January 17, 2003
By Lucille Davie
ONE of South Africa's problems in the arts and crafts area is that the country can't mass-produce items when an order comes in.
This is the opinion of Nina Venjakob, and she is busy trying to redress this situation. She has over 800 artists on her mailing list and is supplied with art and craft work from around the country, which she sells directly to clients.
Venjakob, who describes herself as a "frustrated artist", exhibits some of this work in the foyer of the offices of the Industrial Development Corporation in Sandton. The foyer makes an ideal exhibition space for the work - it is a triple-volume space with muted beige tiles and a wall of slated wood. Venjakob has been displaying artwork in the IDC foyer for two years.
One striking item is the Dumela Dolls, beautifully crafted brown porcelain dolls with soft bodies. The dolls are dressed in suede clothes and bead jewellery, with traditional headgear. The Dolls are a countrywide effort: the attractive packaging is designed and produced by senior citizens running a small business in Johannesburg; the porcelain parts are sculpted in Knysna in the Cape, and the assembly of the dolls is done in Mpumalanga.
Says Venjakob: "Items like these could be mass produced by blind people."
Other artwork includes: oils on canvas, photographs, lamps, beads and safety pins made into imaginative belts, necklaces and bracelets, expressive clay figures, framed ceramics, colourful mobiles and decorative ostrich eggs.
Her long-term ambitions are to open a craft school, where artists can display their work and at the same time earn a living teaching prospective artists, particularly "educationally deprived and handicapped South Africans", to enable them to become self-sufficient and self-employed.
Venjakob already has a name for the school - the Ditoro ("to dream") Craft School and Centre, and she needs to raise R10-million to make it happen. She hopes to make it a "one-stop shop" for international buyers with the aim of "minimising the cost of South African craft production and stimulating the local craft industry on a competitive basis" for the export market.
Nini Venjakob with art in the IDC foyer
Exceptional craft students will enter into apprenticeships with top crafters and in this way Venjakob hopes the project will "constructively start alleviating poverty through job creation, education, training and skills transfer".
She has ambitions to have rural satellite centres around the country, thus spreading the employment opportunities as far as possible. This will eventually lead to the creation of a craft forum which will embrace a host of craft associations, groups, galleries and specialists.
In addition, the Centre will teach basic life skills like bookkeeping, literacy, marketing and banking. Venjakob has a team of retired people ready to teach these skills.
"We will give people who do not have a future a skill that they can turn into a future," Venjakob says.
Venjakob actively markets the artists' work through several means. She takes orders directly from corporates to supply gifts; she has theatre evenings to raise funds which are then used to buy sewing and workwork machines; and when the IDC throws parties in the foyer, guests are invited to buy the artwork on display.
