P R O F I L E:Richard Rawlins

Richard Rawlins is a Graphic Designer/Photographer/Artist/Creative Director, working in advertising for the last twenty years. Rawlins is the publisher of the online emagazine Draconian Switch (http://www.facebook.com/l/;artzpub.com).

His last showings were in 2007 for for the Radical Design Jeans Art Project where he exhibited his work ‘SPEAK UP’ and for 2009’s EROTIC ART WEEK with showings at multiple locations: CMB Annex Gallery showing of ‘OUT OF CONTEXT’ ( a book and video animation of ‘real life’ booty call text messages) and ‘NO ONE CARES’ acrylic on canvas board; he also showed ‘SPACE FOR RENT’, an installation at Brooklyn Bar.

He is currently exploring the writing of really bad spoken word poetry,(’This Ting This Ting’ written with Dave Williams and peformed by Indra Ramcharan for Erotic Art Week Spoken Word event)) as a medium of expression and is working on a book about his father and artist John Ambrose Kenwyn Rawlins’ work in miniatures (toys and doll furniture). He is and most importantly, the father of three beautiful girls.
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Q: Richard, I think that you set yourself apart from the average graphic designer in Trinidad with your projects. What compelled you to start doing project?

A:   I just felt that need to create stuff. I work in advertising,( an industry that’s rapidly changing) and the opportunities and fun I had when I was half my age as a designer, I don’t feel creatives today have. As a way of attempting to inspire the creatives that I worked with, I encouraged an environment in which we as a ‘collective’ could inspire each other and feed off each other. Art and design projects are the main way we do this. It’s good for my spirit feeding off this communal artistic energy.

   

Q:Did you meet with any resistance when you started doing them?

A: I don’t get resistance from anybody really for anything. My friends and colleagues say I’m “draconian” (lol). But seriously, I work at Collier Morrison & Belgrave and our agency has always been supportive of any creative project that I or any of our ‘collective’

has ever been involved in.

Q: Is business warming to your projects? If not,will collaborating be something that you would want to do in the future? 

A:    I don’t think business gets the whole ‘holistic’ view of ‘art and design’ for better living thing. But I have hope. It doesn’t deter me though from creating work, eventually someone will get it. Just look at the recent project on the paddock wall of the Savannah. We threw that in as part of a presentation to NCC for Carnival ’09 and they ran with it. Darren Cheewah just blew up on that wall. I have no problem with collaborating. Ultimately we don’t really ever do anything alone do we? Most of my projects have had some input from or been inspired by the conversations of my friends. Dave Williams for one always helps me bring perspective and value to whatever project I’m working on…and keeps me going when I want to just give it up.

 

Q:We were both at UWI over a month ago looking at student work, and your input was invaluable, what would you like to make students know about the business that you wish had been told to you when you were graduating? 

A: I guess I would tell them just do the work. ‘Creating’ feeds your ‘spirit’. Always have a project you are working on. Start a project…and make sure and finish the project. Then do more work. Don’t be a slacker.

Q:What are your views on creativity and creative concepts in Trinidad and Tobago in the field of design today?

A: Design for me in it’s purest state is simply the process of finding a solution to a problem or set of problems. After that it could possibly be looked at as the governing rules for how we create ‘work’…balance, contrast, enticement and a whole host of other things. For me design is a subset of creativity. Trinidad and Tobago needs more design. Not borrowed concepts and solutions. Not borrowed rhetoric that doesn’t apply, but rather creative solutions geared for our site specific problems. I am still waiting to see real solutions for living under the name of design in this country. 

Q:Who are you appreciating in design at the moment?

A: That’s easy Marlon Darbeau and Rodell Warner. They make ‘things’…and the things are ‘cool’.

 

Q: Do you have any favorite local designers and artist and who are they?

A: I call them the collective and it’s a long list…Tanya Marie Williams, Damian Libert,Darren Chewah,Dave Williams,Marilyn (Maro) Morrison,Nicole Noel, Indra Ramcharan, Terry Smith, Marlon Darbeau, Tracy J Hutchings, Rodell Warner, Brianna McCarthy, Christian Alexis, Darryn Boodan, Ivaek Archer, Anderson Mitchell and Ayodhya Ouditt.

