By Nanette Wiser
OH MY! OBA We asked our author pal Deb Carson about two fantastic rings she was wearing. “They are by Obayana Ajanaku, who I discovered at Florida CraftArt Festival. One is amethyst and the other garnet. I love the way they look together. Oba carves the entire ring all the way around, not just on the top. Back and sides look just as beautiful and intricate as the top. He told me his decorative carving is inspired by both his African American and Native American ancestry and heritage.”
Obayana’s one of a kind handcrafted sculptured jewelry is fabricated using mixed metals of sterling silver, 14k and 18k gold bimetals garnished with various stones, and mokume gane (wood grained metal). His journey as a jewelry creator began in 1973 as a way to “introduce the beauty of African art and culture to an American audience. Not having formal training as an artist, I was influenced in design by watching my grandmother make beautiful quilts out of old clothes when I was a boy in Texas.”
He creates one-of-a-kind design jewelry. “Most of my jewelry pieces reflect memories of my childhood growing up in a small Texas town. Having very few playmates I spent time making model planes and ships and watching my grandmother create beautiful quilts out of old discarded clothes. My work reflects that process of mixing various metals, textures and stones.”
WOOING WOOD Another Florida CraftArt exhibitor, John Mascoll, is a Safety Harbor artist born and raised in Barbados. John’s father was a shipwright and carpenter who provided his initial experience in woodworking – teaching John the beauty and workability of the material and how to use finely tuned woodworking tools to develop his skills.
Mascoll attended the University of the West Indies in Barbados and came to the U.S. on a track scholarship, earning a BA Physics and a BA Engineering and working as a construction engineer and manager before starting a new career in woodturning. In 1994, at Mainsail Art Festival, he exhibited work for the first time, winning an award, the first of many to come.
“Choosing wood as a creative medium was natural for me. My father taught me, as a young boy, that wood was one of the most addicting and user-friendly materials a craftsman or aspiring artist could work with. My earlier works explored the seemingly infinite variety of shapes and forms that allowed the natural beauty of the woof to be reflected aesthetically in the vessels created. I discovered that the natural beauty of the wood represented only one component of creative expression and was not the only criterion upon which I could base my work. I wanted to create vessels with a new spin.”
In the late 1980s, Mascoll started creating wood-turned art utilizing a lathe, inspired by things that have greatly influenced his thought processes–nature, travel, family, cultural diversity, the workmanship of things made, memories and experiences of the past, artists whose works he admired, and his engineering background.
