By
Margaretta wa Gacheru
The father
and son team of Richard Thuku Itundu and Kennedy Ndei Thuku are artists,
environmentalists and aspiring businessmen.
Theirs is a
noble combination of concerns since they want to create fine art that reflects
their commitment to conservation and to raising public awareness about the
urgent need to protect our wildlife.
“The big
game animals are part of our national heritage. We feel they’ll have a better
chance of survival if people know more about them and if they see them up close
in the way that we have presented them,” says Richard who’s been making
transparent boxes containing hand-carved sculptures of the Big Five since the
1990s.
“But we also
started a company called ‘Artfam Creative Designs Kenya’ so we can market our
animal sculptures more effectively,” adds Kennedy who, in addition to following
in his father’s footsteps by becoming an artist is also a Nairobi University
student studying Economics.
The Thukus
are also keen on promoting Kenyan tourism with their three dimensional
‘dioramas’. These are the clear transparent boxes containing everything from
cheetah, leopard, elephant, lion and rhino. Each box contains the semblance of
a tall tree that’s divided into levels, each one of which contains scenes of
the animals within what conceivably is their natural environment.
So for
instance, on the ground floor, they have placed a well-carved elephant standing
amidst tall grass with flying birds hovering around the animal’s back. On the
next level, there’s a lion and lioness, and the top level contains two cheetahs.
The Thukus
have worked closely with a wood carver named Kasyoki who created all of the
creatures according to Richard’s specifications.
“I’m not a
carver, but Kasyoki has helped us create the prototype which we want to use
once we get our company off the ground,” says Richard who wants to hire Kenyans
who have disabilities but who they would train to recreate dioramas like
theirs.
The added
educational feature of their dioramas is that basic scientific information
about the animals is affixed onto the transparent walls. That way, a student or
teacher can easily see the wildlife as well as read valuable data that can
inculcate an interest in a child (or an adult) for the country’s wildlife.
“I’d like to
present one of our boxes [dioramas] to President Kenyatta,” says Richard who
specifically wants to give the Head of State ‘The Kenyan Big Land Animals
Tree.’
The Tree is
their most recent creation and one the father and son team believe would go
some distance in promoting Kenyan tourism and the conservation so critically
needed to save the country’s Tourism industry.
Richard also
shows us a smaller, more compact single level box containing a hungry lion,
lioness and their cub. They are all busy devouring the carcass of a fallen
buffalo. But this one too is a prototype for construction of more boxes that
can be easily displayed and studied for the sake of Kenya’s tourism and the
creatures we need to protect as one of the country’s most important natural
assets.
The Thukus
can be contacted at artfamcdk6@gmail.com.
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