Akudinobi: Periscoping the mind of a modern wood man

At first sight Tony George Chidi Akudinobi does not give the im­pression of a psychic in constant dialogue with the basic elements of his trade and art. As the engagement com­mences, though, one is bound to form the more rounded impression that he is just a modern man getting to terms with his dreams. But by the end of the heat­ed encounter, he does end up a rough-ended amalgam of the two. Much like the smile perpetually plastered on the once-cherubic visage of the late-fifty-something-year old affirms.
At Hammerhead Ethnika, Aba where he holds supreme as chief articulator and basic handyman, one beheld with wonder the utilitarian statements of the workaholic-cum-everything man. Basi­cally pieces of furniture, they are signifi­cantly supped-up with ancient, modern as well as postmodernist motifs bur­nished on its wood and cloth by the art­ist in him. Assuredly, they serve to rev up aspects of the past, present and fu­ture and man’s inexorable place in them.
Just like that the ace musician, poet and former hockey player would end up in the otherwise mundane world of interior decoration. It was more than a surprise to those that had known him in his secondary school days at Christ the King College Onitsha where his fa­ther was a senior science teacher. By his shenanigans at the time, his boon com­panions had nicknamed him Hippie af­ter such musical acts like Jimi Hendricks and some local stars. An attitude he more than lived up to in manner and shenan­igan too many. An avid guitarist he has since made the smooth transition to the keyboard; instruments he still plays with dexterity in his spare hours.
Any wonder then that he had started out as Hammerhead in 1986 upon relo­cation from Enugu where he had been otherwise engaged after graduation from the Marketing Department of the Insti­tute of Management and Technology (IMT) six years earlier. It took him spir­itual pilgrimages to such founts of Igbo beginnings like Nri, Aguleri and Igbouk­wu in search of self and bearing for the ‘ethnic’ aspect to manifest and take over. In this rather uncharted search for the ethereal he had happened on the reali­zation that Africa as a continent had a past that could never be allowed to fall into desuetude. The less so on account of the mere preachments of visiting wolves in sheep clothing that did not get a hang of what they met on arrival.
Thus his art has avowedly veered from mere decorative statements to symbols of a more internalised human-spirit liaison. All targeted in the general aid of human­ity as both physical objects and as mental abstracts with its embedded artistic in­scriptions. A firm believer in upholding the intimate links between the mundane and spiritual realms, he sees his work as starting from the procurement of his pri­mary raw material – wood.
“You cannot, for instance, fell a tree without first seeking its permission,” he explains when reminded about the ap­parent rudeness of the act to the tree. “There are ways they animate must in­teract with the inanimate to avoid a col­lision. This must be so as it is mostly the human as the higher being that will bear the brunt. In the Amazon, for in­stance, it has been found that there are more positive vibrations in the treed ar­eas. So much that as some trees get old­er they become portals to the spirits of the jungle.”
These higher energy levels, he stress­es, are akin to what is felt by the faithful during religious rituals; like during sac­rifice in traditional religion or transub­stantiation in the Catholic mass.
To the observation that his art has passed many transitions since he first applied adze to wood, he sees the pre­sent phase as only a beginning. Accord­ing to him, evolution is a continuous process that never even pauses though it would appear so to the human per­son. He sees the art and artistry of his works as a stream progressing to a des­tination ahead. He can only guess where it is headed with the gift of foresight, but arrived with enough dose of hindsight to make it still realistic.
Presently, his works – be it just a tra­ditional stool or a more complex settee – evokes a kind of duologue that even crosses the bridge between utility and flamboyance. Tasked as to whether all are just targeted at attracting a few more quid from the buyer, he replies with a demur­ring smile that answers the question bet­ter than the avowed reply: that if it had been about the trip to the bank, he would have stuck to just marketing other peo­ple’s products like he had learnt in school.