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Furnishings & DecorOne name can lead to many artists
LIKE all artists worth their salt, Stallon Sylvester Chaka is and shall henceforth be known by one name only: Stallon. His Southern Sun business card gives just this name with the job title below: Resident Artist.
Unlike so many artists, Stallon is entirely without ego. Far from prepared to starve to maintain the purity of his work, swooning at the horror of an old-fashioned sketch artist turning out portraits pencilled from photographs, Stallon has a vision that would turn this one man, one-desk outfit into a hub of young artists in Southern Sun hotels around the country and become a flourishing business.
Born in Zimbabwe, he has been in SA for eight years. His father was a soldier and his brothers all played soccer, one full-time for the Zimbabwe air force — which meant he got a salary from the military for playing football.
For a long time, that was Stallon’s goal too, but he only made the B team, which doesn’t warrant a wage. What’s more, and this isn’t a line I hear a lot: “I could make more money from my art.”
On a busy street in Harare at 21 he was drawing up to seven portraits a day. “In the air force, when the football team won a game they’d get a bonus of Z300 — I could make that in less than a day!”
In the foyer of Southern Sun Grayston, in the heart of Sandton’s CBD where Bafana Bafana stayed during the Fifa World Cup, Stallon sits behind a leather-topped desk that the hotel’s GM, Myan Moodley, had designed especially for him.
The desk has two elegantly framed A4 sketches, unlike the 13 or so Stallon used to have on his table in any number of markets and malls in Johannesburg.
“That was Myan’s idea. This looks a lot less cluttered.”
As a kid he’d always enjoyed sketching — “mostly animals from pictures” — with pencils supplied by his father, although he opted out of art at school. Always looking to expand, Stallon moved to the more upmarket suburb of Borrowdale in Harare at weekends as it had a flea market. That way he could sketch seven days a week, a habit he has never relinquished.
The air force also took him on as its personal trainer, which afforded him accommodation at the gym. At the same time, as one does, he got into boxing and bodybuilding (a broken knuckle on his right hand has yet to interfere with his work) and was hired as a bouncer at a nightclub. It’s that timeless story of artist by day, bouncer by night and putting the military through its paces in place of eating and sleeping.
“I enjoy drawing more than resting,” says Stallon. His day starts at about 8am and ends at 7pm at Southern Sun Grayston; he’s planning to work at Nelson Mandela Square at weekends soon. Moodley thinks it’s a good idea too, and is keen to do evening work in a restaurant there. In restaurants, “the people are relaxed and you can work whatever the weather”.
Stallon is used to being “resident”; he tends to move only so he may settle again. Barber’s department store in Harare used him as its in-house sketch artist, largely because his “product was the easiest to sell and sell quickly”.
As things started going pear shaped in Zimbabwe, something that still saddens Stallon whose family remain there, he left for Joburg with a sketch of actor Sello Maake Ka-Ncube, drawn from a magazine. It would be his “in” to Joburg’s art world. But an overfilled trailer managed to offload Stallon’s bag, and the sketch with it, en route.
No problem. He stayed with a cousin and immediately set himself up at Park Station.
He was charging R200 for a black and white A4 sketch — a lot of money for most South Africans — but was constantly busy and constantly being told to up his prices.
Always hungry for more places and new faces, he moved to Bruma, where he joined forces with the lady running the framing shop; he tried Rosebank market but “the weather was always an issue as they put me outside”; then there was Brightwater Commons in Randburg during the week and Northgate at weekends; then he tried Fourways Mall.
“They charged me R5000 for a week. I went for it and actually covered my costs, but didn’t make a profit.”
He moved over the road to Fourways Crossing, and that’s where he met Moodley.
“Getting Stallon into the hotel wasn’t motivated by the World Cup,” says Moodley. “Our relationship started months ago and will continue long after the tournament ends.”
That said, Stallon has been busier than ever, producing 10 portraits a day with “20 on standby” as tourists rush in.
His price sheet for Star Pretty Portraits has a sliding scale from an A4 black and white portrait of a single face at R500 to an A1 size with six people in full colour at R11000.
He has done portraits of all the Bafana Bafana squad, as well as the coach, some of the pilots from airlines ferrying players to SA, most of the Mexican team and countless foreign visitors.
“SA really is a rainbow nation,” says Stallon. “Which is great because I don’t only want to work with one ‘colour’. But I have an album of sketches of all types of people. People can be sensitive if they don’t see someone like themselves.”
He’s an internationalist who will sketch anyone, and quickly.
Moodley, he says, is making him challenge himself more than ever.
He arranged for Stallon to make a single work of all 34 members of the Sharks rugby team and entourage. It was the first time he’d worked directly onto canvas, and it was the first time he’d done that many faces — overnight.
“Myan was panicking,” says Stallon, who is always calm and smiling. “I got the photos at 4pm. I bought everything I needed, and started at 6pm. We presented the canvas to the team at 10.30am the next day.”
Moodley, and Southern Sun in general — which supports many art initiatives, including beading workshops, in its foyers around the country — is keen to promote local artists and create a showcase for their work within the hotels. Moodley will use Stallon to help source young artists for whom he will provide the hotel’s banqueting space for weekend exhibitions, free of charge, and help with the events’ marketing.
Despite there being no formal contract with Southern Sun, Stallon doesn’t have plans to move on soon. Far from it.
As his stint at the Sandton hotel has already proved, his work is far from desk-bound. People from around the world are sending photos to his cellphone; Stallon then does the sketch and sends a photo of it back. The client is happy, transfers the money electronically and the original is sent by post.
He’s gone international. Domestically, he has an extraordinarily generous, modern yet simultaneously old model for his art-cum-trade.
“I wouldn’t mind working in about 10 hotels in the group around the country. In each hotel there will be young local artists — they must be South African — with a set-up similar to mine.
“They can send me the photos and I will do the outline, I can do about 100 outlines a day, then I’ll send it back and they can do the rest.”
And there we have it; using the renaissance model of a master creating the sketched outline to be filled in by apprentices under his watch, turned modern art business.
“I would expect Southern Sun to get something from it if this happens. It would be a legitimate business, not a favour. I don’t want anything like that.”
chancek@bdfm.co.za
In the air force, when the football team won a game they’d get a bonus of Z300 — I could make that in less than a day!
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