The Million-Petaled Flower of Being Here | Kwadwo Adae
The Million-Petaled Flower of Being Here | Kwadwo Adae
Kwadwo Adae at the Adae Fine Art Academy. Photo: J. Gleisner.
Inside the Adae Fine Art Academy, a small pastel drawing of a brown mouse hangs on the wall. This piece was the first work of art completed by Kwadwo Adae, the founder of the aforementioned school. “It’s always been in the studio as a reminder of how far I’ve come and where I’ve been,” said Adae.
From the age of seven, Adae took art lessons every Saturday morning for two hours with Bill Carney at Artist Garrett in Monroe, Connecticut. Here, he completed his first drawing and many others in an unconventional studio environment. Instead of one person teaching everyone the same thing, the students were allowed to choose what they wanted to make and which tools they wanted to use. Giving the students freedom allowed Carney to foster creativity and ideas, not just skills. Adae emulated this same structure when he opened his art school fourteen years ago.
Adae knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist, but his parents, both Ghanaian immigrants, encouraged him to study subjects they considered more practical. He double-majored in public health and Asian history at the University of Rochester, making art on the side. After school, Adae worked as a customer service representative for a health insurance company in the Hartford area. For nearly two years, he fielded customer complaints and answered questions over the phone. He had intended to use his generous salary to chip away at his sizeable school debt, but Adae grew miserable. He gave his two weeks’ notice without another prospect lined up.
Adae in front of his Women’s Empowerment Mural. Courtesy of the artist.
Thanks to a shortage of art teachers within the New Haven Public School system, Adae was not unemployed for long. Within a few weeks, he was offered jobs at three different schools. He began teaching at Davis Street Magnet School, working with pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students. The next year, he transferred to Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School, which offered a slight raise in pay, but the salary was still meager. Adae knew his life as a part-time educator was unsustainable.
Around this time, Adae applied and was accepted to the painting program at New York University. He stayed in New Haven, opting to commute to Manhattan because his partner at the time was expecting their first son, born two months into his graduate studies. Adae welcomed his second son as he was concluding the program, bookending his Master of Arts degree with the births of his two children.
Kwadwo Adae, Number XXIX (2008). Painting on canvas, 36 by 36 inches.
Outside of school, Adae applied to teach at the college level, but he was dismayed when he did not receive any promising offers. With the continued rejection, he began to wonder why he was seeking permission to teach art when he already had experience. Also, he had ambition. In 2005, he decided to create his own school on the second floor of a building on Chapel Street and purchased several easels from an art store that was going out of business in New Haven. Adae wrote a press release for the grand opening and accepted six students into his first class.
From the beginning, Adae was committed to bringing art to the community, especially people who might not be able to attend his school for one reason or another. “I really feel that art is a language,” he said. “If people don’t have access to that language and want it, then I owe it to them to make it accessible.” He began working with the Parents’ Foundation for Transitional Living, a residential community for people with mental illnesses, thirteen years ago, and he has offered watercolor painting classes at the Linden at Woodbridge, an assisted living facility for patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia, for about twelve years.
More recently, Adae began teaching meditation, which entered his life almost by chance. Breathing Room Yoga Center was on the same floor as his school’s first location. Healing from a divorce, Adae chose meditation as an alternative for other types of therapy. “I see so many parallels between meditation and painting,” he explained, “how a person has to use attention and focus to manifest something.” As his passion for both meditation and yoga has grown, these practices provided the impetus for murals painted by Adae alongside teams of volunteers (often school children) in India, Guatemala, and Ecuador over the past three years.
“Failure has been my best teacher,” reflected Adae, now in his early 40s. There have been setbacks and heaps of rejection, he explained, but Adae learned to seek out environments where his work would be welcomed. The Adae Fine Art Academy moved into a new location on State Street at the beginning of the summer and continues to be a supportive place for young artists. Traveling the world or teaching at home, Adae remains devoted to bringing art to the masses.
All of Adae’s quotes are from a conversation with the author at The Adae Fine Art Academy home in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut on August 6, 2019. Read more about this commissioned project here.
