Heritage

Artists plan first incubation centre for creatives

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Brust Tu Art artists (L-R): David Thuku, Michael Musyoka, Boniface Maina, Waweru Gichuhi and Elias Mung'ora. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU

While there’s a dark cloud looming over the current Nairobi arts scene, (what with reports of Kuona Trust’s financial woes and possible closure), there’s an even brighter creative cloud on the horizon called the Brush tu Art artists collective.

Sharing a sort of progress report last Tuesday afternoon at The Art Space in Westlands, Boniface Maina, (one of the founder members of Brush tu Art) told fellow artists and friends about how their collective was moving forward in ways that would be beneficial not just to the five artists who constitute the collective (namely David Thuku, Michael Musyoka, Waweru Gichuhi, Elias Mung’ora and Maina).

In the coming months, the collective will also be making a constructive contribution to much more of Kenyan arts community, since it will soon be offering its space and services to local artists at its Buru Buru Phase 1 studio.

“We want to set up a sort of [arts] incubator so artists can experience the benefits of working in close proximity with fellow artists,” said Musyoka who described what a hard time he had several years back when he was still a student at Buru Buru Institute of Fine Art (BIFA).

He had wanted to do an internship in his final year at BIFA, but there was almost nowhere that he could find to learn something that would deepen and expand his artistic knowledge, skill or practical experience.

“Some BIFA final years [students] went to Safari Park [Hotel], but all they could do there was three months of catering. I was fortunate to get an internship at Oxford University Press where I illustrated children’s books,” he recalled.

Gaining experience

The issues of finding space and gaining experience are ones the collective aims to address with its new program, which they’re calling an ‘incubator’ since it’s comparable to similar ones being set up around Nairobi, either for aspiring entrepreneurs or IT geeks-to-be, and all modelled on the warming machine that gently transforms eggs into fully-fledged chickens.

Giving the background of Brush tu Art’s development as an artists’ collective, Maina explained that it was David Thuku, (also a BIFA graduate), who first got the job working with Kenyan thespians, doing theatre backdrops for schools taking part in the Kenya Schools Drama Festival.

Thuku then called Musyoka to help him with the work, which initially was for Kenya High School. But their paintings had a ‘snowball effect’ meaning one school after another came calling to the two, who soon called Maina to help them meet the stage directors’ demand to do comparable quality painting for their respective plays.

It was soon after the trio of Thuku, Musyoka and Maina started doing stage sets that they got the idea to set up Brush tu Art studio together. And it wasn’t long after that they were joined by a graduate of Technical University of Kenya (formerly Kenya Polytechnic), Waweru Gichuhi and soon after that by Elias who came to them straight from Nyeri where he’d been working on his own before then.

Now all five were based in their Buru Buru Phase 1 studio, splitting their time between painting for themselves and for the schools Drama Festival sets, which had now grown to also include painting for college and university productions as well.

“We’ve created sets all the way from Nairobi up to Embu and Meru,” said Thuku who added they are often given short notice from directors who usually need new sets straight away.
But the Drama Festival work only runs from around January through April every year, which is just one reason why the artists have a wide range of other artistic activities to do.

“We also create murals,” said Maina, as he shared images at The Art Space of their painting both in private homes and commercial spaces, including hotels like The Windsor and businesses like the sports betting centres.

Working from their two-story set of studios (former a residential home) which include art spaces in both the front and back yards, the ‘Fabulous 5’ are currently busy spruced up the house. Soon they plan to be hosting both local and international artists who’ll apply for their first Brush tu Art Artist Residency which officially will begin the first of next year.

According to Musyoka, their new program will be two-pronged. Thanks to a bit of funding support from the Danish Embassy, there will be the ‘incubator’ designed for local artists which should begin next month, and the international artists’ residency which will start in January.

“We plan to have three artists at a time who will stay for three months each and come twice a year,” added Maina who attended the YMCA Technical Training Centre before meeting up with Thuku and Musyoka.

“We’d like to encourage all of the artists we have in residence during the year to establish their own artist collectives,” Musyoka said, noting that it’s been as Brush tu Art that they’ve gotten commissioned work that’s enabled them to afford renting their studio space in Buru Buru and subsequently to rent two stalls last year to exhibit their paintings at the 2015 Kenya Art Fair.