I work with most of these people everyday. They are designers and architects and sound engineers and writers and people doing stuff. These are my tangible favourites. Then there are the people like you, Sean Leonard and Chris Cozier (Alice Yard) and Steve Ouditt who are chronicling and giving opportunity and encouragement to emerging artists. I am a fan of supporters of opportunity.

Q:  You clearly love illustration, and particularly color field painting. Tell me about your art influences.

A: I’m in love with the “pop culture of mass consumerism”. Hence my penchant for Warhol’s repeating images and garish colours. I’m a big comic fanboy as well so I love Licheinstein and all things inspired by scifi and comicdom. I love ‘POP’ and the emerging graffiti/sticker/street art movements out of Latin America and Europe. 

Q: What are you working on next?

A:    A piece called ‘A PACK OF ASS’ for next year’s Erotic Art Week. A book called SMALL MAN.. The world my father made (about father’s work and studio, he was an artist and model maker), and AHZKEWED PERSPECTIVEZ the beginnings of a single showing ( struggling with that one though).

 

Q: Erotica Week was a great idea. How did it come about, give me the rundown.How did it get done?Was it difficult to co-ordinate? How did the team manage?

A: Well the idea started with Chris Alexis who said why we don’t…and from there Dave Williams does what Dave Williams does and issued orders as to what we would be doing to make it happen. Over the course of the next six weeks Chris Alexis, Terry Smith, Dave, myself and the ‘COLLECTIVE’ with major support from Nisha Hosein of SOFT BOX Gallery would pull out all the stops towards making it a reality. As we said erotic call for entries, the work started coming. The contacted businesses said yes to our endeavour and we had galleries. Nine to be exact. We got all this goodwill. It was great.

At the center of it all was a this genie in a bottle called Chantal Clement, who made everything we needed to have happen a reality. I can’t remember now if it was easy or even hard. All I know is we got it done.

 

Q:What was the feedback like for Erotica Week? What would you keep and what would you do differently next time?

A: Pre-show feedback was mixed. Ambivalence to excitement over the prospect of it all.

Post show was great…mostly positive. No real negatives. I think people were surprised at the varying range of pieces in the show. For some it was the first time they had been exposed to installations and interactive pieces and they thought it so fantastic they kept coming back. For some it was their first art exhibition exposure ever. That in itself makes the project really worthwhile. As to what I would change…not much. Next time…more artists from across the region I guess…and more emerging artists talks.

 

Q. Draconian Switch is your zine project. How did you begin this one, and what have been some of the highlights of the magazine?

A:   Oh man that’s just a joy to produce. Marlon Darbeau and I had gone to a conference in St. Petersburg Florida, and we started talking about the need to do work outside of advertising and creating a vehicle by which emerging talent could be showcased. So then and there on the plane ride I decided to design the magazine. I started it on my way to the conference and finished it on my way back from the conference by laptop. The name came from the way I do things (as they always say about me). The rest is history.

 The highlights are plenty. We’ve had 15,000 downloads in the year that we’ve been doing this magazine that’s one, creating a the catalog for Chris Cozier’s showing of “Available in all Leading Stores” in Puerto Rico is another, having all these creative people (too many to name here) to work with regardless of agency affiliation or age or whatever is really just cool, and finally seeing the EROTIC ART WEEK issue of Draconian Switch hit 2664 downloads in just two days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

