. That her imagination was fired by firsthand encounters with archaeological and historical objects is manifest in her own oeuvre and through her sensibility for plural kinds of art forms.

Her husband Robert's untimely death from polio irrevocably changed Grace Kwami's life. Fifty years later, at the time of her own death, her friends and students had not forgotten his "very sad loss" and its traumatic shadow. Elizabeth Ohene, her former pupil and Ghana's present Minister of Tertiary Education, "remember[s] very well the tall, stately, and quiet woman in her widow's weeds and three small children." They refer to Da Graces domestic and professional generosity in spite of being a single parent and a creative person. To her nieces and nephews, Grace "signified the dignity of work. That whatever you find you are doing, do it to the best of your ability. ... [S]he opened her home to many who today can boast of skills ... which she imparted to us" According to Ohene, Mrs. Kwami delivered a "well-rounded" art education of formal skills and art history with an additional ecological component: "She taught us to make something out of very little: ... it did not require a lot of money to make your living room attractive and above all, she taught us you did not need to shout to make your point."

Following the death of her husband, Grace Kwami returned with her children to Ho, where she resumed art teaching, first at Mawuli School (1957-1969; from 1967-1969 she was also Chair of the Volta Regional Arts Council), then in the Northern Region at Tamale Training College (1970-1978), and then again at Mawuli after her retirement in the 1980s. She made time for her own sculpture practice, which in the 1960s attracted the attention of two leaders in Ghana's first generation of modern artists, Dr. Oku Ampofo and Kofi Antubam. Ampofo, a sculptor and founder of the Akwapim Six. (2) encouraged Grace by giving her a set of wood carving tools, which she treasured all her life. Antubam, a painter and author of the seminal book Ghana's Heritage of Culture (1963), noted in the section describing members of the Ghana Society of Artists that "Mrs Grace Kwami, painter and art mistress of Mawuli Secondary School, also produces some really outstanding plaster and terra cotta pieces" (ibid., p. 208).

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Indeed, clay was Da Graces medium of choice, possibly because of its association with her childhood, but certainly because of its availability, cultural significance, and expressive capacity. For her, modelling the human figure as she did from memory was a source of solace, a means to transform her sorrows into the good company of as yet unadorned (unspoiled?) young persons. Her treatment of the surface seems haptic, emanating from touch rather than from vision; the rough textures convey liveliness (Kwami 2003:294). My cursory, impressionistic, photographic survey of Grace Kwami's clay figures indicates a time span of more than fifty years with phases and peaks and continuities that beckon commensurate documentation and analysis.

In the last years of her life Da Grace's health was precarious; she suffered acutely from arthritis. Her daughter-in-law Pamela recalls that "She never stopped being an artist ... When she could go for a walk, I remember her poking about with her stick looking for interesting stones; how she loved the garden. Da had a lovely voice, full of kindness and sympathy"

A final recollection is from gallery director Martin Barlow, who made her acquaintance when she was reaching age 80, when he was in Ghana working on the exhibition "Kumasi ]unction? His impressions of Da Grace and his response to her work suggest how fully and finely she had blended art and life. Barlow writes in an e-mail to me,

   With the rigors of the long, hot bus journey
   already evaporating into the rich vegetation
   enclosing the garden path, I stepped into a house
   which felt at once tranquil and a home of creativity.
   A welcome, dinner, then talk. Some time afterwards,
   sitting in the porch, I was asked to accept a
   bracelet and necklace made by Grace as a gift for
   a friend whom Atta also knew. Soon I was surrounded
   by more bracelets and necklaces, woven
   hats like the one Atta had worn for his marriage,
   carved wooden figurines, decorated calabashes,
   and masks whose impact was in inverse proportion
   to their astonishing minimalism.

