Though on crutches, Ibadan-based Mufutau Adewale Balogun is a bead artist genius, whose works adorn galleries and living rooms of kings, captains of industries and political gladiators. But it wasn’t a height attained on a platter of gold, as Balogun, whose first dream was to become a medical doctor, took Dorcas Egede through his journey of life.
WHEN the reporter put a call through to Mufutau Adewale Balogun in Ibadan to book for an interview appointment, his voice rang so melodiously, she wondered if that was his usual manner of speaking. She was to understand the reason behind that ringing voice, days later, when she finally met him in his residence in Ibadan.
Balogun, 47, is dark-complexioned and of average height. But for the disability in his leg, he would be slightly taller. With crutches in hand, he alighted from the driver’s seat of his vehicle and hobbled towards this reporter, supported by the crutches.
With broad smiles, hand stretched, Balogun greeted this reporter with a warm handshake, as he drove her to his ‘humble abode.’
Still trying to take in the scenic environment which was just in sync with the man’s peaceful demeanor, he began a most unusual introduction of himself. “I’m Mufutau Adewale Balogun; I’m proudly a handicap and I’m so comfortable being one.” This reporter laughed out of amusement than disbelief. He joined in the laughter and added very quickly, “I’m not saying this to excite myself, I’m truly happy I’m one.”
In response to this reporter’s ‘Are-you-for-real’ look, Balogun went on to explain: “Being physically challenged gives me an opportunity to have two audiences. As a physically challenged person, I can encourage the so called disabled. If I tell them they can make it and they see me making it, they believe me; but if you, an able-bodied, tries to encourage them, they may feel like, ‘You’re okay. After all, you don’t know what I’m going through.’ I, on the other hand, can convince them because we are going through the same thing. Then, if I tell the able bodied that they can move on, they think twice. They reckon that if I can move on with this condition, then they too can. This is the reason I’m comfortable with my physical challenge.”
Growing years
It’s one thing to be born with disability, and a completely different thing to become deformed owing to human errors. In Balogun’s case, his physical challenge was a result of injection wrongly administered. “My mum told me that when I was age three or four, a nurse mistakenly injected me on the nerve, and that’s how the whole thing started. It almost affected the two legs, but thank God for my parents, they spent a lot of money before they could restore one. I would have ended up in the wheel chair and that would have been another problem entirely.”
Maybe not having any memory of the time he could walk on both legs was one big blessing for Balogun, because when asked how easy it was for him to accept his reality and remain such a happy person, despite his condition, he responded, his smile even broader, “By the grace of God, I’m this kind of person that has a positive mindset. Right from when I was young, I so believe in myself. I believe nobody is better than me, no matter who they are. I believe that I can measure up, I can achieve anything. Though I may not do things same way as others, we will end up with the same result.”
Balogun recalls that he wasn’t able to take an upright position for the first three years after the incidence and as such crawled like an animal. This, he said affected his education, as he couldn’t go to school crawling. But at age six, little Balogun practically challenged his challenge. Things began to change drastically “when my younger brother was about being registered into primary school and I was not involved. I asked my mum why.”
His mum’s concern had been about who would be conveying him to school since he couldn’t walk. But Balogun would have none of that. If his brother or anyone else could go to school, then there was nothing stopping him.
When his mum saw his resolve, she promised to send him to a school for the disabled, and his brother, a regular school. But his reaction to this came as a shock to his mum. “Right at that age, I told her I couldn’t go to a school for the disabled because they’d treat me as a disabled and psychologically, I would start thinking as a disabled. I remember my response clearly. My mum was shocked.”
Speaking of his resolve not to be confined as a disabled, Balogun said, “Despite the fact that I couldn’t walk, I used to move around the neighbourhood a lot. I played football and I was a good goalkeeper that everyone wanted to keep the goalpost for them, because I was so fast in running after the ball on my knees. And I was always happy doing that.”
Firewood crutches
It is often said that where there is a will, there is a way. As soon as Balogun’s mind was made up about going to a regular school, things began to happen differently. “One fateful day,” he said, “there was a party on my street. They cooked with firewood and this local tripod stand. I went to where the bunch of firewood was stacked, picked two sticks from the stack and tried to lift myself from the ground, using them as support. Little by little, I rose to an upright position and I started moving slowly, supporting myself with the sticks. This was at age 6.”
That bold move changed everything.
