Hinterland

Really, the timing could not have been any more perfect for the run of Hinterland at the Theatre on the Square. Like the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island and The China Syndrome perfect. Remember that?

Lately, the newspapers have been full of headlines about the student protests leading up to the recent removal of the Cecil John Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town campus, tentative plans to transfer the Paul Kruger statue from Church Square in Pretoria to the Voortrekker Monument, and the vandalism of Queen Victoria's statue in Port Elizabeth as well as other statues in The Company Gardens in Cape Town that depict historical figures active in politics before the era of the born-frees. Even Gandhi FFS!

some of the recent headlines

At the very least, the recent actions have proven that Rhodes and his legacy are still hot topics in the South Africa of 2015.

The play is about the (fictional) meeting of two giants of South Africa that could have changed the course of history. Deeply controversial at present and more than a hundred years after his death, Cecil John Rhodes still enjoys fame and notoriety, as Southern Africa’s arch-imperialist - while the multi-talented man of letters, Sol Plaatje, was one of the ANC’s founding fathers in 1912.

Sipho Mahlatshana as Plaatje and David Dukas as Rhodes

The plot of Hinterland has the two men, Plaatje and Rhodes, meeting while Kimberley is besieged during the Anglo-Boer War. In the autumn of his life, Rhodes, the king of diamonds, hires the young Plaatje as his new secretary and the two develop the unlikeliest of friendships, full of humour, warmth and pathos. But the country is changing and as Plaatje’s political career begins to dawn, the two men become set on a collision course which will change their lives.

I would have been totally in the dark if I had seen this play only three short years ago. But now, after extensive reading coupled with visits to the Anglo-Boer Battlefields, Kimberley and Cape Town which all figured prominently in the story, I probably understood 99.9% of what was said.

I had been to Groote Schuur and the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town and am fairly knowledgeable about the life and times of Cecil John Rhodes thanks to my reading The Covenant. Unfortunately, I was completely unfamiliar with the play's other main character, Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje. Luckily there was a mini-biography of Plaatje in the Playbill which I read before the curtain rose.

Educated in a mission school near Barkly West, Plaatje was conversant in eight languages including English and Dutch and he was widely regarded as one of the most influential black journalists of his time. He was a founder member and the first secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the forerunner of the African National Congress (ANC).

But this was not some boring history lesson. The play was funny, tragic, surprising and immensely entertaining. Not to mention educational and extremely timely.  

Hinterland runs through April 25.

67 Blankets

signing the 67 Blankets challenge board

Today at Bryanston Organic Market there were a bunch of knitters and crocheters promoting the 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day project. 

According the project's website, "In December 2013, Zelda la Grange, Nelson Mandela’s trusted assistant, presented philanthropist and ‘Arts Angel’, Carolyn Steyn, with a challenge: knit, sew or crochet 67 blankets! These blankets would then be distributed to those in need on NelsonMandela Day (18 July).

 

Carolyn gladly accepted Zelda’s challenge but soon realised that she wouldn’t be able to achieve it alone. She called on her friends for help and developed a Facebook Page. Her friends shared the Page with their friends, who shared the Page with theirs, and in just a few weeks, hundreds of people from around the world had pledged to knit a blanket for Nelson Mandela Day.

Since then, 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day has transformed into what some are calling a movement – a movement that has captured the attention of many South African celebrities as well as corporates and do-gooders in Australia, Canada, Germany, Cyprus, London, the US and India.

You are invited to join this incredible initiative! Stitch by stitch, we will be keeping thousands of people around the world warm this winter in the name of our beloved Nelson Mandela. His legacy lives on in each blanket we produce with our own two hands."

