Kangolo’s bags, furniture and trinkets are tops

By Andrew Mulenga

When jeweller Spider Kangolo was retrenched from the gem company that employed him for several years he was devastated and thought it was the end of the world. But a close friend advised him to capitalise on his creativity and the skills he had acquired.

An assortment of baskets that sell for
anything between K25 (approx. US$3) and K45

However, instead of continuing as a jeweller, seeing he did not have the capital to set up that sort of business, he took to collecting discarded bottle tops, creating them into all sorts of things from earrings to furniture and 15 years down the line he has perfected this skill and has emerged into what is almost a one man manufacturing industry.

“I started in 1998 here in Lusaka this is after I came here from the Copperbelt. I was inspired by Quentin Allen who I used to work with on the Copperbelt when I was a jeweller. But for what I’m doing now first I started with making waste paper bins then I started making anything, hats, and chairs lamp shades”, says Kangolo who has just been on the phone with a client from Livingstone, a backpacker’s lodge that ordered 10 lounge chairs.

He explains that although he does not have any staff working for him, he has an apprentice that helps him puncture the bottle tops that are collected every Monday for small fee from a number of bars and restaurants with which he has an agreement

The bar stools are among
the most popular of his products

“All I use is soft wire, just different sizes depending on what I am making whether earrings or fruit bowls and so on. The designs are also my own, I sketch them first and take these to a welder who does my frames when I’m doing furniture like bar stools which are the most popular”, he says.

He explains that he sells the bar stools for K200 but some of his clients that get them on wholesale are known to sell them for about double the price but this does not bother him.

“Business like any other has its ups and downs but yes otherwise I’m used I am managing. In the crafts market September and October is quite bad, but by the end of this month and up to December it is good because people start buying gifts for Christmas and the end of year,” he explains.

“But I also want to expand into something big because I don’t think I can manage the orders alone if you look at what happened recently someone just approached me to do 40 chairs and I spend about 4 hours on one bar stool and every bar stool takes about 220 bottle tops, so it is a lot of work and sometimes I work around the clock,” says Kangolo.

Kangolo has not invented the use of bottle tops for use in crafts at all but he has taken it to another level making very high quality products and raising standards. Although this kind of craft is common in South Africa and Zimbabwe, he appears to be the only one doing it consistently and so skilfully in Zambia which is why he is getting commissions from as far as Livingstone. One can only hope he manages to expand his workshop and further train his apprentices so that his company can grow and he can probably employ more youths helping to contribute towards job creation and poverty reduction.

His earrings, pen holders, bar stools and basket handbags can all be purchased from selected craft outlets such as Ababa House on Addis Ababa Road, the Art Academy without Walls in the Lusaka showgrounds from where he sometimes operates or the Sunday market at Arcades, and since it is that time of the year, why not visit one of these places and surprise a friend, or loved one with something unusually Zambian. 

Kangolo - December is usually good
because people start buying gifts for Christmas

David Chibwe: painter, printmaker extraordinaire

By Andrew Mulenga

There are a few artists in Zambia that can boast the consistency of David Chibwe, a painter and printmaker that has been active on the Lusaka art scene for well over 40 years, surviving on nothing but the coaching and production of art alone.

Akalela dance,  acrylic on canvas,
by David Chibwe

As focused and uninterrupted as his illustrious career may appear, it started on a rather flippant note when in 1970 as a teenager he left his parents’ home in Lubumbashi, Congo where his father, a Zambian missionary lived for many years.

“When I left the Congo I never went to see my relatives in Zambia, it was an adventure I didn’t even have money for transport but my friend sponsored me. We arrived in Ndola and were supposed to catch a train to Lusaka, by then it was 1 kwacha 18 ngwee per passenger but we only had 2 kwacha,” he recalls.

Luckily Chibwe had a box of watercolours, then they stumbled upon Kingston’s, a popular  stationary shop at the time, seeing the array of brushes, tubes and paper, the excited youths decided to invest.

“I told my friend let’s use the little money we had, when I convinced him we bought assorted material, and went to sit in the park next to the museum, we sat on the benches and I started making small abstract paintings, it was just after new year we were very young and a bit hung-over from a late night,” he recollects wearing a mischievous smile.

David Chibwe working at his home
in Kaunda Square Stage 1, Lusaka, Zambia

“We sold my paintings for two kwacha each, then we went to Savoy Hotel, I sat outside and started making some more, my friend was doing the selling and we ended up making over 30 kwacha which was a lot of money, we were still in the New Year mood so we went to a bar called the Under Tavern at Broadway”.

Having had their fun, the lads eventually managed to catch the train. When he got to Lusaka, Chibwe was able to locate his sister’s friend in Kamwala who took him in. He wasted no time and started selling, his paintings in Madras and Long acres.

