By Kevin Lambert

Akwaibomites are noted throughout Nigeria for their talent in sculpture. The wooden sculpture from this area is also very detailed, and artists are just as likely to capture beauty as they are the hideous forms of evil spirits.

Sculpture is a difficult medium to present; it’s big and bulky and takes a lot of time (and walking) to take it all in. Its most familiar habitat – bank lobbies – may not be the best of backdrops. The trend is to put the sculpture outside in parks and of course charge admission.

"Sculpture parks are a phenomenon that has been growing over the past 10 years," says Glenn Harper, editor of Sculpture Magazine, "both as a way for museums and cities to attract attention to themselves, and to sculpture itself. They are more public and more of a destination than a museum in people’s minds. The field has totally exploded. To update a 1996 sculpture park directory, we’re going to have to hire someone especially to do it."

The West Discovers African Art

The discovery of African art – especially sculpture – was to have a staggering influence on people like Braque, Matisse and Picasso when it came to the galleries at the turn of the century.
The artists of Paris – the most accomplished and self-confident in the world – were deeply impressed by the colors and shapes and vibrancy. They immediately went to work utilizing their versions of what they saw. "That influence has never stopped," says Harper.

The influence has, of course, spread out in many directions. "It gets more and more complicated as artists are reacting to that influence by using that work in a more postmodern ironic way."

Melvin Edwards, (b. 1937) an African-American and one of the most prominent sculptors in America, has been travelling to West Africa since 1970. His work was pretty well formed before he got there, but he finds African art to be a solid aspect of the fuel that drives him. The best sculpture, he says, is "how you put influences together and make meaningful art out of it. As much as there are old techniques in

Nigeria, there is also modern technique and conceptual aspects from tradition."
Asked what American sculpture would have been like without the African influence, he says, "The same as American music."

Uwa Usan is the chairman of Nigerian artists and head of sculpture at Uyo University. He calls it a "baby university," meaning that it has only been around since the early 90’s.

"We offer five degrees; sculpture, ceramics, textiles, graphics and painting." They are coming far and fast; their arts department has been not only keeping up with the bigger world but innovating.

There is "proplastic" which is somewhere between a technique and a material, invented by Dr. Best Ochigbo, who is head of their arts department. "We go to the extra length," he says, "to try and make the tactile quality of the physical painting make sense by introducing plastic into the painting. It gives it a kind of relief effect which approaches sculpture." The Goethe institute in Lagos has exhibited it, along with many others.

The students are very conscious of the olden days and integrate the legends and old gods – who still have a lot of power in the countryside – with modern techniques. The images are used now "for their beauty," says Usan. "It is not grotesque, it is refined."

The sculpture garden at the University of Uyo is a quiet place to look at and appreciate this sort of thing.

Free to all visitors, the garden exhibits the three- dimensional works of students of the Department of Fine and Industrial Arts, showing a wide range of images of the Nigerian saga, from the old gods to oil workers. The mediums are fiberglass, reinforced concrete and ceramics and metals.