The Mirror's Health , Lifestyle and Fashion
A peek into the world of a fabric artist - The story of Mrs Eva Amonoo Hayford
Thirty-seven-year-old Mrs Eva Amonoo Hayford, who describes herself as a Fabric Artist, saw this void in the industry and decided to exploit it.
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Mrs Hayford uses fabric to create all forms of art — wall hangings, canvass print, throw pillows, key rings / key holders, broaches and aprons. For the wall hangings and canvass prints, for instance, she skilfully cuts cards to create the figures or subjects in them and then use fabrics to create the clothing of those figures created coordinating them with accessories made of fabrics, bits and pieces of buttons, and leather to bring out the detail, making her work a rare art piece.
The Mirror visited her Lakeside residence at Ashalley Botwe in Accra, where she had converted one of her rooms into a working studio, to see how she worked and also share with readers how she started it all.
Mrs Hayford (left) in a chat with Ms Augustina Tawiah, the reporter
There were many of her works on display. Different types of colourful fabrics from denim jeans to local prints had been used to create figures beautifully dressed to reflect modern fashion trends. Using fashion glue, she pins these figures onto a smooth wooden surface and places them in a picture frame to achieve the effect she wants.
Mrs Hayford’s theme is: the female, and so most of her works depict them. Some include a young girl wearing short denim jeans knickers with a matching high heels and a bag and another of a young girl and a boy. Their posture suggested that they were lovers. For some of her works, nails were added to the fabric creation in order to give them a three-D effect.
A gallery of her works
Sharing how it all started, Mrs Hayford said she was artistically inclined and had that drive to always bring fabric to life. For that reason, one day when she woke up, the idea to use fabrics to create the art works in that form hit her.
She made a sketch and started to cut pieces of fabric to form it. It was, however, at the university that she made a breakthrough with her work. According to her, as part of the requirement for being awarded a degree at the University of Education, Winneba, where she majored in Textile and Sculpture, she was expected to use textiles to create something as her final project.
“Most of my mates were like, ‘I will sew this, I will sew that,’ but I wanted to go out of that norm and fortunately for me, because of the artistic background I came from, I knew much about fabrics so I decided to create figures with fabrics instead of just doing the normal sewing of a dress.” Her final project work was to use fabrics to create figures of a durbar of chiefs and his people. From the chiefs, elders, subjects to the umbrellas the chiefs sat under, she used fabric to create them all. According to her, this piece of work, which she got ridiculed for when she started, came out so beautifully in the end that everybody praised her.
It was after the success of this project work that she thought she could do business with them and so decided to do wall hangings for sale. She added this to the table covers, chair backs, arm rest and aprons, she was already doing at the university for sale. She then started selling her products, initially to the people around her. Later when she started working, she was taking some of her wall hangings to her work place and once some of her colleagues saw them, they got attracted. Some ordered them as birthday gifts for others or for other occasions. Unfortunately, she said because artworks were not valued in the country, the sale of her work weren’t encouraging. However, the passion she has for using fabrics to create various forms of art pushed her forward to create more of her work for sale anytime the need arose.
After a five-year hiatus from her fabric arts business due to marriage and childbirth, Mrs Hayford is back to business and has now introduced gift packages which allow her to make her own gift boxes and put her art work inside them for sale. She also makes hampers of her products for sale and according to her, the introduction of these made sales better. On various social media handles such as Instagram and Facebook, she advertises her products for sale under the brand name ‘Ntomacollage.’
Mrs Hayford used nails to create this artwork
Brand Name
Explaining the meaning behind that brand name, Mrs Hayford said they were picked from two words — ntoma (fabric in Akan) and collage which is making arts with pieces of items. She said she chose that name because she wanted a name that was catchy.
Challenges
The road to her current destination has not been easy. According to her, there was little encouragement from people around her when she started. She mentioned, for instance, that in school, some of her mates sarcastically remarked, ‘na wei so ye dien? (what is this),” whenever they saw her working on her art pieces with fabrics for her final project work. Others also perceived her as being playful. She mentioned sales as another challenge. Because sale of her products were slow, she was often unable to quickly recoup the money she invested which was usually her salary.
Aside from the art work, the artist works in the formal sector as a Disbursement Officer at a financial institution. That, coupled with the fact that she is married with three children and no apprentice to run errands for her business, meant that she had little time to rest.
“ I don’t have a social life. Managing myself is very tough and there are times my friends complain about my inability to respond to invitations . Apart from work and church, I go no where because the little time I get, I want to use it to do something. Sometimes, my husband complains. Because of the regular work I’m doing, when I take a day off or I am on leave, I try to do the complex parts of the work such as the making of the gift boxes in order that when I get orders, I will be able to meet them”.
She gets the concept to do her art work from observing things in the environment.
Arts in the family
If Mrs Hayford is very good at what she does, then that may be due to the kind of family she was born into. Her grand mother used to sell cloth in one of the big shops at the Kaneshie Market in Accra. According to her, she used to go there during vacation to assist her and it was through that her appreciation for colours emerged. Her father was an artist who was into painting and sculpture, while her half sister is an interior decorator. “So arts is in my genes,” she remarked.
Schools attended
A product of Christ Mission School, Kwashieman in Accra, Mrs Hayford attended Mfantsiman Girls High School from the year 2000 to 2003. She pursued Visual Arts and went ahead to do Textile at the University of Education, Winneba where she graduated in 2009 with Bachelor’s Degree in Education. ‘So, I am a professional teacher as well. I went there with the intention of becoming a teacher because I love teaching, I like to impact knowledge.”
However, after her one-year internship as a teacher at the Prince of Peace International School at North Kaneshie in Accra, she did not continue as a teacher. Rather, after getting the opportunity to do her National Service at her current place of work, she was retained as a permanent employee.
Family
She is married to Mr Eric Hayford with whom she has three children. She disclosed that her husband has been very supportive
Gratitude
Mrs Hayford is grateful to her friends who have been very supportive of her work by giving her encouragement and posting her works on their social media status.