This summer has been a wonderfully active and memorable summer for Kwasi Asare to promote and share his Kente cloth weaving! For the weekend of July 7th, 8th and 9th Kwasi traveled to Denver, Colorado for his first ever appearance at the Colorado Black Arts Festival. Kwasi he set up his traditional loom in an artist booth, alongside displays of his various hand-woven Kente products – including Kente shirts, shawls, stoles, bow ties and neck ties and bookmarks. Kwasi also included a few of his large Kente art pieces. The weather for that weekend was almost perfect, with beautiful sunny blue skies and temperatures in the mid 80s and low 90s. The Black Arts Festival drew more than 100,000 visitors. Festival goers loved seeing Kwasi at work with his loom – it gave visitors an immediate and visceral sense of the intricacy of Kente weaving and why Kente is the most beautiful and prized fabric from the Motherland of Africa.
Despite his initial reluctance to deal with the encumbrances of transporting and setting up the loom, Kwasi was overwhelmed by the response – and sold his entire inventory! After the Festival Kwasi also did two special Kente weaving presentations at Brother Jeff’s Cultural Center in Five Points. Once again, the response was fantastic – people LOVE the opportunity to see Kwasi’s work on the large loom! The cultural education and interaction with the Kente weaving process is exciting and enlightening. There are important takeaways from this great Festival experience. First, there is a vast hunger among African Americans to understand the true origin, nature and culture of hand-woven Kente. Perhaps as much as 90 percent of the Kente that is displayed and sold in America are cloth dyed prints, mostly manufactured in China. However, once people have a chance to see the weaving process, they develop an intuitive understanding of the magnificence of hand-woven Kente. Secondly, we believe the market for authentic handwoven Kente is vastly underestimated. Kwasi took a trip up to the mountain restort town of Winter Park to visit the Winter Park Jazz Festival, where Maxwell was headlining a great lineup of R&B and jazz artists and it was a very positive experience! So in addition to the Colorado Black Arts Festival, Kwasi plans to participate in the Winter Park Jazz Festival next summer and perhaps in some other art festivals next year as well!
In the meantime, as the school year is beginning once again in August, Kwasi is back to his work as a mathematics teacher. Kwasi will continue to do special weaving workshops and demonstrations throughout the year, as time allows. On Saturday, July 22 – barely two weeks after being in Colorado, Kwasi put on a wonderful small loom weaving workshop for the Brentwood Arts Exchange in Maryland. As you can see from the photos below, people love working with the small looms – it is a great personal introduction to the craft of Kente weaving. Working with the small loom, one enters into meditative awareness of mind-body unity, Zen state of beauty and peacefulness. If you would like to organize a small loom workshop for your school, church or community organization, please don’t hesitate to email Kwasi at kwasister@gmail.com!
Kwasi Asare: Master Kente Weaver, Mathematician, African Sage & Teacher 