more “Best” chain letter

26.  You are unique but expendable; artists are a dime a dozen.

27. Be your own rock, galleries mean business.

28. Judgement is a deadly weapon: careful where you aim.

29. Always listen to your heart; you will never go wrong.

30. Don’t be in a big rush to show your work in a gallery.

31. Keep your light bright, and it will always be with you.

32. Trade with other artists, that way we enrich each other’s lives.

33. Learn to talk about your work, but not too much.

34. Do group shows, they put you in a context with your peers.

35. Work on paper a lot, you can fit a life’s work under your bed.

36. If your works sells, fine, if not, keep working, that’s the thing.

37. Don’t throw what gives you pleasure to the wolves.

38. Being an artist is never easy, but avoid celebrating struggle.

39. Disregard negative energy directed at your work.

40. What goes into your work is what gets passed on.

41. Have at least one non-art skill (with income) that you enjoy.

42. If art is experience, what is yours?

43. Be a full-time artist, work part-time jobs.

44. We are the only ones who have to care about what we are doing.

45. Be a human being first, artist second; art means soemthing.

46. Give yourself credit for your accomplishments.

47. Being a good artist is a question of character, not craft. (skill)

48. Our judgements are ALWAYS subjective; they only mirror us.

49. Be generous when viewing art in the artist’s presence.

50. Learn to take your own slides, natural light and Kodachrome.

P R O F I L E: AnnaLee Davis/ Barbados

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post-independence. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, run through the work, interweaving poetic sequences with more direct references to our lived realities.

~ Annalee Davis

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I met Ms. Davis a number of years ago, and was instantly struck by her  energy. I had first read about her in Caribbean Beat, where she  had a lithograph called ‘My friends say I am too white’. That work caused instant interest in what she was about, and I wanted to know more.

Her work came to Trinidad, with the show Lips, Sticks and Marks. This was quite a pivotal show, as the artists involved were all caribbean and women. I was able to meet her then. She produced a series of  installations that she had done on site at Fort St.Andres in Port-of-Spain. Where the viewer was  encorporated into the works. It was a complete experience of sensation of sight and sound.

Later, she showed in Trinidad again, at CCA7, she did an installation using a house and tree roots. I recall seeing it on the landing outside the building, before it was installed. She talked with me about the difficulty of contructing it. Later, I was on a workshop with her, and she used images of herself as every racial group for another of her installations. Ms.Davis’s visual pantheon includes self-portraiture, knotted bundles, houses and roots.

Her work is very visceral, as she explores from printmaking to film.

In 2001, I had the privilege to work with her on the workshop and working group for big River II. For this workshop , artists were encouraged  to use the environment.  For Ms.Davis’s works, she allowed the viewer to interact with her work, as she does with much of her installation. The viewer was encouraged to turn the object, this you could do by touching a  wooden lever on the side of the piece.

It was a challenging residency, but the work it produced for many of us, and the friendships it helped form, has lasted to today.

Getting to know her, I now have a sense of anticipation about what she produces.  She is very focused and driven about what she does, and her website is one of the best sites on an artists work that I have come across recently. http://www.annaleedavis.com/work/painting.html

Photo credits: Abigail Hadeed and Ronnie Carrington

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B  I  O  G  R  A  P  H  Y

Annalee Davis was born in Barbados in 1963.

She completed a BFA at the Maryland Institute, College of Art & Studio Art Centre International, Florence, Italy (1986) and an MFA at the Mason Gross School for the Arts, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1989).

Annalee lives and works in Barbados as a visual artist. She has exhibited her work throughout the Caribbean and internationally since 1990.

 

She has contributed to the regional art community through her work as a teacher, a co-founder of the artists’ union, Representing Artists and editor of their newsletter RA, coordinated the Lips, Sticks & Marks show – an exhibtion of seven Caribbean women artists, and participated in Triangle Arts Workshop in Jamaica, Trinidad and India, among other activities.

 

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

Did we ever really believe that this exploited, brilliantly gifted child would grow to old age? We shall never see the like again.

~ where were you when you heard the news will be asked for generations.

His impact on the music world shall never be forgotten. He was an original.

“Goodnight sweet prince, may angels take thee to thy rest.”

Next Post

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk inspires

 

A dear friend once told me, be careful of success. Success can actually blunt your instrument. Whether it is your voice, your thoughts , your athletic ability or whatever it is that you do well.

There was a poem I learnt as a child that goes roughly like this….

The centipede was happy quite,

until the frog for fun,

Said, Pray, which leg comes after which?”

