Ife Nii-Owoo was just 13 years old when she first stepped foot into Allens Lane Art Center in Mt. Airy. It was summer, and the family had just moved from North Wales to East Mt. Airy. She enrolled in Leeds Jr. High School, but it was the art center’s summer camp that changed the course of her life. 

“What I remember most was that I made this linoleum block print which I still have today, and that was the first time I felt that art students were taken seriously, and I wanted to take on art as a profession,” she told the Local in an interview last week. 

It’s a journey that has now come full circle, as a solo show of her explosively colorful work, titled “Ife Nii-Owoo: The Shape of My Heart,” will begin Saturday, Oct. 5, and continue through Saturday, Nov. 2, at Allens Lane Art Center, 601 W. Allens Lane in West Mt. Airy.

Nii-Owoo's work is characterized by vibrant colors and intricate compositions. She uses hand-painted and printed papers, photo transfers of family images, and markings of African writing scripts and symbolism to create layered, complex works of collage, painting, and mixed media sculptures. Her pieces evoke a range of emotions through saturated, rich colors and carefully balanced pictorial spaces.

“My work has evolved over the past 35 years from exploring printmaking, poster making, photography, graphic design and now painting and collage mixed/media,” Nii-Owoo said. “Whether my tools are a camera, photos, written words or paintbrush, the passion has been the same, to record our history, to interpret our own stories, to sing our praise of our heroes, to create images that make people feel empowered.” 

The artist credits her mother, Barbara Ruth Dore Nickens, for supporting her dreams. "She was a public art school teacher in both Baltimore and Philadelphia for more than 30 years," Nii-Owoo said. "She encouraged and paid for my sister and me to attend Allens Lane Art Center and introduced me to artists and art programs throughout the city."

After graduating from Germantown High School, Nii-Owoo went to Syracuse University, where she started her own research into African-American artists and African Art history because there was no such official course of study at the time. The Mt. Airy native was amazed to learn about the beautiful bronzes and terracotta sculptures from the ancient city of Ife, which means “love,” in Nigeria. 

Nii-Owoo's first trip to London was in 1972, as an exchange student during her junior year at Syracuse, where she was a fine art student majoring in printmaking. In London, she became involved with the London Poster Collective, which led her to choose graphic design "as my new vehicle of expression" and also changed her perspective on race and class.

While in London, she met other students and young people from Africa and the Caribbean, including members and leaders involved in African liberation movements in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique who would discuss politics at the local pub. It was there that she met Ghanaian filmmaker, Nii Kwate Owoo. The pair began a romantic and working relationship – and would eventually marry and have two sons. 

Born Dale Jenkins, the artist began changing her name during her teenage years. "The name has evolved since I was 16 as my life and identity as an artist have changed," she explained. Her first new name, Ife Ore, comes from the Yoruba people of Nigeria and means "something precious that's lost has been found."

"It was a gift from my first serious boyfriend when I was 17 before I left home to go to college," she said.

In 1977, she married Nii Kwate Owoo and moved to Ghana, West Africa. At this time, she adopted the name Nii Owoo, which comes from the Ga-Adangbe people, an ethnic group living in Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Owoo is Ga and means "One who wards off death." It is a large clan name in the Jamestown/Buokum/Osu district of Accra, and Nii Owoo means "Royal of the Owoo Family."

"I dropped Ore and took on the Nii Owoo family name," she said. "I married a Ghanaian and had two sons and wanted to keep the name as our family legacy."

Her current name is a merging of Nigerian and Ghanaian ancestry. "For me, Ife Nii-Owoo means 'love chases death away,'" she said. "The name is my identity as an artist, my evolution as a person and embracing my African heritage and the sacred act of renaming myself and telling my own narrative on how I want my story to be told."

In the 1980s, Nii-Owoo's life changed again. She became a single parent and left Ghana, determined to remain independent and continue her progressive work. "I began working as a graphic designer, teaching at art schools while continuing to find projects that allowed me to create social messages," she said. "I was now the head of the household, and my major focus was on how my art had to feed us."

It wasn’t a difficult transition. 

“I have been using words and images together all my life - from being a printmaker to a poster designer,” she said. 

And now, Nii-Owoo has lived for the past 25 years in Germantown in a housing cooperative whose mission is to provide affordable live-work spaces for artists. Her work has been included in shows at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Moore College of Art Gallery and many other venues. 

Ife Nii-Owoo also wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “A is for Africa: Looking at Africa Through the Alphabet” in the 1990s that is presently out of print. Her show at Allens Lane Art Center closes Nov. 2. For more information, visit allenslane.org. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.