Apart from the strong desire to go to school, Balogun said another reason he desired to stand upright was because “whenever my parents wanted to buy or sew clothes for me and my brother, they would get me knickers because when I crawled wearing trousers, it would tear from the knee down. I felt cheated. Why couldn’t I wear trousers when everyone else did? There was also the problem of not being able to wear shoes when all my siblings did. All these things triggered me to want to change my story.”
Expectedly, “when people saw me using the sticks, they encouraged my mum to ask a carpenter to make wooden crutches for me. He did. And that was how I started going to school. I was going barefooted at first, but after my primary education, I told myself I couldn’t go into secondary school not wearing shoes. So, I told my mum to get me sandals that had lace, so that when I tied it, it would hold the deformed smaller leg.”
Did he have any daunting challenges that weighed on him while growing up? He had “little, little challenges,” such as the hassle of getting on commercial buses and conductors being impatient with him because of his physical challenge, he admitted. “But as far as my physical challenge is concerned, I can’t see anything that has really weighed me down.”
Journey into the world of arts
Balogun noted that while in senior secondary school, he was a science student. He described himself as “a little brilliant,” and as such participated in competitions within and outside the school. His penchant for the arts was however soon to take over. “During our time, there’s what we called vocational subjects and we had to choose from Arts, Home Economics or Agricultural Science. I chose arts.”
He however insists that arts for him did not exactly start when he chose arts as a vocational subject in senior secondary school. He believes “it is inborn” and chose it because he already had a leaning towards it. “I drew my first portrait when I was six. I drew my mum’s portrait and it was okay.”
Moreover, he recalled that he loved drawing a lot when he was younger. “I loved drawing a lot. And after drawing, I would use my sisters’ makeup kit (lipstick, cortex, eye pencil and the rest) to do the painting. But you know what we call beating? I was beaten so much. But that didn’t deter me, because the very next day, I would go back to it again,” he said, amidst hearty laughter.
But as it is with any talent that is left untapped, Balogun soon got distracted. “On discovering that I was a little brilliant, I decided that I wanted to be a medical doctor. In fact, I remember drawing the kind of hospital I wanted to own while in secondary school. I studied a lot just to meet up, but most of the time, they seized my (WAEC) result.”
Five years out of secondary school and no admission into a higher institution to study medicine, Balogun was counseled by an older friend to try and brush up his drawing skills, since that came naturally to him. Even then, he only agreed to pick a form to study Fine Arts in Yaba College of Technology, when the friend told him he could still study Medicine after his Fine Arts degree.
Today, Balogun looks back and says, “I am happy that God directed my path to become an artist. I thank Him that I am not a medical doctor, because if I were a medical doctor, I might have started using needles to draw on people’s body,” he said, laughing.
An uncommon medium
Asked why he settled for bead arts, of all art forms and branches, Balogun said, “Luckily for me, I met a British-Nigerian, Dr David H. Dale, who is a well-known artist. He is a very successful artist. He was invited to our school then to talk to us. When he saw me, he was highly impressed and asked how I would cope with the course in my condition because he knew how stressful art is. He asked if I could be his friend and I readily agreed.
“He was so kind to me. He even asked me to come and live with him. I was with him for some time. He paid my school fees, catered for me. He was the one doing bead art at the time. Most of us that were with him were just there, we couldn’t pick anything about bead art, because it was like the more you looked the less you saw. It was just like magic.”
Being the talented young man that he is, Balogun realised he could try his hands on bead art on leaving his benefactor. “When I left that place, I just felt I could do something with beads, and that’s how I started working on beads. I was not taught in school. I picked the idea from the man and was able to bring out my own style. It’s like using the same medium in different forms.”
No pain, no gain
How challenging was it when he started out and how did he scale through? This reporter wanted to know.
His response: “One thing about art is that passion matters a lot. If I were to be conscious of money, I would never be an artist. Most of the time, I worked with the intention of creating something that is not common, though I need money. What gives me excitement is not really the money per-se, but making the seemingly impossible, possible, because with beads, I can achieve anything I see.”
But for the passion that drives him, Balogun admits that at the beginning, “it was so challenging because you buy materials, take pain to sit and start arranging them one-by-one. At times, you may go hungry because you want to buy some packs of beads. It’s not exactly been easy but I’m only encouraged by the passion I have for the work. I make the impossible possible and I’m able to exhibit the talent God gave me. This is very encouraging.”