“I used to sell door-to-door, I made allot of money, but four months later I went back to Lubumbashi and stayed there for 6 months before coming back to Lusaka,” he says “But in 1972 I met Edwin Manda, a famous actor who was also in charge of running the National Dance Troupe under the Cultural Services Department. He used to take them all over the world to perform but when he saw my work he gave me a job too.”

It was Manda that offered him a place at the Kabwata Cultural Village alongside craftsmen but then he [Manda] thought that it was not the place for the ambitious young Chibwe, who after all had undergone some formal art training at the Athens Royal School Likasi in 1964, the Academies of Fine Arts in 1967 and Artistic Humanities Des Beaux Arts, Lubumbashi, 

Less than a dollar a day, acrylic
on canvas, David Chibwe

Democratic Republic of Congo in 1969. He was clearly a cut above the rest.

“When Henry Tayali came back from studies in Germany, Mr Manda introduced me. Also Mr Tayali told me that the cultural village was no place for me,” he says.

 

It is Tayali who introduced him to the Art Centre Foundation (ACF) at the Evelyn Hone College, where he started working with Patrick Mweemba and Fackson Kulya until they were joined by the Choma-based, Dutch artist Bert Witkamp, Style Kunda and the youngest member of the group Vincentio Phiri. In fact in its day, under the leadership of Cynthia Zukas MBE and the late Bente Lorenz, the ACF was so organized it would host discussions every Thursday where they would invite and engage non-artists and key members of society.

 “We would just sit and talk about art, we even used to invite people like medical doctors and lawyers, so one doctor even gave us a contract to decorate the children’s wing at the University Teaching Hospital when we convinced him that art is therapeutic,” remembers the artist.

Dance to the rythm, acrylic on canvas,
by David Chibwe

Chibwe would later become a founder member of the Lusaka Artists Group which was operating under the Art Centre Foundation, but he explains the group was short lived because it was like having an organisation within an organisation.

He remembers the late 1970s and the early 1980s as being the golden age of art collection in Zambia; these are the days of the defunct Mpapa Gallery founded by Joan Piltcher with Heather Montgomery, Ruth Bush, Gwenda Chongwe and Zukas as board members.

“Mpapa Gallery were very strict and they did not just display anyone or anything, it is not like nowadays at the Visual Arts Council where the gallery is just showing anything,” he declares taking a swipe at the VAC run Henry Tayali Gallery in the Lusaka show grounds.

“In the 80s there was also an Indian who came to the Evelyn Hone College, he is the one who thought of commercialising the artists workshop he thought we should do silk screen, so we went to Lumumba Road and from there we started printing seed bags for Zamseed, but this guy was also a drug dealer he ended up being arrested at Bombay airport and the project died,” he adds.

Market place, acrylic on canvas, by David Chibwe

From his tales in the 1980s he also suggests that when there was a change of government at the turn of the decade those who came into power were simply not interested in art and this was a serious downturn.

“When the new president and cabinet do not appreciate art then that’s the end, there are very few Zambian ministers or even businessmen that can buy a painting from you today, not even for K1, 000 (one thousand kwacha) when you tell them the price they say ah! Even prominent black buyers like Mr Kapotwe it is just because he worked with Mr Sardanis for a very long time”, he alleges.

Vendors, linocut, by David Chibwe

For the most part, Chibwe has had a very illustrious career, enjoying significant commissions over the years. His linocut prints and paintings have been collected all over the world. Perhaps in the evening of his career, he now intends to retire to a small holding in Chongwe where he will teach and produce art, known for knocking from door to door seeking funding for the project proposal intended for an art village he tends to build there. It is sad to note however, that something does not add up, at 66 he appears to be older than he should; he is clearly stretching himself to make ends meet as well as get his project going. One feels he could have done better for himself than wait until he is not getting any younger and visibly weary, but such is life. Unlike many western countries that have retirement packages for aging artists, this is far from being a reality in Zambia.

Nevertheless, Chibwe remains a maestro, one of the Zambian greats his rhythmic brushstrokes still blend perfectly with his musical subject matter as can be seen in the paintings Akalela Dance and Dance to the Rhythm. The soft colour palette and mildly blurred visual effects that lend the artist his signature style will continue to charm us for ages. He lives and works from his home in Kaunda Square stage 1. 

VAC presents ‘Custodians’, all-star end of year fundraiser

By Andrew Mulenga

“The Custodians”, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by top contemporary Zambian artists opens at 17:30 hrs on Friday 20^th November at the Henry Tayali Gallery in the Lusaka Show Grounds.