On April 21 - for the 21st anniversary of South Africa's democracy on the 27th of  April - 21,000 blankets will be laid out on the grounds of Pretoria's Union Buildings in front of Nelson Mandela's statue. Carolyn's dream of breaking the Guinness Book of World Records with a colourful sea of blankets around the feet of the statue might just come true.

my yet to be completed going on 10 years needpoint project

I resisted the call to knit or crochet a blanket myself. I haven't knitted since I was a teenager and I still have this massive needlepoint project to finish first. But I did contribute to the project by buying enough yarn for some do-gooder knitter to use in order to make an entire baby blanket for the project. 

To get involved, contact Johan Vos on 0617 67 67 67 or email info@67blankets.co.za.

Textured Translations

me with Marguerite Stephens

Run ...

         don't walk ...

















... to 44 Stanley ...

... and Gallery AOP to see Textured Translations, an exhibit of tapestries from The Stephens Tapestry Studio.

We thought today was the last day to see the exhibit but it has been extended until Tuesday and should not be missed! (The gallery is closed on Mondays.)

"Opened in 1963 as a branch of a carpet and curtain business in Swaziland, the Stephens Tapestry Studio moved in 1965 to Diepsloot, a suburb of Johannesburg in South Africa, where it established itself as an independent workshop focused on raising awareness of weaving as an art. The studio has collaborated with a wide array of artists from South Africa and Europe—including Gillian Ayres, Gerard Sekoto, Eduardo Villa, and Tito Zongu—allowing them to experiment with and realize works in the tapestry medium. Included in many public collections throughout the world, the tapestries produced by the studio have also been exhibited at numerous museums and galleries—most notably at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg since 1970.

Stephens and her team of weavers create tapestries that range from wall-sized to monumental. Production begins as a cottage industry in Swaziland, where mohair shorn from goats and purchased in bulk is carded and spun, a process requiring at least ten to fifteen women for each tapestry. Four dyers then achieve a variety of subtle tones working from the three primary colors. The weft is dyed in vats over a wood fire and hung to dry in the sun. 

The rest of the process takes place at the Diepsloot studio, where Stephens currently employs thirteen women as weavers. Stephens herself participates in the crucial stage of translating the artist’s work by hand into a large-scale cartoon. The cartoon is a full-sized map for the weavers to follow with exacting detail, and it includes annotations specifying colors as well as outlining the patterns, forms, and characteristics that comprise the artwork’s imagery. Using the French Gobelin high-warp technique, the weavers work on vertical looms, and the weft is woven in a horizontal motion. The cartoon is placed behind the loom face as a guide to the weavers as they create the tapestry from the bottom up.

Cicero by William Kentridge, 2014

Stephens recognizes that the artist involved in the collaboration can be one whose sensibilities exclusively resonate with the decorative aspect of tapestry, or one whose work is also considered political or controversial. While the art of tapestry is based in precision, it also possesses plasticity that can capture many different artistic expressions and can allow for successful collaborations such as the series produced with William Kentridge. 

Since 2000 Stephens and the weavers in the studio have created nearly a hundred tapestries from the artist’s series of seventeen Puppet Drawings. For Stephens, the combination of a strong artistic vision and meticulous execution is what produces a successful tapestry, and it can be judged only when the tapestry is released from the loom and hung for the first time, becoming a work of art in its own right that possesses reverberations of the touch of all who participated in the process of its making." (text from The Philadelphia Museum of Art website)

Night Shift by Sam Nhlengethwa, 2012

the earliest tapestry in the exhibition, School Board by Norman Catherine, 1986

'-for the lion roars himself compleat...' by Judith Mason, 2014

New Orleans Dandy by Robert Hodgins, 2013 (designed 2009)

In the case of New Orleans Dandy, the original artwork by Robert Hodgins was exhibited right next to the resulting tapestry.

Marguerite created this small scale cartoon of the design which was blown up into a larger cartoon in scale with the size of the intended tapestry.

The weavers then took the scaled cartoon and used it as their loom guide.

The weavers had to change out the mohair yarn for each color change guided by the cartoon.

There are plans in the works for a group of us to visit the Stephens Tapestry Studio in Diepsloot and see the production process firsthand. Seeing this exhibit really whet my appetite!

