An Exchange of Ideas and Art

I feel very privileged to work with Becca Schaefer (see the earlier blog about her and Amanda Batson, my project assistants), art teacher(extraordinaire)at Rasor Elementary in Plano, Texas. She is leading a wonderful part of Renewing Material, hundreds of her elementary students are contributing to a "Talking Mural" exchange with students in Masaka, Uganda. This will be the 2nd mural exchange between Texas and Uganda, the first took place in 2008. If the 1st exchange is any indicator, this one will be impactful for all involved.

The theme of the mural is Renewing Material: Nurturing Environment. The way the mural works is that students begin by responding with vocabulary that expresses how they feel about the theme, then they explore and add images to illustrate their responses. Becca sent me a few words that her students came up with, I thought I'd share a few...Mia (9) wrote Keep the World Healthy, Quentin (10) wrote Make a Change.



The canvases will fly with us to Uganda this November and then completed at various schools in Uganda where they will remain. While in Uganda the students at the workshops will create and contribute to one large mural on barkcloth (a renewable resource from Uganda) that will then be completed and kept at Rasor Elementary.

Becca has done an excellent job teaching her students so much about Uganda and Fred Mutebi's artwork that they feel a part of this place across the globe!

European company takes bark cloth global

Bark Cloth Europe (www.barktex.de) is a German/Ugandan owned company who, for the past 10 years has been diligently getting bark cloth into the hands of artists and designers across the globe. Oliver Heintz and his wife Mary Balongo work both in Uganda and Germany to explore the potential for bark cloth in contemporary art and design.

It has been great to get to know their work and business over the past few years. I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Mary in 2008 at their home in Masaka. A few days later, Mary joined us at a dinner hosted by the US Embassy, bringing all those involved in bark cloth into one place for great conversations. The dinner was a great forum to see how unique each person's approach to bark cloth is - from researchers to designers to educational organizations. Bark Cloth Europe is unique in its approach to getting the material into as many hands as possible, thus increasing awareness and demand for this material. Their manipulation of the surface with dye, bleach, stitch, rubber, etc is opening this material to new uses.


Oliver and Mary are working with me on organizing works for the exhibition in March at UNT.

You have to take notice of the jackets they are wearing, one guess as to what it is...