Another factor that makes the work really challenging, Balogun says, is that “the environment we find ourselves never encourages creativity. If you do something that’s worth a million Naira, somebody may approach you and say ‘Is it up to N200,000? Is it gold that you used in making it?’ But for people who appreciate artwork, it’s not the material they pay for, because they know that the beads on their own cannot come together and form this thing, somebody has to sit down and string these beads together. Such people pay for your effort, not the material.”
But Balogun has a way of looking on the bright side of life. Even though his work is underpriced, he says, “To move on, we let it go. Maybe someone wants to buy a portrait worth N500,000 for say N300,000, we allow them, with the hope of making their homes our gallery. Maybe someday, someone who will pay double what this other person paid will see the work in their living room and ask to know who made it. So, your living room is my gallery, because our works represent us wherever they may be found, as long as our names are on them.”
On how long it takes to work on a portrait, Balogun says, “Many things determine that; 1. Inspiration. 2. Clarity of the picture. Some pictures are so bad that you’d have to rack your brain to imagine what is there. 3. Flexibility of the work, what I mean by this is that it is easier to work on the portrait of someone wearing plain clothes unlike that of someone wearing Ankara prints. 4. The size too. But averagely, if I concentrate on doing the work alone, I can finish it within a month. I work for 12 hours daily. At that rate, I can finish the work within a week.”
Every artist does have a source of inspiration, so we asked, what’s Balogun’s source of inspiration? “God.” He says. Continuing, he adds, “I know some artists attach their inspiration to things like nature, but at the same time, if God does not interpret something to you, there is no inspiration. You may see, but if it’s not interpreted to you, it could be that the more you look the less you see.” But for him, when he sees colourful references, he’s “triggered to work.”
Balogun also says he gets challenged more by the most difficult tasks, because he will stop at nothing to ensure he achieves what his clients want. “Bead is hard, but the fabric on you is soft; so when I finish the work, you must feel the softness of the fabric on the work, even if it is water, the water must move when I’m done with the beads. Those difficult works trigger me. I want to achieve them.”
So far, so good
The challenges notwithstanding, Balogun says the journey so far has been rewarding, especially in terms of customer satisfaction and the kind of clients his works have continued to attract over the years.
Cataloging some works he’s done, Balogun said, “I did a portrait for Mimiko, the former governor of Ondo State, Babatunde Raji Fashola and his wife, Jimoh Ibrahim, Seyi Makinde in Ibadan here, Abiola Ajimobi, Honourable Olatoye Sugar. I did an art work for Chief Mike Adenuga, which First Bank ordered for him. My work is also with Sumonu, an honorable here in Ibadan. Some of my works are in the US, Canada and Germany. These are the ones I can remember for now.”
Balogun, who currently operates from Ibadan, plans to extend operations to Lagos soon. Asked his most memorable job ever, he says, “The Ooni of Ife’s portrait; and that is because I’m in love with that man. I just love him as a person. We only met once and I did the portrait before I met him. I’d followed him closely right from the time they were still trying to decide who will be Ooni. I was happy when he was the one that was chosen.
“So, I said let me make a portrait of him using beads, and I did. It took me three months plus because I worked 12 hours every day. He was so impressed when he saw it. He thought it was painting from a distance, but when he got closer, he was surprised. He asked, “Who did this?” When he asked that question, people around started shouting my name. He then approached the work and asked me if I did it. I told him it’s not painting but beads. He was even more surprised. Then he said, “Give me your price.” I told him I wasn’t selling it, but that I needed his assistance. He said that means I’d have to come and see him in the palace.”
Your work is painstaking. How do you string these beads together, tiny as they are? His delighted response was, “I take them one by one until I cover the whole wood in beads. And I enjoy doing it.”
Is Balogun doing anything to help physically challenged persons like him? “The greatest help anybody can offer is to help them discover themselves and realise that they are able. There’s nothing called disability, as long as you have a brain. Just discover yourself.
“The fact that you cannot use your hand does not mean that you cannot use your leg, and if you cannot use your leg, it does not mean that you cannot use your eyes. Forget about what you cannot use and make use of what you can use. We have five senses; if one is bad, use the remaining four to move on. Even if two are bad, use what’s left. It is unless the five senses are bad that you can say you’re disabled; as long as you have one or two of these sense organs still working, you’re not disabled. It’s not right calling anybody disabled.
“Secondly, I give them support in my own little way. I finance the ones I can finance to school or to learn a trade. If there’s any way I can assist them financially, I contribute my part. I befriend them and make them feel free to relate with me. I have also thought of starting a foundation, but it’s not easy doing it alone.