Clandestine heaven

popcorn and a coke - it was breakfast time!

When my sons were in lower school, one of my favorite guilty pleasures was to sneak into the city during the day to catch a movie at one of the downtown cinema art houses. My friend Lynn was my partner in crime. We would each drop our kids off at school - for me that would be the Pingry School in Short Hills and for Lynn, McGinn in Westfield - and then we would meet up half way in between at the Starbucks at the Barnes & Noble on Route 22. Two Cafe Mistos with vanilla syrup to go please.

We would take turns driving and we'd cruise through the Holland Tunnel - it being well after rush hour - and park at this little outdoor lot diagonally across Houston from the Angelika, our cinema of choice. It cost $10 to park for the day! With a tip! We always got there way too early for the Soho shops, most of which only opened at noon. So we'd grab some more coffee at the World Cafe and head down to Canal Street and Pearl River Mart and buy a bunch of things we didn't need.

The Angelika always had five or six movies playing at the same time. We usually picked a movie that started around 11:00 am. If one of them was French or Italian, we'd choose that one. But sometimes we would just go by the name or the poster art. Swingers! How bad could it be with a name like that? Answer: we loved it! A cult favorite. Sometimes we would recognize the director. Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Or one of the actors from a previous film we had liked. Mark Rylance in Angels and Insects. It didn't really matter though. The films were always enjoyable - or at least interesting - allowing for ample discussion and dissection on the ride home.

the cinema @ Hyde Park

The Angelika turned over their films often so we always had plenty of choices every time. Lynn was the perfect date for our secret sorties. There was never any pressure over which movie we would choose. It was a lark. It didn't count. Nothing at all like the pressure of the weekly Friday movie date night with your husband where the choice of movie was always a matter of hot contention. "What do you want to see?" "I don't care; what do you want to see?"  Horror? Action? Costume drama? Lynn's and my choices were more like, "Which movie will get us back out on the street by 2:30 at the latest?" Done.

We would each buy a tub of popcorn no butter and a large diet Coke - it was lunchtime! We'd grab a seat on the aisle and disappear into the darkness and another world for a couple of hours while the sun was shining and people were being oh-so-productive outside. It was clandestine heaven! Especially since it was our dirty little secret. Or so we thought. Once, as Lynn's daughter Casey was getting ready for school one morning on one of our NY movie days she asked Lynn innocently what she had on for that day. "Oh nothing," replied Lynn. "Oh, you're meeting Darlene, aren't you?" Casey responded. Dang it, that Casey was always too smart for the room!

After the movie, we'd refill our diet cokes or grab another cafe au lait in Angelika's lobby bistro, dash out of the theater, grab our car in the lot across the street and shoot out the Holland again and back to our rendezvous spot on the Jersey side well before the afternoon rush hour even began. I'd be back in car pool line before 3:00!

Can I get a cafe au lait with vanilla syrup to go ...

We never once missed a car pool deadline. But there was always that chance that one of us might get a flat tire or there would be an accident blocking our timely return to our real life in suburbia. Sure, we had contingency plans just in case, but we never had to initiate them.

Later when our kids were in high school and stayed after school for sports practice and clubs, it became a much less dangerous sortie ... and therefore much less fun! And that great parking lot diagonally across from the Angelika? It's now covered by a high rise condominium. Pearl River Mart? Closing in December. Ah, life goes on. And so it does ... I moved to Joburg after all. I still enjoy going to movies during the day even though I hardly ever do. I don't know why not; it still feels like a mini-vacation from life.

But today I had the chance for a little deja vu moment. Vince was flying back from Cairo into Joburg this morning and I offered to pick him up at the Gautrain station in Sandton on his arrival around noon. As it happens, my daytime cinema group was going to see The Second Best Marigold Hotel at the Hyde Park Shopping Center this morning. We were to meet at the theater at 9:15 for a 9:30 movie. A little early for popcorn and a diet coke but I cannot seem to watch a movie without a tub of popcorn on my lap.

