Visual Art – Los Angeles
My name is Joseph Effah and I go by Kofi. In my culture, Kofi is a name given to a male born on a Friday. I was born in 1984 in Berekum, a small town in Ghana that is about a 7 hour bus ride from the capital. My decision to use buttons evolved from an accident where I decided to include a single button in one of my acrylic paintings. This was in 2007 and since then, my main focus has been to develop my button art into pieces of all shapes and sizes. My biggest joy and fulfillment comes from working with these individual buttons and stitching them to reveal a harmonious conglomeration of texture, colors and sizes. I am influenced by my training in university, where I graduated with a degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in textiles and metal smithing. You can see this influence in the way that I treat the background in my pieces before I sew onto them. My hope is that people can connect with my process and also enjoy its beauty.