Image: A. Amoako-Attah
The Creative lives talks at the University of Sunderland started this year’s talks with a wonderful man and Artist. Anthony Amoaka Attah is a glass artist that brought his culture from Ghana into his work with his Kente fabric designs done in Bullseye glass powders. His work is so detailed showing what looks like precise stitches and the weave of cloth. And the colours are so vivid. After many hours of screen-printing each individual colour the very fragile result, he then carries each sheet of glass from the screen-printing room to the kiln without smudging the delicate powders. These are then tack fired to keep the details the finished glass is then slumped to give the look of a folded and draped fabric.
The fabric design is traditional Ghanaian fabric originally worn by royalty and is comprised from Adinkra symbols. Each symbol has a meaning in his culture.
Image: A. Amoako-Attah
Anthony is at present studying for his Ph.D and is based at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland where I am studying for my B.A. So, I’ve had the pleasure of not only watching him at work but been taught screen printing by him.
In his talk he spoke about how he has now settled in the northeast and joked how he didn’t have the right clothing when he arrived, as it’s a bit colder in the UK than back home in Ghana. At the end of his talk he showed some of the failures he had to overcome. When the settings where wrong for firing or the piece was too close to the edge of the kiln. But this never deterred him from achieving the beautiful results. He has inspired me to push though failures and show me what I could accomplish in my art.
See Anthony’s artwork at @kente_glass on Instagram.
Learn more about Anthony in this Northlands Creative Artist Spotlight from August 2020.
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