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MOSSEL BAY NEWS & VIDEO - Mossel Bay resident Minda du Plessis has a BA with political science and history majors and she worked in national intelligence and human resources at Unisa.
The focus of her studies was African politics.
In 1996 she started painting on ceramic items as a stress reliever because her Unisa job was taxing. Now, she is a full-blown, multi-disciplinary artist, churning out pottery and fabric art and she also makes silver jewellery and does mosaic.
When quizzed about from whom she inherited her creativity and how a political science graduate and human resources practitioner could turn into a prolific creative, Minda shrugs and says: "I've no idea. My family are academically inclined." With regards to her former careers, she says: "That was work. Work is just work."
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She grew up in the town of Alice in the former Ciskei in the Eastern Cape, where her father was a professor of agriculture at the University of Fort Hare. Her mother was a nurse at the hospital there.
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Needle and thread
"There wasn't much career guidance in those days. There were no art subjects offered at school back then," Minda says. She surmises her skill with a needle and thread came from making clothes as a child. "There was only one clothes shop in town and it was probably a Pep."
Minda sews, embroiders and crochets extremely well. She is a scrap fabric collector. While on holiday in India, for example, she gathered scraps from tailors. She has furniture in her home, upholstered in her handmade fabric. She combines the different scraps, embroidery and crochet to create it. One of her wall hangings won her an award in a quilter's competition.
She produces fabric belts and handbags too.
Sometimes she includes snippets of writing in her pottery and textile artworks.
Although Minda could use mass produced, unglazed pottery bowls and plates for some of her works, she makes all her pottery from scratch, by hand. She prefers not to use her potter's wheel.
Minda bought her own kiln several years ago.
She enjoys being busy on her own, at home. "When people work together, they tend to copy one another. Everyone's art starts looking the same," she feels.
Still in pyjamas
"I jump into work early in the morning, when I'm still in my pyjamas," Minda muses. "I look like a nightmare."
She says she makes things that she likes. "I don't make them to sell. If they sell it is a bonus."
She admits she is "useless" at marketing herself. Her work is sold mainly from her property which includes a two-bedroom self-catering unit. Tourists who come to stay buy her work. The walls and surfaces are covered with her creations. In December an Indian family bought R18 000 worth of her artworks. She also sells her items at a popular, trendy restaurant in town. "People buy them off the walls." Minda is married and has a son and daughter in their twenties.
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