The Visual Arts Council of Zambia (VAC) will be presenting a show that comprises a body of work staging multiple themes while cultivating an explicit relationship between the present and the past by pitting some of Zambia’s greats, living and deceased alongside works by a younger crop of artists with great promise, as part of a fundraiser. As such, VAC will be charging a K20 entrance fee for the opening event, which of course will be characterised by an open wine and snack bar.

Custodians, a group exhibition opens on
Friday this week. Photo by Andrew Mulenga

The exhibition marks an important and new step in proving that as a space, the Henry Tayali Gallery and visual arts centre plays a fundamental role in offering testimony that against many odds, the country indeed has a flourishing visual arts scene and committed artists who are worthy of support, a point that is critical as definite political will is at long last on the horizon, vis-à-vis support for the arts from government – if of course President Edgar Lungu’s recent remarks and visit to the gallery are anything to go by.

Just a year ago, VAC hosted a similar group exhibition entitled “Visibility (can you see us?)”, well that show’s title was self-explanatory, it was a call by the gallery co-ordinators beckoning private and public stakeholders in the visual arts, a call for support particularly of a financial nature, which has been dwindling over the years since the main foreign donor agencies and their government began tightened their budgets and shifting their aide focus for various reasons. The Custodians, nevertheless, is an equally important show, assuming now that VAC’s visibility has somewhat improved, it is really time for its members, paid-up and non-paid up to put their house in order.

Over the years, the institution has been blemished by infantile bickering and finger pointing with accusations of individuals feeling they “own” VAC more than the next member as well as claims favouritism and opposing camps within the ranks, all this must come to an end if the council is to move forward as a unified body.

Flashback - the main exhibition space in
the Henry Tayali Gallery and
visual art centre, Lusaka © VAC

When a call out is sent to all artists to pay up membership, they must all comply, when they are all called to an Annual General Meeting, they should all do likewise and attend. Someone wise once said strength is in numbers, can you imagine if every single Zambian visual artist were up to date on their annual subscriptions, the funds would definitely go a long way in paying the gallery staff as well as the building rentals to the show society for VAC, Lusaka. Currently VAC demands a small amount of K50 for individuals and K150 for institutional membership, these figures are almost a joke to any practicing Zambian artist regardless of the hard economic times, if anything VAC should consider increasing the fee to K150 for individuals and K1, 500 for institutions, if you do the maths there will be no more delayed salaries for art centre staff in Livingstone, Lusaka, Kitwe or Chipata. Also, if all the visual artists get actively involved in the council, they are bound to have a stronger voice and will be heard whenever they call for something. As for art students from the Zambia Open University and Evelyn Hone College, these institutions should make it mandatory for each and every student to be a paid up member – at a special students rate of course – school pupils and art clubs should be encouraged to join and told of the benefits of being affiliated to a professional body of artists.

On the other hand, returning to The Custodians it is gratifying to note that among the featured artists, the gallery co-ordinators decided to include the late Martin Phiri. Phiri is arguably the most unacknowledged contemporary Zambian artist of his generation, which is quite regrettable considering the artist’s legacy. Truth be told, without him there would be no VAC at all, it is Phiri whom as a young lecturer at Evelyn Hone College in his late twenties elbowed his way into a high-profile cultural policy meeting chaired by Lazarus Tembo, the late singer who was also a government minister overseeing Labour and Social services at the time. Phiri, who had just returned from China where he had obtained a BA Fine Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and was obviously inspired by the students uprising of that country, argued that the cultural policy that was being created lacked visual arts representation and demanded he be given a month to organize artists and create a nationwide, professional body. Along with three of his students, William Miko, Harry Kamboni and Agnes Buya Yombwe, they were able to pull off this immense task and mobilize close to 100 artists from all over the country to gather for a meeting at the Evelyn Hone College, this was the birth of VAC, mind you this was way before the e-mail and cell phone era. This is not to say Phiri has been entirely forgotten, of course the VAC offices in Chipata are named in his honour, but the man at least deserves a retrospective show to bring awareness to his contribution and work.

In any case, The Custodians is set to be an entertaining event, other artists featured in the show are Zenzele Chulu, Lombe Nsama, Adam Mwansa, Agnes Buya Yombwe, Chansa Chishimba, Charles Chambata, Danny Lwando, David Chibwe, Eddie Mumba, Mwamba Mulangala, Stary Mwaba, Sydney Siansangu, Nukwase Tembo, Patrick Mweemba, Patrick Mumba, Poto Kabwe Flinto Chandia, Gladys Kalichini, Lawrnence Yombwe, William Miko, Lutanda Mwamba, Raphael Mutulikwa, Vincentio Phiri, Mulenga Mulenga and Geoffrey Phiri.