These earrings have actually been available in my shop for a while, but I noticed that I hadn't blogged them, so here we are. Large leaves striped with rich purples and blues, hand-lettered with 'amani' and 'imani', Swahili for 'peace' and 'faith'. Sterling silver ear wires, as always.

Introducing the Amara Collection

I'm finally ready to show off my newest line! I'm very excited about this one-- I've been working on these for over a month now. First, a little about its reason for being.

As you may know, I have a small connection to East Africa-- in grad school, I had a minor in African Studies and in my linguistic work, specialized in African languages, especially Swahili (ambacho ninajitahidi kutopoteza sasa). I was lucky to be able to study Swahili in Tanzania for a couple of months in 2003. What I've learned has enriched me in all sorts of ways, including in my work as an artist. I've always kept in mind that I'd like to give back when I find the right opportunity.

Recently I've heard a couple of stories on NPR about the toll of the conflict in the Congo on the women and girls there-- it's been hard on everyone, but particularly horrific is the way that rape has been used-- for the first time documented, the rebels have been using it as a weapon (as opposed to a mere byproduct) of war. I won't go into the details-- you can read some here--suffice it to say that it leaves women and by extension entire villages and regions physically and emotionally ruined.

One hospital working to help these women with their surgeries, physical rehabilitation, and counseling is Panzi Hospital of Bukavu. I decided that I'd like to find a way to donate to them to support their work. I discovered that the way to help them is through the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a Canadian organization that relies on regular folks-- not corporate donations-- to fund a number of initiatives that are in turn conceived of and run by locals (not Western 'experts', who have helped enough already, thank you very much). They're all-around excellent, I can't say enough good things about them.

The line of jewelry I've created for this purpose is inspired by African fashion and design--

if you've ever seen photos of East African women, one thing you probably noticed is the way they mix and match their clothing. Two or three brightly colored kangas (wraps) each with different colors and patterns, a different colored t-shirt on too. To celebrate this, my new line has a wonderful mix-and-match aesthetic with bright colors, repeating geometric motifs, and a batik look. Actually, it's funny about the batik paper-- I developed a technique for making designs on paper that looked a lot like batik but did not involve wax-- then later learned that the technique that I had 'developed' myself was also a very standard process used for handmade African batik textiles. That made me very happy to hear! As they say, great minds....

Anyway, I call it the Amara Collection. 'Amara' is Swahili meaning 'urgent business', 'assistance', 'aid'. These beads feature my batik papers with my original designs. They're accented with hammered sterling silver flourishes, and can be converted into either earrings or pendants.

Best of all, they're mix-and match! I've been asked several times in the past year whether I offer mix-and-match earrings. Now the answer is finally YES! Mix shapes, patterns, or colors (or all three if you're really bold) for a completely custom set. You can even get an earring trio-- one more earring gives you three different pairs.

So far the Amara pieces are available in three colors (mocha, moss, and sun), three patterns (fern, spiral, and wave), and 4 shapes in 3 sizes. (If you do the math on that, you'll see why it took me so long to get a good initial selection made-- 3 x 3 x 4 x 3= 108). Mocha is pictured here, and you can see both the fern and spiral patterns in the first picture. More photos of the other colors and patterns coming soon!

$1 per piece (thus $2 per pair of earrings) sold will be donated to the Stephen Lewis Foundation to support Panzi Hospital.

Project Panglossia

Upon further consideration, I decided I could give my language project a more exciting name than "Language Project"-- a little brainstorming with my philosopher (who is a punning genius) yielded a winner: the project shall henceforth be called "Project Panglossia". What the heck is Panglossia, you ask? Well, after Doctor Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide-- the overly optimistic fellow (the "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" guy). And also, when you break it down, 'pan'= 'all' and 'glossia' = 'languages'. Yeah, appropriate, huh? I thought so.

Today's offerings again from Swahili. 'niambia= 'tell me'.

And 'sikiliza'= 'listen'

I've got one more Swahili piece in the works, and after that, it's on to Hausa.

Language Project

Apparently 2008 is the International Year of Languages, so declares the UN. The folks over at Language Log blogged about it a bit today, and left me inspired. Yes, language is a bit abstract a subject for art, but hey! I'm a calligrapher, and I already have a bit of a language theme going on in my work, and wouldn't mind riffing on it a bit more. I think I'll have a go at it. I like a challenge.

