Adinkra in Brooklyn

by MARY MARTIALAY on NOVEMBER 16, 2011 

reposted from The Approach features the innovative ideas, creative endeavors, and research discoveries of students and faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  http://approach.rpi.edu/2011/11/16/adinkra-in-brooklyn/

__________________________________________________

"black is the nite (Round the World)" a stop motion animation by Pamela Sunstrum on exhibit at MoCADA

Just a few weeks ago I was writing about fractals as part of a post about a piano concert featuring Debussy’s La Mer. Wouldn’t you know it, they’ve cropped up again.

An exhibit opening this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in Brooklyn - with ties to Rensselaer - will feature several fractal-based works. The exhibit is titled “Feed Your Head: The African Origins of the Scientific Aesthetic,” and, according to the description on the MoCADA website, the works featured  “join together two visual artists with a physicist and ethnomathematician to explore the aesthetic convergence of science and art.”

The ethnomathematician is none other than Rensselaer Professor Ron Eglash. Eglash, a professor in our Department of Science and Technology Studies, has made fractals a keystone in his efforts to show minority students the cultural relevance of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

Here’s how Eglash summarizes his work:

Fractals are patterns that repeat themselves across several scales. They were first thought to be purely mathematical abstractions, but in the 1970s mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot realized that many natural structures have this “scaling” characteristic: trees are branches of branches, rugged mountains have peaks within peaks, clouds are puffs of puffs, and so on. Fractals became an exciting new frontier for mathematical models of nature.

In the late 1980s I noticed that aerial photos of African villages also tend to be fractals: circular houses in circles of circles; rectangular houses in rectangular clusters. A Fulbright research fellowship allowed me to spend a year travelling in Africa interviewing the artisans who created these structures. I found that these patterns were intentional and that the repeating process of shrinking scales— what mathematicians call “recursion”—often symbolized recursive cosmologies, the infinite regression of kinship, the self-generating power of life, or other concepts that mapped fractals to spiritual and social ideas. Fractals showed up not only in African architecture, but also in African textiles, sculpture, hairstyles, metalwork, and many other designs.

Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, we have developed educational software that allows K-12 teachers to use these African fractals in the classroom (www.csdt.rpi.edu). Architects working in Africa have also started to look at fractal structure for contemporary buildings, and there is even an entire university campus planned for Angola which will have a fractal layout.

As for the project, Eglash said:

We began our discussion with a focus on the work of Sylvester Gates, who has been visualizing his supersymmetry theory with some diagrams he calls “adinkra,” after the Ghanaian print tradition. I described some of the work I had been doing on adinkra in Ghana, and Kalia Brooks, the curator, suggested we make adinkra the central theme.

A few months later Taena Richards contacted me and asked about an adinkra symbol she had seen called “linked hearts.”

 

Eglash says this pattern is slightly different from a traditional Ghanaian adinkra pattern (in which the hearts would be more circular, reflecting the actual shape of an animal heart). Nevertheless, he used her version as the basis for a fractal which he returned to her:

The finished piece is a collaboration between Eglash, theoretical physicist Sylvester  Gates, and artists Pamela Sunstrum and Richardson (full disclosure – “black is the nite (Round the World) ” - the image of which opens this post - is not one of the pieces on which he collaborated, although it will be featured in the exhibit).

As part of the exhibit, on December 6, MoCADA will offer a workshop for educators on using African arts to teach STEM, run by Rensselaer Professor Audrey Bennett.

The exhibit will be on view November 17, 2011 to February 25, 2012.

ShareThis

Tagged as: fractals, MoCADA, rensselaer polytechnic institute, Ron Eglash, STEM

The Earth Has Weight

The symbol at the center of the cage is from the Adrinka people of West African and it means "The Earth Has Weight." It is a reminder of we must live with care for this planet. Copper collar with caged wired stones. Two colors of green Aventine, turquoise, glass seed beads and Swarovski crystals.

Other articles on "wire cages";

• A necklace of tumbled red jasper undreilled nuggets 
• I reposted a video from Youtube.  The artist is creating a necklace from - sea glass.  The glass is undrilled so she uses cages to make the sea glass a part of the necklace.

Sankofa

In this image the camera's light setting wasn't quite right, but the I'm including it because it best captures the sun lighting up the carnelian. The entire piece is made up of a carnelian ----- and a carnelian briolette from Turquoise Magpie, suspended from a brass frame. My client is going to hang it in her window. I call this piece Sankofa. It will make a gorgeous window and room display.

In the Adinkra African writing system of the Akan people of Ghana and Corte ‘d Ivorie there is for me one symbol that recognize more than any other that life is transformational. That symbol is Sankofa.

Of all of the intrepretaions I found regarding the concept of Sankofa, this text from W.E.B. DuBois Learning Center has resonance for me:

"se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki."

"it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot".

