[ man singing ] >> The reason I'm singing that song, basically, is to you.

You are my guest.

So you cannot really be fully an artist without a story.

You know that.

Everyone knows that.

I mean, every work that we do in this world, you have to see with some kind of a storyline.

>> JEFF DOUGLAS: Baba Wague Diakite, Wague to most, is from Mali, West Africa, where he spent his childhood tending sheep and listening to his grandmother's stories.

>> In the evenings, we will be exposed to stories all the time, from the elders of the compound.

My grandmother was a great storyteller, left a lot of influences with me.

We are taught that stories are truly based on our own existence, so therefore, our own behaviors are usually transformed into folktale to help us understand, you know, the right way of doing things.

>> When Wague left his village for school in the city, he found that pictures were often the common language.

A lot of children speak three, four languages before they go to school.

So the layer between us and new language, especially written new language, was more of the drawings than anything else.

I remember those days.

Teach us every word has to be drawn, simply because we have to understand it that way.

And the time came that I actually became so good at drawing that I was the main drawer for the entire school.

>> In 1984, Wague moved to Oregon, where he again turned to illustration to tell his stories.

His wife, sculptor Ronna Neuenschwander, urged him to try his hand at ceramics.

Clay quickly became his canvas.

>> She started teaching me just doing simple things, like slipcasting clay and attaching them together.

And I started doing that.

And I did so many of them, and people would just go nuts.

I had no idea why they want to buy them so fast myself, but a lot of them, everything I made sold, and that's when I got connected to the gallery.

>> Wague has illustrated two books for children and is working on his third.

Each illustration is a hand-painted tile.

My influence truly come from Africa.

I find the idea of using animals in storylines so fascinating that I really carry that on.

>> This bowl right here, I made these, this was for Ronna's birthday.

It's got symbols here that I personally heard over and over.

My grandmother tells stories about the serpent.

The serpent is a symbol of creation.

They say today, the world has high places, it has low places, and that is the movement of the serpent.

My grandfather always say, if you gather the sound of all birds together, you will find the secret of the creation.

And whether this is true or not, you know, I carry it with me.

>> You see in Wague's work his whimsical take on humans, their relationship to animals and the environment.

As one critic calls it, "A lyrical dance of our collective experience."

[ music plays ] >> I'm going to mix this with a little bit of red.

That's my favorite color, my favorite background color.

Make sure there's enough water in there.

So very lightly... very beautiful and creamy, mm-hm.

The best way to do your art is do it as it comes out of your head.

And then you have the original piece there.

I'm painting directly on a greenware.

So this piece that I'm painting on right now has not been fired.

Okay.

I don't know any other clay artist that does this.

But I do it simply because I will be able to scratch through my pieces if I want to.

>> This is my version of the chameleon and the rabbit.

And the chameleon is going to be giving a gift to the rabbit, basically.

The gift will be the pot.

And this is rabbit's walking stick.

So what I need to do now is start scratching.

Woo, this is the most exciting part of it.

But it's also the most critical part, because what happened is if you don't do it at the right moment, you're going to end up actually ruining the piece.

And since this is from a traditional folktale, "The Rabbit and the Chameleon," you have to make sure you add some extra details to it, you know?

Like making the rabbit ears very elegant.

To really appreciate art, you have to understand art.

You have to understand the individuals that make art.

I'm always identified as African artist, which I endorse very well for the sake of my father and my mother being African and myself being African.

But here, the way I look at it, I am a person first, you know?

And then I'm an African.

So therefore, if you see my art, what you see is the person I am first.

And maybe my art can guide you to where I come from.