L'Atelier de Kalidou Kassé

Last week we had a guest speaker and on Monday we visited his workshop. I did not realize how well known Kalidou Kassé is (he's friends with the presidents, heads of state, and has had galleries all over the world). Most recently he is working on creating a workshop for young artists to come and work on their projects for an extended stay. His workshop is located in his former house, but now just serves as a workshop.

His specialty is tapestries. He explained the process which takes around 3 months. He first paints the image, then transfers it to a large sheet of paper (the actual size of the tapestry). Then he decides on the thread color (sometimes adding brown thread to change the shade of the string).

Then on the top floor of the workshop, there is a giant loom. He uses the grid to make the tapestry, but because he threads it from the back, he actually has to do it mirrored. To check his progress he uses a mirror. At the beginning of his career, he did the whole process, but now he hires his former teachers to make parts of each tapestry.

On the bottom floor of the workshop is a new art gallery featuring several artists.