Nike Davies-Okundaye is a Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

n batik

Batik

Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Azerbaijan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, and Singapore.Javanese traditional batik, especially from...

 designer, considered to be the foremost designer on the west coast of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

Davies-Okundaye was brought up amidst the traditional weaving and dying as practised in her home town of Ogidi

Ogidi (Kogi state)

Ogidi is a Yoruba town in Kogi State, Nigeria, known for its formations of igneous rock mountains, a traditional art industry, hospitality, valor and a deep tradition of self reliance.-Location and history:...

, Kogi State

Kogi State

Kogi state is found in the central region of Nigeria. It is popularly called the Confluence State because the confluence of River Niger and River Benue is at its capital, Lokoja, which is the first administrative capital of modern-day Nigeria....

, in North Central Nigeria, though she has become known for a modern approach to traditional themes in her colourful batik and paintings. Over the past twenty years she has given workshops on traditional Nigerian textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

s to audiences in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Finding that the traditional methods of weaving and dying that had been her original inspiration were fading in Nigeria, Davies set about launching a revival of this aspect of Nigerian culture, building art centres offering free courses for young Nigerians to learn traditional arts and crafts. Her son Olabayo Olaniyi, College of Santa Fe

College of Santa Fe

Santa Fe University of Art and Design is an institution of creative and performing arts based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The university offers programs in creative writing, theatre, art, graphic design, moving image arts , music, and photography, based on a liberal arts core curriculum...

 graduate, is also an artist. Nike has more than 100 students in Europe and America. She is also a philanthropist.

Published sources

A book about Davies was written by
Kim Marie Vaz, The Woman with the Artistic Brush: A Life History of Yoruba Batik Artist Nike Davies.

External links

• Official site
• Purefoy, Christian. "Nigeria's 'Mama Nike' empowers women through art." CNN
  CNN
  Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
  
  . April 12, 2011.