A Ghanaian Adventure 1

Earlier this year I was travelling in Ghana with Magie Relph and Bob Irwin. Every day was an adventure as we covered the miles and length and breadth of the country. One of the main thoughts that I brought back with me was a sense of awe and respect at the amazing craftsmanship and resourcefulness of the makers despite (or perhaps because of) poverty and poor working conditions.
In this series of work I am looking at the elements that the craftspeople take from nature and use in their processes to produce wonderful items.
In this first piece I spent time with the brass beadmakers and even made my own set of beads with them. Copper and zinc are smelted to make brass and one of the other essential items in the beadmaking process is beeswax. The wax is extruded through a pipe to make strings of spaghetti-like wax. These wax strings are then wound round carbon shapes to make the mould that eventually is filled with brass. The whole process is long and labour intensive.
Here you can see an atom of copper and an atom of zinc forming concentric circles. The outer circle forms a 'necklace' of images of the beads that I made with the beadmakers. The bees are there as a reminder that beeswax is an essential ingredient in the production of the beads.
Pat Archibald