This worked his mind to such a pitch,

He lay distracted in a ditch

Considering how to run!

This is the challenge of success, it comes unexpectedly, and for some, there is no body of work that is satisfactory in the mind. You do not know what it is about this particular thing that caught people’s eye?  Will doing another along these lines continue to attract, or will there be criticism? The likelihood is, both.

You can no more rely on the things people tell you in success, or in failure for that matter. The truth is normally down the middle.

Enjoy the doing, ignore everything else.

Quality, I tell you

 Can you and should you judge a painting by its frame? Of course not. Yet, you wonder what catches the eye of many who buy local work. How many people bother to look at the art on offer at a gallery before it is framed?

After looking at the short film made by Vivan Sunderam, (see post on Amrita Sher-Gil) I also viewed The Tate’s short interview with the Art Critic,  Nick Hackworth  discussing the work of Gustav Klimt.

One of the things that he said that struck me right away came at the end of the short. He mentioned that Klimt’s art lives on because of the standard of it.  It was also wonderful to see so much of the work of The Sessession Group. One of the  lofty moments  in 20th century art history.

My first memories of the work of Klimt was as a child. I remember looking at the work of Erte before coming upon Klimt, and for many years I assumed that Klimt was all about the decorative. It was not until I was a teenager that I began to read history of the early twentieth century and the work of Rennie MacIntosh, whose designs I was fanatical about  when I was fifteen. In researching him, I came upon Klimt again.

Klimt’s working with gold leaf, his language of curls and straitions on the canvas as his women look out, posed, hair glossy and flowing, velvet dresses jewelled…you cannot help but wonder about the man who created this work. What compelled him to this type of painting?

Mr. Hackworth mentions that Klimt was exciting for the times, and I agree that that still comes through today.

You never know what work shall keep its energy, power and interest? Yet, to me, certain things remain the same no matter what, and that is an artists’ strong sense of self through their work. This cannot be faked. So, as an artist, you may be influenced, you may copy a style, but ultimately, if you are in any way hesitant about what you are producing, it registers in the work at the end.

It might be said, but can’t awkwardness be the work? Certainly, and that sense that cannot really be named, is part of the success that makes an artist’s work matter in the long run.

So, you inevitably get back to the knowing that art reminds us that we do not know. It reminds us that it is an experience. Perhaps your experience may make up one of many types of similar ways of seeing over time, or perhaps you may be a lone wolf from the start, producing something not quite seen in that way before.

I think for many artists, striving for just that, is part of why they work Although the not seen must be drawn out from deep within. It is not pretty, it is gut wrenching and particularly hard for those who love them. But it must be done to reach anywhere the artist wants to go.

Ultimately the viewer must give work a serious look. What do you get from what you see. Is it like everything else that you see, or is it in some way different? That is the starting point of looking at something great.

Amrita Sher-Gil

I read about this Indian artist about two years ago in a British paper. I was very interested in her work, partly because women of the war years, WWI and WWII, represent to me a period  of great strength, resilience and moxy. By the age of  twenty - eight  Amrita Sher-Gil had lived a lifetime.  She was born to a Hungarian mother and Sikh father in Budapest in 1913. She  lived most of her childhood in Hungary, and moved to India in 1921. She was admitted to the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1929 at the age of sixteen.

 Her classical training and Indian heritage produced an artist of deep curiosity, charting the waters of the feminine and the arguably, feminist, as she recalled the resigned, lonely lives of women in India in her paintings. 

The article that I read about  her was weighted towards the titillating speculations of her sex life…one belief that she may have had an affair with the future prime minister of India,  Jawaharlal Nehru.

The film that you see here, made by her nephew, the artist, Vivan Sunderam should bring home the rightful regard for her work and not those moments in her life that pale next to what she was and could have been, had she lived longer.

I N T E R V I E W S : Lesley-Ann Noel

Q.You studied in South America. Tell me about that experience.

