Talking.
What I do for a living.
As an art historian, I talk for a living.
Politicians, lawyers, teachers and other professionals also make a living from talking.
But many people actually have to make something to earn a living.
Talking or making things, we all do something to put food on the table.
Exactly one year ago today, my father, the venerated Yoruba writer, Oladejo Okediji, joined the ancestors. His transition proved to me the truth in the saying that death is an illusion.
One does not die.
I still see him in the house,
discuss with him in my studio,
drink with him in my parlor,
dance with him at my parties,
just as I used to.
The visual character of the alphabetical design that I did for the Yoruba people is actually universal.Even those who are visually challenged can experience it in a tactile form as braille characters.
Once upon a time, a tick and a dog sat together on a green field.
Quickly, the tick buried itself inside the skin of the dog and began to suck the blood of the dog.
The dog, feeling dizzy from the loss of blood, wanted to remove the tick from its skin, but the tick invited the other ticks on the field to join in the blood-sucking feast.
In 1999, I boarded a plane from New York to Syracuse. It was in December, and the weather was freezing cold. I was happy that the weather forecast indicated it was not going to snow, though I knew that the temperature in Syracuse was going to be well below zero, even colder than the weather in New York where I boarded the plane.
I was going to the University of Syracuse for a job interview. The advertised job was going to almost double my salary, if I got it.
Gina sat on the floor by the doorstep waiting for us when we returned late to Benin City from Iludun. I didn’t she was sitting there until the headlamps lit up the spot where she was and Felicia said, “Hey, is that not Gina?”
It had been a long day spent mostly on the road and it took me a minute to adjust my mind to what was happening. I was exhausted from hours of driving on rough roads to and fro Iludun, Mama Rufus’s place.
The Àkòdì Orisa artists did not know how to design textiles when they joined the center.
So, the first thing they did was to produce their own uniforms. We took them through the process of designing and making their uniforms, as the picture here shows