The movie ended at 11:45. Perfectly timed for me to be on schedule to pick Vince up at noon. No longer clandestine, but it still felt so guiltily good!

Winter has arrived at Valley Lodge

And it's a wee bit early!

Delights

I have protected the innocent wearing these attractive hairnets!

As if I needed any more Easter candy, I went on a tour of the Sally Williams Nougat Factory, and bought some more.

There really is a Sally Williams and her business is a South African success story. After tasting nougat in the souks of Morocco, the real Sally Williams began perfecting her own nougat recipe in her kitchen in Johannesburg before moving production to her garage before opening her first factory in Kramerville at age 55!

Her company became so successful that her son-in-law bought her out, she retired comfortably and he opened a state of the art candy making factory in Linbro Business Park. We removed all our jewelry and watches, donned our hairnets and white lab coats, washed and sanitized our hands once again and visited the factory for a behind the scenes tour to see how it's made.

product pictures from the Sally Williams website

When they can, they source from South Africa. Sugar, egg whites, macadamia nuts, and glucose syrup. Honey from South Africa too. And not just any honey. Honey made specifically for Sally Williams using bees who pollinate only citrus trees in Limpopo.

But they also use the most decadent milk and dark chocolate imported from Belgium. They source their almonds from California - mostly because the quantity and quality is guaranteed. And their cranberries come from the United States too. 'Cause that's where cranberries come from. (FYI: FDA approved, Sally Williams is also sold in the USA.)

Along with nougat in various configurations studded with cranberries, almonds and / or macadamia nuts, they also make the best Turkish delight in the world - even better than Turkey. Perfectly sweet, they use rosewater imported from Switzerland. Plain, enrobed (that's the word they use!) in chocolate, or layered with a non-dairy "cream."

And they make mint dark and milk chocolate slabs with crispy nougat using crushed up nougat and delightful bite-sized madeleine-shaped milk chocolates with crispy nougat too.

popping the chocolate bubbles

Much of the production is done by hand like popping the tiny chocolate bubbles on the enrobed  nougat and Turkish delight. But the industrial equipment the hands use to make the confections is state of the art precision custom calibrated machinery from Germany.

The quality control is unbelievable! Nothing enters the production area until it is tested and documented and guaranteed 100% free of bacteria or infestation. Their egg products especially are run through a battery of tests and temperature controls to make sure there is no bacterial contamination. Nuts and the candies produced with nuts are strictly quarantined. Sally Williams guarantees that when they say their candies are made without nuts, buyers with nut allergies can trust that the candy is safe to eat.

more Easter loot from the factory store

I love these behind the scenes factory tours - all except the hairnet part of course!

My Linnware collection ... so far

We have been slowly collecting Linnware since we arrived in South Africa. This is what we have unearthed so far ...

First Vince bought two coffee mugs (dark green and a slightly larger bright azure blue) at the African craft market. Then we bought three tankards (yellow, sky blue and green) and a light green coffee mug, an azure blue cream jug, two aqua demi hot chocolate mugs and a beautiful turquoise tea pot.

A small turquoise plant container / vase.

A green and brown brick flower container with a matching ceramic frog.

 A unusually shaped sky blue vase and frog. Very Ikebana.

A brown vase which we are using as a walking stick stand until (if or when) we can find a real umbrella stand. They exist - we saw one at Sunlawns. Finding one in the wild however is a whole other thing.

Hello Serge!

In the meantime, it actually works quite well as a stand leaning against the window jam. Especially with its pin flower frog in the bottom.

A beautiful amethyst colored vase with a ceramic frog.

Another small plant container / vase - this one sky blue - and a most unusual celadon green table lamp (without a shade.)

Linnware is much harder to find than we originally thought. We do not want to use eBay or other auction sites. It's much more fun to stumble upon a perfect piece at an antiques market or shop as we traipse around the country. Viva la chasse!