Here's my plan: one new piece per day for the rest of the year in another language. I'll aim for one or two new different languages per week. I may do a number of words and phrases for each language, depending on where my whim takes me, but for each I will at the very least do pieces featuring the equivalents of 'listen' and 'tell me'.

Yeah, I know, a tall order! I'll have to go do a little research to figure out how to say those things, since it's a little more involved than just looking them up in a dictionary. Sounds like fun to me (I welcome any excuse to go hang out in the library and study languages). If you happen to speak another language well, I'd love a helping hand with the translations. And I'm game to do non-Roman scripts, too-- though anything non-alphabetic might require a little (um, or a lot) of coaching.

Up first, my favorite second language, KiSwahili. To kick it all off, I'm listing these earrings in my shop this afternoon. 'Amani' and 'imani' are KiSwahili for 'peace' and 'faith', respectively.

Asante kwa kusoma na karibu tena!

I had lunch this week with my friend and former Swahili teacher, who had her bag stuffed full of kangas to lend to a student who was doing a presentation about the kanga later in the day.


The kanga is a popular piece of clothing/all around useful item in Tanzania-- lots of people call it the 'traditional' clothing, but I think that would be stretching it a bit-- as I understand it, it wasn't really introduced until early in the 20th century-- but it is certainly much-loved, both deeply and widely associated with Tanzanian culture. Anyway, it's a colorful cloth featuring bright patterns and a saying of some sort. The saying can be used to give a message to the recipient (if it's a wedding gift, it may have a saying of good wishes for the new household,for example), or the wearer may use the message to communicate with others in the house or neighborhood about something that's been on her mind. Usually the saying is in Swahili (although on Pres. Bush's recent trip to Tanzania, I saw that the commemorative kanga worn by the women greeting him was in English). Swahili these days generally uses Roman script.


Back to my friend's recent kanga acquisition. She had one new kanga that used Arabic script! This is very unusual-- Arabic script was used for writing Swahili for centuries, mainly by poets, but when the British missionaries began their literacy work in East Africa, they went with the Roman script. For various historical reasons, this was the method that stuck. I had heard tell that there were still some poets in the coastal region that preferred Arabic, but hadn't come across it anywhere myself. Now this kanga! Popular culture with Arabicized Swahili! How cool is that?!


I did my best to read it, but frankly, the Arabic writing system really isn't very well suited for Swahili. Granted, my grasp of the Arabic writing system is limited, to put it mildly-- I took a year of the language about 15 years ago and haven't done much with it since-- but I don't think it's all me. There are a few more vowels in Swahili than Arabic, for one thing, and several consonants don't match up well with the letters available. Though I suppose that the same criticisms could be made of the Roman alphabet. But anyway. This one translated roughly as "I will not leave my husband because of rumors in the neighborhood." I don't understand the choice of Arabic script for this, but it's probably meaningful. There's always more than one level of meaning in Swahili.

In honor of the President's visit to Tanzania, here's my favorite website out of Dar Es Salaam with all kinds of cool pop culture stuff. Well, yes, it's mostly in Swahili, but don't let that stop you from enjoying it. It's a view of a side of Africa we don't get to see too often here in the U.S.: something beyond war, privation, disease, or large game animals.

Tips: "Bongo" is the local nickname for Dar Es Salaam-- 'bongo' means 'brains'-- the idea is that you have to be really smart to survive there. People, especially young men, come from all over Tanzania to try to find work there-- and that may not work out unless they have some serious street smarts.

Here in the Bongomdundo ("rhythm of Bongo [i.e. Dar]") section you can listen to some local music. Click on any of the links in the upper right under "masongi" (surely I don't need to translate that? Hint: 'ma-' is a prefix that makes a word plural) to hear some awesome local tunes. I'd recommend one, but I'm on dial-up here and it's a bit slow going. If you have trouble, too, maybe try this online radio station, Bongo Radio.

Here's their list of local slang, with translations into standard Swahili and English. Warning: like slang everywhere, some of them are not polite! Some of the transaltions are mystifying, and some are hilarious if you can read all of the translations. Some pose a clear danger of unintentional hilarity for learners of Swahili, like 'kupumzika'. In textbook Swahili, it is an innocent word meaning 'to rest'. Apparently in the slang, it means to fart. Oh, my!