In a peaceful place: Ghanaian folk artist Nanasei Agyemang weaves together community

When Nanasei Agyemang was 12 years old, he watched his father’s friend Paulina weave beautiful baskets from elephant grass.

“I had never seen anybody weave until then,” Agyemang said. “She taught me how to prepare the straws before weaving. You pick a dry elephant grass. Later, you split the straw with your teeth.”

Agyemang grew up in Bolgatanga, Ghana, the oldest of 11 boys. His father had three wives. His own mother moved back and forth. Paulina helped with the housework.

In a peaceful place: Ghanaian folk artist Nanasei Agyemang weaves together community

The weaving “kept me in this peaceful place,” he said. “She would sing and weave at the same time.”

Today, Agyemang will bring 150 baskets from his eight-member collective Bolga Woven to Santa Fe’s 20th annual International Folk Art Market from Thursday, July 11, through Sunday, July 14, in the city’s Railyard Park.

Out of this year’s 571 artist applications, the market has chosen 167 artists from 51 countries. IFAM has added a new country this year with the inclusion of Papua New Guinea. Since the market’s 2004 formation, it has hosted more than 1,600 master folk artists from 103 countries. Last year, the market moved from its longtime Museum Hill location to the Santa Fe Railyard Park.

This marks Agyemang’s third year at the market. Now based in Denver, the weaver first came to this country after earning a scholarship to study business management at Collins College in Tempe, Arizona.

From there he flitted through various jobs in accounting, FedEx and Halliburton before returning home to Ghana to decide what he really wanted to do. He looked up Paulina.

“I knew the materials, I knew exactly where it was coming from,” Agyemang said. He recruited eight weavers, allowing them to weave from home, and a collective was born.

He started by showing the work at small, local Denver markets.

“I didn’t think it would go to the extent it is now,” he said. “At first it was Paulina and I. It was very challenging. The work ethic differs here.”

Some companies tried working with the weaver in a factory style.

“This is something they see as my free time,” Agyemang explained. “(Paulina) convinced me it’s better to let your workers stay home. All year I stock up for Santa Fe. Now everybody is comfortable.”

Paulina had changed her style so that the baskets undulate in an organic wave. They bend in and out of shape like a pliable ceramic pot that has been gently twisted while still wet.

“When I went back, Paulina told me some members of the family were watching ladies making a wave in their pottery, so the women started copying the same style.

“When the grass is soft, you turn it into the pattern of the wave and it stays. No other grass does the same. The wave basket is not functional,” he added. “It started with a more functional shape for carrying and planting onions.”

The colors come from natural dyes made from plants and minerals.

“The concept of making the colors are very, very complicated,” he said. “You try samples. When it’s dry, you start the weaving.”

The first time he displayed the baskets at the Folk Art Market, he sold out within the first two days.

Collective members have used the money they earn to dig a pump well and to produce toilets that don’t dispose of their contents into the ground.

“Paulina uses it for food and medicine,” Agyemang said. Now elderly, she also hires help for farming in June, July and August.

“Most of the money goes straight into the community,” Agyemang said. “They have to re-mud their homes every year.”