Artsdiscourse

By: Mbata Lawrence I plead for my dear country Nigeria; For our green is fading and our white stained with blood. The giant eagle has refused to fly; its wings have seized to flap. Their plead to lead have become more than a nightmare. I wish for Moses to lead that we may have roses rather than thorns that causes this bleed. They took turns to loot; Blowing their trumpets, they saw us their puppets. We've been served blemish as dish; Little wonder we stool at the digest of this. Our mother land has become a murder ground, Where we mope and wear faces that frown. Every town is wailing and all I see are hearts failing. My Nigeria is fading, with hope I wish for peace to awaken. Drunk in hatred they kill more than a hundred; That's the headline each day I mope at the mirror. I go to sleep today to wake up tomorrow; I close my eyes to pray for Nigeria.

Ato Arinze in his studio By: Mathew B. Oyedele Ato Arinze was recently a guest on Artsdiscourse with Mathew B. Oyedele - an online platform for the discourse and critique of the arts - where he shares his content, technique, and experiences.   He opens up on his technique of production and how his method of copper finishing typically evident in his recent body of works came to be. He makes his pots with coiling methods. And recently, he likes to bend, compress and sometimes punch his vessels to delineate the unstable situations in the country. As a young artist, Ato would always go to the National Museum in Lagos to meditate before the Igbo-Ukwu bronze pots. This would later inspire his copper finishing method. The artist did not fail to recognize his short stint with the iconic Abayomi Barber at the University of Lagos in 1993 as a stepping stone and blessing in his artistic career. He confides that the barber art school exposed him to detailed rendition of forms a...