Hippies of Elmina

African Arts, Summer, 2005 by Keith Nicklin, Jill Salmons

As you enter the Ghanaian fishing port of Elmina, between the pounding surf and the majestically looming St. George's Castle (built by the Portuguese in 1482) lies a huddle of clapboard kiosks mostly proffering petty goods and "small chop." Among these is the studio of Fante artist Donatus Archibald Acquandoh, a wiry, bearded man in his mid-fifties, universally known in Elmina and beyond as "Hippies" (Fig. 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The artist has painted the name "HIPARTS" on the the front of his studio, and he signs some of his works with this moniker. You will find him at his beach studio or in a spacious room with an open verandah on the upper story of his uncle's house in town, where he sometimes retires when his kiosk becomes overcrowded with friends and passers-by, many of them children.

We have never visited Hippies and found him idle, or even pausing to eat or drink. He seems to exist in a state of perpetual motion, working with quiet intensity and glittering eye, now fabricating a mask from papier-mache or wire mesh, then stitching a masquerade costume, sketching or putting the finishing touches to a painting, or instructing one of his apprentices in the finer details of screen-printing or signboard painting. Donatus Archibald Acquandoh is among the most hard-working, versatile, and accomplished West African artists whom we have had the privilege to meet.

Hippies hails from the small coastal town of Mumford, situated between Apam and Gomaa Dogu, east of Winneba in Ghana's Central Region. He was brought up in a poor Fante fishing family, and his father died when he was a boy. There was no-one to sponsor his higher education beyond his attendance at Ghana Art College in Accra, 1971-74. Hippies maintains that had his father not died "in time" (i.e., young) he would have proceeded to the Science and Technology College at Kumasi; he sometimes muses that had this been so, he himself might have become a lecturer in art. Today, however, he says, "I pay school fees to push my children. They will look after me in my old age." Two of Hippies' four children are budding artists: his fourteen-year-old son, Ken, and Todd, aged ten. Family artistic enterprise does not end here, as Hippies' wife, Agnes Atta Kobina, regularly assists her husband in sewing masquerade costumes, notably the cloth-covered foam rubber costumes that are the unique accomplishment of HIPARTS.

Hippies displayed his multimedia talent even at elementary school, where he eagerly engaged in weaving, modeling in clay, and painting. He admits that his main aim in attending college was simply to obtain a formal certificate in order to endorse his reputation. Reading between the lines of his own verbal account, although Hippies does seem to have perfected his drawing and painting in school, his involvement in textile design, screen printing, wood sculpture, and cement modeling seems to have been more as instructor than student.

Hippies adopted his nickname during the 1960s, when he and some classmates established correspondence with an American pop group of the same name, following a write-up about the group in a magazine which one of their fathers had brought back from the US. Today he is almost invariably to be seen sporting a "Hippies"-emblazoned t-shirt, screen-printed or hand-painted by himself.

Hippies established his seaside studio in Elmina in 1979, a rented property, well-situated to catch the attention of potential customers both local and tourist. He usually works in this breezy location, which, unfortunately, he cannot afford to connect to the electricity grid. This is a major drawback, as he often works at night. (In order to meet urgent commissions, Hippies often works for three days and nights at a stretch, taking only brief naps.) This is a further reason why Hippies also works at his uncle's downtown house--it is electrified. Uncle Moses is himself a semi-retired signboard painter and discotheque decorator, who in his younger days worked in neighboring Cote d'Ivoire.

Over the years, Hippies has had numerous apprentices, each of whom, a modicum of starter capital permitting, usually sets up on his own in due course. Apprentices are not paid regularly, but are given some "chop money" and the occasional handout when their master is recompensed for a sizeable commission. In 2000-2001, Hippies engaged three young men--Ebenezer, Joojo and Akopa--who assist in the making of screen-prints, the screen-printing process itself, costume-making, the fashioning of face masks from wire mesh, the preparation of papier-mache mixture, and odd jobs. Any work signed by Hippies is all his own work, as is the decorating and finishing of every mask. Hippies does not find it necessary to exhort his workers: He instructs by way of example.

Nowhere are Hippies' artistic skills better demonstrated than in the making of masks both in wire mesh and in papier-mache (Fig. 2). The following description is based upon our commissioning of the following performance characters, during the period October 2000 to January 2001: Crocodile, Bull, Monkey, Mammy Wata, Fine Lady, and Ugly Man. All these represent stock characters in the so-called Fancy Dress masquerades (Figs. 3-6) of many of the predominantly Fante towns of coastal Ghana. This collection is deposited at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.