I often tell people my life started when I went to Brazil. I was suddenly ‘independent’, was forced to come out of my sister’s shadow, learn a new language, create a new social life, manage my own money, make independent decisions about my life, career etc. That experience is probably the most significant in my life and has made me who I am today. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Q. Your shop ChicShak has both industrial design, craft and fashion items from all over the world, but particularly from Africa and South America. Tell me about your store and how the idea came to start it?

Chic Shak started out of the fact that I was working as a design consultant with people from various parts of the word – at that time it was Dominica, Tanzania and Guyana, but I felt that I was wasn’t really helping significantly as I was just designing products and walking away. I felt I also needed to provide access to markets, and sell the products. By selling the products I would also be able to test the new designs. My friends also used to visit me and want to buy stuff from my home. When strangers also started to call me to come and see what I had, I decided it was time to open a store. I drove by the location at Jerningham Ave and so the For Rent sign at the same time I was thinking about moving out of home.

Q. You did a project for the National Museum with crafts people, identifying and acknowledging three key forms in the island. Can you elaborate on what it took to co-ordinate that, and the outcome?

I worked with 4 art forms –

screwpine,

vertiver,

clay

and

leather.

I was working on my M.Phil in Cultural Studies and was researching those groups. As part of the research I re-designed some of the people’s products. I maintain an informal working relationship with the leather worker. Unfortunately the clay artisan died soon after the study – a tragedy as he was very young. Ms. Governor the screw-pine straw artisan retired from production, and Milton the vertiver grass artisan continues his own production. I don’t think many of the results of that programme were long lasting, but I will try another intervention within the next few years.

Q. With all that you do, teaching at UWI, being a new mother, and your store, you are certainly busy. I am sure that there are people who think, how do you find the time?

I find the time because I have support. I hardly ever work on projects alone. I have developed a framework where I help people and they help me – because we both want to – I also treat people extremely well – I teach them everything I know, I don’t hide information or opportunities from them, pay them as well as possible etc., so people always want to come back and work on projects with me. It also works because I only work on projects that I want to do. I will slow down of course as Azure gets older, but it probably means that I will get more efficient support so that I slow down, but the work levels will remain the same.

Q. You clearly stand as an inspiration to others with your drive

and vision to get things done. Tell me about your work ethic.

Some of that I explained in the question above. I only work on projects that give me some measure of pleasure. I am actually a bit lazy at times, but if I’m working on stuff that I like I find the drive to finish. I also am able to motivate and mobilize other people to work hard.

Q. Have you ever collaborated with Anna Serrao? You both have contributed in a very big way to the arts and craft of the island.

Anna and I have collaborated on the Design Studio programme where we co-taught the programme for 2 years. I was a supplier for Anna’s store almost 20 years ago. We’ve never collaborated on work together. We have very different approaches even though we have similar stories – Anna is more of an artist and I’m more of a designer.

Q. Do you think enough is being done to get original, locally made products onto the market, and what are some of the things that you would like to see?

I will be greatly criticised for saying this but some of our crafts will die and maybe should die :- As they are simply not economically viable. The only industries that I really think we should focus on are probably the leather craft, soaps and oils (which is new) and possibly clay and ceramics – though I’m not even sure about the clay and ceramics. We don’t have enough design happening and without it ALL manufacturing will die.

Q. What are you working on now, and what do you want to do next?

For now I’m focusing on settling into the UWI programme at the end of the first year I’ll work on my projects again – though we’ll see if I can really do that work is constantly coming in.

I just finished a magazine for Caribbean Export, and I am working on other projects with / for them – at month end I’ll be giving a talk in the Bahamas on trends in the craft industry for Caribbean Export as well. I also have a project to finish with the Export Promotion Council of Kenya which was started in May this year. I’m a student in the ACEM (Arts and Cultural Enterprise Management) Diploma and should finish the thesis project in May 2009.

My students are working on a fundraising project with Guardian Holdings, and we will also be working on the Derek Walcott Festival with Dance, Theatre and Carnival Studies as an attempt to get the students to work on more projects together.