   In fact I knew little then of Grace Kwami ... That
   didn't matter, for I had been glad to meet her simply
   as Atta's mother ... I heard occasional news of
   Grace after that until, inevitably, news came of her
   "transition." ... Sitting with objects made by Grace
   Kwami in front of me now [October 26, 2007] and
   recalling those moments on her porch of quiet
   wonder at her creativity, it seems a particularly apt
   way of thinking of her own passing last year.

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In Ghanaian imagery, the spider is a positive and protective creature; the same attitude toward the spider can be seen in Louise Bourgeois' drawings and most famously in her monumental bronze Maman (1999). It may seem far-fetched to compare the life histories of Grace Kwami and Louise Bourgeois, given the vast differences in conditions for artistic production in Ghana and New York City--and, indeed, of their personal situations. Yet both women demonstrated early talent and had familial support in their pursuit of academic training in art; both are pioneers of modern sculpture in their respective societies, with public recognition in the 1950s; both of their practices are inspired by the domestic realm--redolent with psychological quality; both of their repertoires have a tendency for human figuration. Both artists stimulate our consideration of women's careers in art, motherhood, the art of survival, and elderly mothers. Relevant comparisons can also be made between Grace Kwami and Reinate Sadhimba and Magdalene Odundo, two African ceramic artists who also have long professional careers, national/international recognition, and feminine subject/content. Referring to Grace Kwami's exceptional independence, her son asserts that "Her courage to think differently marked her out."

Be still, focus on the artistic presence of Grace Salome Kwami, and then be inspired to use your hands, to dig in, and to create your own imagery, to understand as she did art as experience.

References

Antubam, Kofi. 1963. Ghana's Heritage of Culture. Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang.

Kwami, Atta. 1993. "Grace Kwami Sculpture:" Paper distributed at the Artists' Book Fair, Queen Elizabeth Hall. London, May.

--. 2003. "Ghanaian Art in a Time of Change" In Ghana heir et aujourd'hui: Yesterday and Today, eds. Christiane Falgayrettes and Christiane Owusu-Sarpong. Paris: Editions Dapper.

--. Forthcoming. "Stepping Stones at Home and Abroad" In Artists and Art Education in Africa, eds. Elsbeth Court et al., p. 292. London: Saffron Press.

Notes

Clearly, this essay is a joint effort and I thank Atta Kwami for access to his archive and for his deep thoughtfulness. I take this opportunity to convey my gratitude to both Pamela and Atta for their generosity and splendid camaraderie over the years. Meda wo ase also to Martin Barlow, Director, Oriel Mostyn Gallery Llandudno, Wales and to Janet "Area" Stanley, Director, Library of the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC for their kind and timely contributions.

(1) Atta Kwami's Grace Kwami Sculpture, a long time in gestation, was realized during his fellowship at the Royal College of Art in 1992 3. It was first exhibited at the Artists' Book Fair, London, May 1993, followed by the Beardsmore Gallery, London, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in the USA, 1994 95, and again in London during africa'95. Its limited edition is thirty-two copies with four artist's proofs.

(2) "Akwapim Six" was a pioneer group of modern artists who lived on the Akwapim Hills. Started in 1952 by sculptor Oku Ampofo, the initial members were F.A. Gyampo, a painter and sculptor; I.D. Okae ,a painter and illustrator; E.O. Asare, a weaver, J.C.O. Okyere a painter and sculptor; and A. Ofei-Abagye, a sculptor. The group "made its influence felt by its exhibitions of art and crafts; most belonged to the larger Ghana Society of Artists (Antubam 1963:208). "Akwapim Six" membership and activities indicate an expansive notion of art production to which Grace Kwami subscribed, not the rigid binary, art/craft classification that is implanted, usually, with the transfer of academic Western art education.

Elsbeth Joyce Court is a lecturer in African art at the University of London in the School of Oriental and African Studies and Birkbeck College. Her current projects are the publication Artists and Art Education in Africa and research about workshops in Kenya that compares the Kamba Handcraft Co-operative Societies and the Kuona Trust. [e-mail]