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| Visiting African-American sculptor and 2014 OYASAF FellowshipScholar Prof Albert Lavergne (centre) in a group photograph with founder Prince Yemisi Shyllon and participants shortly after his presentation at OYASAF Lecture Interactive session, in Lagos...few days ago |
Abstract Of Presentation
A Culture Awakening Through Technology – My Fulbright
Experience in Ile-Ife Nigeria by Pof. Albert Lavergne
In 2012, I arrived at ObafemiAwolowo University on a Fulbright Lecture/research Grant with a mission of building a steel fabricated sculpture and present it to the university as a gift from Western Michigan University in commemorating their 50th Anniversary. It was my first visit to the African Continent with only my enthusiasm to guide me.
Over
my 39 years as a teacher/researcher, I developed a unique process of
fabricating directly, with metal without the need of a foundry. I
grew up watching my mother fabricate colorful quilts with reconstituted fabrics
pieces without the need of a model. I was intrigued at the process of how
individual sections of clothes, evolved into a large mosaic colorful design.
She maintained the capacity to improvise circumstances as her imagination dictated.
The quilt’s design was developed in the moment.
My
first exposer to metal work came when I accompanied my father to the local
blacksmith to have farming tools and equipment sharpened. At the
time, I remember being mesmerized by the process that the heat of the fire
could transform the metal. As a sharecropper, my father instilled in us
at an early age how essential skills in eye and hand coordination were to the
survival of our farm.
As
I traveled towards discovering my personal conceptual identity and my
sculptures grew larger, building for strength and balance became a primary
issue. The law of gravity would always challenge my designs, to transform
industrial steel into rhythmic organic looking forms. The process required
dynamic engineering of joints. I needed the spontaneity of my mother’s quilts
and the practicality of my fathers’ tool making skills.
My
lecture will cover my preparations and my adventures in Ile-Ife building a14
feet steel fabricated sculpture.
