Joseph Manana was born in 1964 near Weenen, and spent his childhood in the country before moving to live in KwaMashu, Durban. He was introduced to the Community Arts Workshop in the late 1980s, and it was all he needed to refine his talent into a series of paintings which quickly earned him the reputation of being one of KwaZulu-Natal's most exciting young artists.
Township by Joseph Manana 1991In 1987 he won the annual prize for the Community Art Workshop's best student. His work started appearing in a range of exhibitions in the early 1990s, including the African Art Centre exhibition at Natal Technikon, Vulamehlo - Open Eye, and the 1991 Natal Biennial, where he won an award. Manana is presently self employed as a signwriter, and works as a painter.
School Boy Leaving by Joseph Manana
Terry-Anne Stevenson
In August 1990, the Art Centre was approached by the Valley Trust, which asked for assistance with a proposal to provide training and materials for youth art and design groups in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Terry-Anne Stevenson was interviewed, and she was subsequently involved in introducing mural painting to the Valley Trust.
Terry-Anne Stevenson had joined the staff of the African Art Centre in May 1967, with art training from the then Natal Technical College. With wide experience working in Ireland with country people, she was able to give advice to artists and crafts people who had no formal training.
Puring the nearly four years she was with the Centre she formed a particular rapport with young artists.
She also coordinated three important exhibitions on behalf of the Art Centre - in particular Vulamehlo.
While at the Centre, Stevenson made a valuable photographic record of artists and their work. She left the Centre at the end of 1990, and has subsequently been involved with Thami Jali in community mural painting.
Among her projects have been paintings on the old prison wails In Ordinance Road, the Valley Trust Community Centre, rural hospitals and, more recently, a station In Umlazi. In 1993 she set up, with Use Mikula, Community Rural Projects, a trust which accesses funds from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to paint murals on schools in KwaZulu-Natal. The trust aims to take art into the streets, and to people.
