Events – 2007
Textile wall hangings for Constitutional Court in Johannesburg
The Centre was commissioned by Judge Albie Sachs to make two quilts on the theme of justice for the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg. In December/January 2007 Orla O’Flanagan, Tarot Couzyn and Jeni Couzyn worked with the Pomegranate group on the quilts, and they were delivered at the end of January. The first, called The Freedom Quilt, shows the pool of Bethesda, (traditionally a pool of healing), with Nelson Mandela in the centre creating the ripples that spread out into human rights, the first democratic election, and Freedom Day being celebrated in Bethesda 10 years on. The second quilt, called The Truth Tree, is about injustice as it is experienced in the personal lives of the Pomegranate women. Albie Sachs described the quilts as ‘a triumph’.
Fundraising, monitoring and evaluation
The Centre has recruited Nanene Kruger, to help us with fundraising proposals, and with monitoring and evaluation. Nanene, who moved into the village a year ago, has been in development work for ten years. She is a very welcome addition to the Bethesda team. She also grows organic vegetables, so lunch at the Centre now includes salad twice a week. This is a real treat in our semi-desert.
Family Literacy training continues
In April Snoeks Desmond from the KwaZulu Natal Family Literacy project came to the Centre and taught a second teacher’s training course in Family Literacy. Our five facilitators will be started their second twelve week module with their groups of parents in June. Family literacy, which teaches parents to talk with, listen to, read with and play with their children, is making an enormous impact here. What impressed the facilitators most was the concept of bringing up children without hitting them or shouting at them! Family support will help children so that they learn to express themselves, and are able to thrive at school when they start learning to read and write.
Two month residency by Dumisani Mabaso
The other fantastic piece of news is that a printmaker from the Artists Proof Studio, Dumisani Mabaso, is doing a two month residency at the Centre, teaching printmaking. We have a group of five dedicated printmakers – four of them new to the Centre, and one who has been with us for years (James Hartlief) working 9am–5pm Monday to Friday, and till 2pm Saturdays.
Dumi is totally dedicated, and teaching in the most rigorous and amazing way. He is very experienced, and was not only part of the Rorke’s Drift project, but has also set up projects similar to ours in other parts of the country. We are so lucky to have him, and he has agreed to go on visiting us for a week a month when his residency ends. He says that the two women in the printmaking group are the most amazing natural talents. Neither has much schooling – Beatrice reached Standard 4, and Esmeralda Standard 9. Both have only ever worked as domestic workers, but they are doing brilliantly!
Dumi is going to run Saturday classes for kids. We decided to respond when they started drawing pictures in the dust on a car, parked outside the Centre!
‘Koos Malgas – Sculptor of the Owl House’ – published
Julia Malgas’ book is ready for the press, and will be out in October 2007. We are all very excited about it. The book will sell for R300 (about £30). Anyone wanting to order it can do so by contacting the Centre, firelizard@bethesdafoundation.org telephone 0277 (0)498411 731.)
Bethesda Arts Centre Johannesburg tour
In October a group from the Bethesda Arts Centre travelled to Johannesburg to deliver the first two quilts commissioned by Old Mutual, The Web of Love and Building a Community, and to see them hung.
This was much more than a delivery trip. While in Johannesburg the group visited the Artists Proof Studio, where our printing press had come from, and where Dumisani Mabaso was a former teacher. (He was our first South African artist to teach at the Centre since Cecil Skotnes’ early lino-printing workshop in 1999. Dumi was with us for two months earlier this year.)
The group went on to visit the Constitutional Court, and see their own textiles, Truth Tree and Freedom Quilt which were commissioned earlier in 2007. They took in other art-work, notably Kim Berman’s charcoal drawing and visited several other galleries.
This educational trip widened their experience and increased their confidence by taking them to a large city for the first time – lifts, escalators, city traffic, backpackers, tsotsis, underground parking, shopping malls, swimming pools. This is part of a continuing project to prepare people to take their learner’s driving licence, by pointing out the many road signs and rules of the road, which people confined to a rural area can’t learn from a book.
Read the full story of the trip
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