By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted originally 11 April, revised 12 April 2019)
Technical University
of Kenya, formerly known as Kenya Polytechnic, has spawned a number of
important artistic figures in our time. Among them are Patrick Mukabi and
Waweru Gitahi and others.
And now,
after seeing what senior Design students are doing at TUK, one can forecast
there are young Kenyan artist-designers coming up who’ll maintain the
‘tradition’ of creative excellence established by their Poly predecessors.
Granted TUK
students were working more in multimedia than paint, charcoal, palette knife or
pen. But similar artistic skills plus a fertile imagination are required in
both careers nonetheless. And these were apparent in plenty last Thursday when
both diploma and degree students displayed their final projects inside the
Kenya Railways Museum and out among the vintage railway cars.
For
instance, fourth year Design students like Joseph Musyoki and Anthony Waweru
Kamuru created animated short stories on film for their final projects.
Meanwhile, Mercy Mwangi created a magic carpet using recycled cement bags and
scraps of multicolored kitenge. Having stitched an abundance of the scraps onto
multiple layers of the cement bags, Mercy created a soft thick carpet that
could be used either as a decorative floor mat or an attractive wall-hanging.
Mercy wasn’t
the only TUK student to create functional designs out of recycled materials.
Anne Wangari made an attractive lampshade out of plastic cups and a blossoming
flower (complete with vase) out of plastic spoons spray-painted silver to look
like stainless steel. Her floral design reminds one of the twelve-foot
steel-spooned ‘Coffee Tree’ that currently stands in the central plaza of the
Hub mall in
Karen, created by the Thika-based artist, Peter Ngugi. Hers is on a
much smaller scale but we applaud her upcycling plastic waste. Nonetheless, her
plastic lampshade, while being decorative, doesn’t seem functional since the
heat generated from lightbulbs is bound to melt the lampshade in no time.
Purity Igoki
also upcycled ‘useless’ waste, transformed discarded cotton t-shirts into handbags,
shoes and her idea of Maasai bead jewelry.
The ‘defective’ shirts had been rejected by clients of silkscreen
printers who Purity says were happy to be rid of the ‘rejects’. So Purity took
them home, tie-dyed them (as she had been taught at TUK) using bright sunny
colors. After that, she sliced up the shirts according to the shapes she required
to make matching sandals, clutch bags and necklaces.
Then there
were designers like Stan Manthi whose full-time job keeps him on his computer
throughout his working day. That’s how he knows about dysfunctional mouse pads.
Noting that when the pads are made out of rubber, they tend to buckle rather
than lay flat. Suspecting he was not the only one who found that tendency to be
a nuisance, (especially when you work under serious time constraints), he
decided to create a series of denim ‘jackets’ for several mouse pads. Then as a
way of decorating the denim, he used a dual-purpose kitenge border, one side of
which had pen-sized pockets so you could have all your essential tools
literally at your finger-tips.
But it was
the animated film shorts that attracted the most wide-spread attention at the
TUK exhibition. Even the TUK Vice Chancellor, Professor Francis Aduol voiced
his enthusiasm for the inventiveness of the animators who were required in their
course to not just produce a finished short film. They also had to create
multiple story-boards that illustrated the film’s screenplay. Plus they had to
create visual profiles of their characters.
Joe Musyoki’s
short film, entitled ‘Lost’, is about three characters: a paint can, a palette
knife and a paint brush all of which are wide-eyed and fully-dressed when they wake
up one day and find themselves in ‘a strange place”.
(“Their home
was in the art room, not the living room where they had been left,” says
Musyoki).
The story
unfolds with the three characters stumbling from one obstacle to the next as
they struggled to find their way home.
Since
Musyoki was constrained by time, the film ends with a ‘To be continued’ as the
three take a rest, exhausted by their difficult day.
The
imagination that Musyoki displayed in his film could easily serve as a pilot to
a charming children’s television series that one of Kenya’s TV station ought to
pick up. In the meantime, one hopes this ingenious animator will follow through
and create a sequel to “Lost’ in which the trio carry on with their journey,
wherever it leads them.
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