The natural environment is the inspiration for Christiane’s art. It is also the source of food, medicines, dyes, and housing for the people living in Africa’s rural areas. Making sure that this environment is preserved, and the livelihoods of local people are improved, is a big part of Christiane’s commitment to Africa. The training in sculpture Christiane provides to local artists emphasises sustainable harvesting.
For every Christiane Stolhofer unique miniature sculpture you collect, a percentage of the proceeds helps develop the talent of a young Motswana artist through the work of the OAA — Okavango Artists Association. Learn more about the OAA’s promotion of local art through training, mentorship and exhibitions.
This past July, Botswana’s Department of Non-Formal Education ask me to train ten San wood carvers from Kacgae village, in the western Kalahari, and five beginners from Charles Hill and Ghanzi town. The learners arrived as a group at the Botswana’s Out of School Education Training campus in Maun, site of a gleaming glass and metal building surrounded by, as luck would have it, mopane woodland.
In September 2018 Botswana’s Ministry of Education, the Department of Non Formal Education invited me to New Xade in the Central Kalahari to run a workshop for San carvers. I met with the participants - 17 men and women - at the local school.
