A Hundred Years in South Africa
In the series A Hundred Years in South Africa colonial and African culture meld figuratively on the surface of a beaded apron, representing the sentiments of a Johannesburg native, who spoke about how intimately entangled the two cultures were in her childhood. "Like most white South Africans, I was raised in part by an African nanny. This Pepetu, a beaded apron made by a Ndebele tribal woman for her initiation ceremony, represents the rich texture of African life for me."
A pictograph of the home the Ndebele woman imagines she will inhabit after marriage, the apron - reconfigured - binds The African Notebook and frames The Cycle House: L.K. Hurwitz and Son Ltd. Here, a wire bicycle sculpted by an African youngster, casts a shadow across a sandy brown surface where a turn of the century German wedding picture depicting L.K. Hurwitz and his wife crisscrosses with their son's South African passport. The countenance of an idyllic, colonial schoolgirl - beaded headdress and all - shines from the cover of The African Notebook, her visage fusing with that of a mid-twentieth century regional map. White beads from the tribal apron emerge through the multi-layered surface.
After A Hundreds Years in South Africa, The African Notebook is closed. Roma, the schoolgirl, has grown up and married John, the son of L.K. Hurwitz. In their senior years, they watch, as their granddaughter, the Johannesburg native, plants new continental roots for the Hurwitz clan. She leaves a country and people deeply entrenched in her soul, yet a political system of apartheid too "repressive and odious" to allow her to remain in her native land.