From Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga's website: Sheet metal, known in Swahili as Mabati, is ubiquitous in Kenya. It is used mainly for roofing materials and walls. Sheet metal is particularly associated with Mabati Women’s Groups of the '60s. These grass roots groups organized in order to improve their communities, by upgrading the roofs of their homes using sheet metal. Naomi observed the success of their efforts, the harvesting of water from the new roofs and the consequent ageing of the material itself. She mirrors these effects in her own artistic process that weathers the surfaces of the materials. She occasionally adds dye to create color and more complex effects. The delicate transformations etched in metal by the effects of weathering, chance and time emphasize an ethereal, transient beauty. Mabati art is the continuum that connects Naomi and her generation to that earlier generation of Mabati women of the 1960’s. Her art brings attention to women in Kenya, and tells their stories of transformation, renewal, and empowerment. Her sculptures reflect, at one and the same time, both the Mabati's enduring functionality and its fragility. The fragile quality of materials is crucial to how Naomi’s work deals with loss and passage of time.