About

My craft is meant to stand out and to be set apart from the walls of your house some artists want to blend in with your lifestyle or agree with you, not me I don’t do “art washing” but my craftwork isn’t too clean our minds about how we got here, No I am on the other hand want for the spectator to remember how much has been erased or excluded, so we have stopped asking why? or how did we get here? Instead of focusing on how much we need to escape the material reality that causes mental illness, emotional distress, and physical harm. My work centers people and brings balance to see a more improved way of life. Yes, my craft is meant to get down and dirty.

Nommo Kofi Diop

A hawk was most often seen as a symbol of strength, grace, power, and freedom As young child I started the Hawk Club that I was the only member because initiation meant running down city streets squawking like bird no one else did it and just laugh at me when I looked back and found I was the only one at the bottom of the hill, Cool Breeze if there’s a word that best describes me cool breeze believing that I could be wind. I wanted to see myself outside of the system. Nommo’s art resonates with struggle, culture, and people. Nommo’s paintbrush tells a story. Painting is my crafting of a story of African kinship and conceptual experiences — disruptive, visual imagery that is a paradigm shift of what each viewer accepts as reality —deeply connected to an inner standing of oneself.

My craft stays aware of the current and evolving complexities of the African identity with such color, motifs, design, and ideology my hands and mind become one with the earth and fire that burns within that why I need a Cool Breeze – an admirable – deserving the highest esteem and popular person – I will forever look forward in a creative way of expression. Nommo applies acrylic are fast, and not in between the lines but transforming one’s thought with new beginnings and endings blurring the line of what is perceived as real and our material reality and condition.

As a Craftsperson who paints, digital and traditional upwards for 40year, Nommo wants alternatives. To be seen as a voice and expression of the unseen, Unheard, and unspoken Our ancestors have been forgotten and trampled; there’s a legacy stolen and copied and pasted onto the world as if we have no body of work. Much of Diop’s messaging reflects the people as if speaking to our hearts, connecting to the weight of our souls. From books of sketches and loose lines to sharp color to hints of social justice, his art creates space in an artistic way to the questions, who am I? Am I really who I say I am? Am I all that I ought to be?

“ What we can’t imagine, can’t come to be “ –

~Bell Hooks

Craftperson

Greetings! I am a craftsperson named Nommo Kofi Diop when I think back over the years and ask why I became an craftsperson? My beloved and honorable mother Willie Jean Barnes inspired me, she was beautiful, persistent, and in awe. I tell stories with craft; I use pictures as words to explain the heritage of African people. Nommo’s worldview sees no kinship or possibilities or future for our people in a world that’s anti-African mother.

The craft of storytelling through craft is arduous, challenging, and rewarding. Social Justice craft takes deep contemplation, to tell important concepts and explore through craft, I must spend hours reading, working, and studying with kinfolk and learn to ask why we have evolved or created to be in the present state, Africa on the Move.com is the story of craft told self-expression through exposure.

The creation of life is a story as well as a form of craft, Industrial Maintaining.org is an epistemology painted, drawn, and envisioned through the mothers and people from the bottom looking up.

BIO

Nommo Kofi Diop a social crafter and collective healer

“I make politics central to the aesthetics of my craftworks if you are not viewing my works through politics then what is seen is never seen”

I am an artist named Nommo Kofi Diop when I think back over the years and ask why I became a crafter? My beloved and honorable mother Willie Jean Barnes inspired me, she was beautiful, persistent, and awe. I tell stories with craft; I use pictures as words to explain the heritage of African people. Nommo’s worldview sees no kinship or possibilities or future for our people in a world that’s anti-African mother.

The craft of storytelling through compelling community conscience. Social Justice is crafted with deep contemplation, to tell important concepts and explore through craft, I must spend hours reading, working, and studying with kinfolk and learn to ask why we have evolved or created to be in the present state, Africa on the Move.com is the story of African craft told self-expression through exposure.

The creation of life is a story as told with African concept and form is equivalent to craft is to art, Industrial Maintaining.org is an epistemology painted, drawn, and envisioned through the mothers and people from the bottom looking up.

At 65 in a juxtaposition with my early years, my experiences are reflective of my childhood again, embracing a new life with now the decades of memories as my guide that carry me forward, still in a new world with new encounters shaping all of images, feelings, and sensations. If one image defines this journey, one feeling or sensations illuminates my self-expression through exposure, not the cool breeze, not hawk or terrorist, the petty thief, or the part-time lover but the falcon that perched on the shoulders of Mother Africa.