The Akan Symbol Project at Marshal University

expands on the ideas of memory and knowledge with the following;

The Akan believes that knowledge must have practical bearing on the conduct of life. This is portrayed by the aphorism:

Nyansa nye sika na woakyekyere asie -

Wisdom is not like money which may be kept in a safe;

or,

". . .one does not collect wisdom in a bag,
lock it up in a box
and then go to say to a friend,

"teach me something."

This second Sankofa piece is a pendant

of onyx and copper.

The idea I'm trying to work on is --our futures are not shackled by our past but given flight by knowledge of the past. Because the symbol is interpreted as two birds

or one bird flying in two directions

or a bird and an egg.

I see the concept of Sankofa as speaking to the multiple identities we wear, the multiple paths we can and do choose to travel and as a result the multiple possibilities we have when we allow ourselves to hear and see the past and the future from the position we exist in today.

Here are a few more images I’ve used to inform my work with wire and gemstones. I love the stylization of these image.

Why I wire wrap

Wire wrapping. . .I was drawn to the process because it creates works that are one of a kind. Are there machines that do this? Can anybody tell me? For me, going to Target or the Jewelery District downtown (Los Angeles, CA) and getting a glob of manufacture metal and chips of stone like product just doesn't get.

I want stones and glass that have been rolled in the palm of someone's hands as they imagined how the living earth will unite with a living being. The concrete and conceptual. Heaven and earth. I want wire metal made malleable by the warmth of blood pulsing through veins and distributed to soft yet strong flesh.

I want designs that call me from the past and project me to the future.

That is why I wire wrap.

This cuff was inspired initially by Eni Oken's work. It also was inspired by the concept of Sankofa--a symbolic bird of Ghana that flys forward while looking back.

I didn't have a bracelet mandrel so I used a piece of PVC pipe to mold the base.

First step was to wrap 20 gage copper wire around the pipe 9 time. Then I divided the 9 wire loops into 3 sections, a top, a bottom and a center frame shaped into an oval and sandwiched in the middle. With 18 gage wire I wrapped the entire frame, squeezing the center back so that top and bottom frame meet.

Another length of 18 gage wire narrows the back of the cuff to a whisper. This is the place where memories are so ancient we don't even understand them anymore.

Then I began with the loops and the swirls and the twist, all created in 20, 22, and 18 gage wire. I left the center frame blank a wonderful negative space waiting to tell me how to fill it. This negative space represents the present and the future waiting for memories to be lived.

When the future and the present came to me it was in the form of red jasper. So I caught the three nuggets in copper wire cages. Not to imprison them but just to tether them for a moment until I can catch up with the present and past. More swirls, cooper beads and crystals, so that. . .

I Wear My Memories . . .
. . . here. . . on the pulse of my body, at my wrist or at the top of my arm close to my heart.
The cooper wire swirls and coils are like the arteries of my body, pulsating, alive with memories. . .living to make more memories.
The open spaces of this cuff, where the jasper treasures reside are also open for the possibility of new memories to take root.
The crystals are conductors of light that radiates my energy to and from the cuff.
I wear my memories here. . .with this cuff.

The Earth Has Weight. . .

The Earth is where we begin . . .The Earth is were we end. In the Adinkra language system, the earth is the feminine and half of the whole. Combined the Earth and the Heavens are whole.
. . .the earth is where we have weight . . .the heavens are where we can fly. Our bodies endeavor on earth. . .our sprits rest in the sky.
Copper coils embellish the frames and give the earthy weight to this adornment. Rutilated African quartz serve as the balance and anchors in the focal setting of this bracelet. Picture Jasper caught up in a freeform copper setting creates the second element of this piece. The third element is a round slice of batik bone encircle with coiled copper and held in place by tiny cooper beads on one end and fine gage of coiled copper wire on the other end. The hand made free form clasp is also coiled with more copper wire and caught in a handmade copper eye.

All materials in the adornment are what give the earth weight:

Elements used in this adornment:

Jasper: stone of protection, heighten awareness, joy, balancing of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual energies.
Crystal Quartz: Intensifies energy, spiritual development, healing, raises consciousness.
Copper: Found in adornments and tools crafted by the ancients the world over, copper has long been a metal of choice. Don’t be afraid of the patina—the green, blue green result of oxidation. Modern snobbery demotes the beauty and practicality of this metal. Those who allow their Sprits to Dance remember. . .and make a choice of copper.

Talking Adornments

When your sprit speaks let it use the Adinkra language of the Akan people of West Africa. The Adinkra language is an ancient symbol system, today it is primarily found in Ghana. At Sprit Dance we have added a Diaspora element to the interpretation of the language. When creating our adornments we conceptualize each piece considering two methods of interpreting the symbolic representation of the Adinkra language. First, we employ the ideal of “Sankofa.” Like the mythical bird flying forward while looking back, we endeavor to fearlessly remember the sprit of the past while employing craft techniques of different times and different lands where the children of Africa have traveled and settled.