FRANCISTOWN: A 47-year-old Tonota native, Tebogo Abotseng was inspired by her late grandmother to enhance her creativity in fashion and fabrics through beadwork.

In an interview with Arts & Culture, Abotseng said growing up, she always adored her late grandmother’s devotion to needle work and dressmaking. “My granny was a dressmaker and while designing garments and doing some needlework, I used to just sit by and be her needle assistant girl by always threading the sewing machine.

Slowly after watching her do magic, I started helping out doing some pattern cuttings,” she added. The self-taught artist also said she used to collect her late grandmother’s cut-offs materials to make patches using thorns as an improvised needle for sewing.

Growing up she started making dolls using old clothes, she added. “In 2015, I started making patchwork handbags and wall hangings. In 2019, I fell in love with beadwork art. Ever since exploring creativity using beads, I then used them to make jewellery, jewellery boxes and decorating hats,” said the talented Abotseng.

The single mother of three explained that she chose to do some beadwork art so that her work can be different from one just made from using ordinary painting and drawing. Abotseng believes that she is amongst the first people nationwide to do beadwork.

She further indicated that due to her curiosity in exploring art, in February this year she came up with a brilliant idea of combining patchwork and beadwork into one artifact. According to the beadwork artist, the idea was out of this world and received massive love from the art lovers.

She said that as Africans it is of great importance that they take pride in their culture by using handmade beadwork jewellery to showcase their originality. Therefore, she said her inspirations come from telling African stories as a way of preserving their decorated culture.

She uses beads, canvas, wool, velvet fabric for couches upholstery in order to come up with extraordinary artworks. The creative Abotseng shared that she also uses cotton lining and Ankara for decorating in some of her artworks. She described the African Queen artwork as her favourite, simply because it is the very first piece of beadwork art she has created.

“When coming up with the masterpiece, I didn’t know what I was doing but had a beautiful picture of an African woman in my mind. At the end the artwork came up beautifully.

The portrait describes a queen mother and that piece of art gave me the strength to produce more,” added Abotseng. Abotseng was one of the exhibitors at the Francistown Arts Meeting, which was a four-day art exhibition including a workshop and therapeutic art session.