Published: June 01, 2008 12:19 am      

LOCKPORT: Art is critical for men of reason

LOCKPORT — ANGOLA VISITORS:

Artist from West African nation learns about chain saw art.

By Bill Wolcott

wolcottb@gnnewspaper.com

Antonio Tomas Ana, internationally known as Etona, visited the Market Street Art Center on Saturday to learn about chain saw sculpture.

Art Hilger of the Bear Market Studio gave a demonstration and handed his chain saw to the Angola artist. He barely got his sculpturing tool back about 90 minutes later.

“Give a man a chain saw and he’s off,” said Sally Bisher, the assistant executive director of Market Street Art. “Once you get an artist going, they’re in their own world.”

Etona visited Lockport with Patricio Batsikama of the western African nation and interpreter Louis V. Riggio of the State Department. Lockport was included in the tour, which included New York City, Washington, D.C. and Buffalo under the auspices of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

Hilger started work on the eagle made of white pine and Etona caught on quickly. Hilger explained, “He used a chain saw before to rough out his work. He never used it for detail and that’s what he’s using it for today.”

The artists used sign language to communicate. Hilger has been in business for seven years and offers everything from bears to buccaneers in his Bear Mountain Studio.

“You give a man a chain saw and what happens?” Hilger asked rhetorically. “He has a lot of fun, whether he’s doing artwork or cutting logs.”

Etona, who paints and also works in stone, was leaming. “The important thing is when you are doing art, you are making your own children,” he said. “Those children take along an image of what they are and, even when we pass on, those images those images remain.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s a recreation. Each piece that I make I feel that I’m born again.”

Etonism hopes to bring tolerance through art. Angola is just getting its footing after a 25-year-old civil war. As of 2001, the United Nations estimated that battles between the government party, the MPLA, the popular movement of the liberation of Angola and UNITA, the National Movement for the Liberation of Angola, claimed 1 million lives.

The war ended in 2002.

Etonism is a philosophy of tolerant reason. The term comes from “etona,” which means flag. Etona and Batsikama are working for tolerance among the people of Angola, a former colony of Portugal which was cut out of the Congo.

What was the essence of the Angolan culture? Etona asked.

“Once the war ended he was able to understand and expand the idea of Etonism, not only to Angola, but to the entirety of Africa,” Batsikama said.

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott

at 439-9222, ext. 6246.