Nike Davies Ogundaye is one of the most respected female artists who have made tremendous strides in visual arts, batiks and oil paintings. That some of her works decorate the White House, the seat of power in the United States of America, speaks volumes about her rating as an artist. She has won many awards from around the world, including Honorary Fellow, The Pan-African Circle of Artists and the Merit Award of Unparalleled Artistry. Reads one of the awards citations: 'Your handiwork continues to add beauty and elegance to the lives of many'.

N the year 2000, Mrs Nike Davies Okundaye was invited to Italy by the Italian government to teach Nigerian sex workers how to use their hands to engage in creative ventures. Most of the girls had complained to the Italian government that they left Nigeria in search of work. When Nike got to Italy, therefore, she taught them skills in craft making and some of them became self-reliant in no time.

There is hardly any important museum in the world that does not have Nike's work. She is an artist of many parts - she drums, directs plays, and paints. But she is most outstanding in paintings and designs of adire, bead works and batik. She was once described as an artist who used detailed and arresting batik images to chronicle her society's contradictory views towards women.

Born in 1951, Nike said she came from a village called Ogidi in Kogi State and was brought up by her great-grand mother and an aunt who was an artist. She tells the story of her humble beginning: "I come from a culturally-oriented background. I lost my mother at a very tender age. My grandmother took care of me until she died. The lot now fell on my great grandmother, the Iyalode of Ogidi, to raise me. Art runs in my family. My aunt, who also raised me, was an artist. My late mother was an artist, and my father was a trumpeter.

"As a child, there was no money to further my education. So, I started working at an early age to support myself. I started working with an Indian family in Kabba, Kogi State. Kabba is a bigger town than Ogidi. It was while I was working for this Indian family that I discovered my talent as a creative artist. I started making embroidery and paintings."

The Indian couple saw the talent in Nike and encouraged her to continue painting. She went on: "The Indian couple started selling my works to teachers, Rev. Sisters and Rev. Fathers who were living in the neighbourhood. It made me happy that they were buying my works and that I was making a living out it."

She said of her going to Osogbo, her meeting with Susan Wenger and the influence on her work as an artist: " I left Kabba village to stay with my aunt at Osogbo. In Osogbo, I learnt how to make adire and other crafts and met the famous Susane Wenger who had a great influence on my work."

For a woman who ended her education in primary six, she embraced art and her talent blossomed. Today, Nike's paintings sell for between N500,0000 to N2 million. In 1983, she opened an art centre known as Nike Centre for Art and Culture, world-renowned for craftsmanship in Osogbo. The centre has provided training for hundreds of aspiring young men and women. Teachers instruct students in sculpture, paintings, bead work, mosaic, batik, adire, applique, pen and ink paintings; quilting, drum making and dancing.

Apart from Osogbo, she also has another Centre in Abuja, which is fast becoming a must visit for any tourist going to the Federal Capital Territory. "Apart from the art centres, we also offer facilities for tourists from within and outside the country. We have a guest house (Nike Hill-Top Guest House) at Ogidi-Ijumu in my village. It is a beautiful place, where you can spend the day observing traditional artists and artisans at work.

"We provide accommodation for our guests who want to spend nights in Osogbo. We also take you on a trip to the home of Susan Wenger, the famous artist and high priestess of Osun Secret grove. At Nike Centre for Art and Culture, we have fused arts and tourism to give tourists the best of Nigerian culture.

"Tourists who come to Nigeria are not interested in five-star hotels. They have enough of that in their countries. They are interested in our culture, our way of life, our huts, our cultural dresses, how we live in our communities, our traditional ways of settling conflicts. They want to hear our moonlight stories. They want to see the African-ness in us. They want to eat with their fingers as we do. They want to watch our cultural dances, and listen to our talking drums. They want us to explain what the drums are saying. These are the things we are trying to achieve at the centre. We want to preserve our culture and our way of life."

The famous Nike is different from Mrs. Nike Davies Okundaye at home. At their home in Lekki Phase One, Lagos, the feeling from the gate is that the visitor is about to enter an unusual home. The wall of the fence has a touch of art designs. But it is inside the one storey building that houses the Nike Art Gallery that would take the breath away. Everywhere is a piece of artwork that is unique. From cloths, to oil paintings, carvings, beads, all sorts of art works that make the gallery very rich. She is very patient to explain the artworks that catches the fancy.

At home, Nike is a typical African mother, as she introduces the journalists who have come to see her to her husband. She calls him "Daddy" and is quick to add that Nigerians made every artwork in the gallery.

She explains how she works: "I work with various materials from cotton to silk. I begin by drawing a design on the fabric. The design is then traced, using melted wax applied with sponge brush on the fabric. The fabric is then dyed. More wax is applied to areas where the first colour is to be retained. The process is repeated until all the desired colours are added. Light colour is added first. The final colour is the blue-black of the indigo dye. What I call a 'signature colour' in adire and batik.

"Next, the cloth is boiled in large industrial drums, to melt away the wax. I work with both imported synthetic dyes and natural dyes derived from vegetables, flowers and tree bark. Though this wax-and-dip sequence is the basic technique, I vary the procedure. The wax-and-dip method has the disadvantage of limiting the artist to six or seven colours. In a method I call 'waxing before tracing,' I first wax the areas on the cloth where the colours will appear, then apply various dyes directly to the cloth. When the dye dries, more wax is applied to the dyed areas and the whole batik is dipped in indigo."

Nike says she can use as many as 20 different colours with this method and she often adopts it when she works with vegetable dyes. In the second variation - tracing before waxing - she paints the entire cloth before forming the design, using wax. The cloth is then dipped into indigo dye.

Nike's batiks vary in sizes, smaller pieces are two-by-three feet, and large-scale works are five-by-eight feet. Two other media Nike has employed, though less frequently used because they are labour intensive, are needle batik and embroidered wall hangings. In needle batik, the cloth is folded, stitched, and tied before dyeing so that when the threads are removed, figures are made.

There are some needle embroidery in Nike's gallery that were started more than a year ago but still have not been completed. She said some might take about two years to complete because they are hand-made.

Considering her background and where she is coming from, Nike says she does not want to see any young woman go through what she went through in her early life. "I want these girls to understand that they can make a living; a good living with their hands. They should come and join the centre and learn some crafts. Let them come and get trained. The training is free of charge, and accommodation is free. And after their training, I expose their works and products to the outside world.

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