That’s all

Gallery: Lesley-Ann Noel

The chairs are from work I did with Liana Cane in Guyana - 1999.

http://chicshaklifestyle.blogspot.com/

Lesley-Ann Noel

Manzanare Design Solutions Ltd / Chic Shak Lifestyle

27 Jerningham Ave. Belmont Port of Spain

Trinidad & Tobago

1-868-625-4214

Chic Shak is now on Facebook

This is the group of Chic Shak Lifestyle. A small store with a global mission located in Port of Spain Trinidad. We buy and sell products from small producers all around the world. We also design and distribute some products wholesale in Trinidad and Tobago and in North America. Some of these products are produced in Trinidad, some in Africa. This group is used to keep in contact with our customers and friends

Other contacts-:

chicshaklifestyle@gmail.com

manzanare.design@gmail.com

http://www.chicshakwholesale.blogspot.com/

$20,000,000 work for the United Nations

Hundreds of shards of paint forming icicles dangle from the ceiling of the United Nations. This sculptural art piece is 16,000 square metres long and is the two year construction of phenominal Spanish artist Miguel Barcel. It was unveiled on November 18th at the United Nations in Switzerland. Fifty-One year old Mr. Barcelo has been compared to the other great Spanish painter, and the greatest painter of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso.
Mr. Barcelo’s premise for the work was to use one hundred tons of paint with pigments from all over the world. He worked with architects, engineers and even particle physics laboratories to develop a support for the elliptical dome of aluminum.
It is Mr. Barcelo’s most challenging project, and may be the most important of his career.

The work is naturally controversial by its costliness and location. But here is why. The government of Spain funded forty percent of the project with the rest coming from the private sector. The funding was diverted from another building project, one dealing with the human rights chamber, so there was ire about where it was going.
Mr. Barcelo likened his work to that of the art of the Paleolithic period. “The cave is a metaphor for the agora, the first meeting place of humans, the big African tree under which to sit to talk, and the only possible future: dialogue, human rights,” Barcelo said to Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Miguel Zugaza, director of the Museo del Prado, defined the artwork as ” Barcelo’s most important and the best public art project made by Spain in several decades.” He went on to say, “More than the Sistine Chapel, the dome is more like the ones by Manet and the one by Rothko, and above all the one in Altamira.”
At the inauguration of the unveiling of the ceiling, King Juan Carlos stated, “Nothing better than art as a universal message to express the values and beliefs that inspired the United Nations.”

The renovated Room XX with its ceiling painted by top contemporary Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo at the United Nations offices in Geneva, Switzerland.

The enthusiasm for art is keenly observed in all that I have read about this work. Some argue that the United Nations should have diverted funding to much more worthy causes. Others say that teaching a man to fish and teaching self sufficiency costs much more than twenty million dollars.
What is interesting is the look of the work itself. Imagine the brief, to create a monumental work on the scale of a Michelangelo. One that shall influence and encourage thoughts of peace, prosperity and fairness in a room where world leaders must connect.
Can swirling abstract colour produce such a lofty feeling?
Mr. Barcelo has used a reflective technique that makes his work appear one colour one moment and as you shift and move across the room to take in more of the work, the colour shifts with you. This signifies the complexity of the world.
An artist was able to attempt it, we shall see how this work shall reflect its intentions over the decades to come.

“On a day of immense heat in the middle of the Sahel desert, I recall with vivacity the mirage of an image of the world dripping toward the sky,” Barcelo says. “Trees, dunes, donkeys, multicolored beings flowing drop by drop.”

President Calmy-Rey fittingly pointed out in his speech: despite its diversity of appearances, the dome presents many pictorial similarities from any angle. Similarly, although the people of the world differ in color and perspective, we share some universal values.

Queen Rania rocks!

She is well educated and has movie star looks. Yet, she had a hard act to follow in the likes of her mother-in-law with equal charm, looks and education, Queen Noor and of course her late father-in-law, handsome, soft spoken King Hussein. Yet, Queen Rania has taken an unusual way to deal with Islamic issues for her country of Jordan and I think that she has to be admired for more than her looks.

Accepting the first ever YouTube Visionary Award via taped message, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah spoofed the famous Top 10 format from US comedian David Letterman to explain why she launched…

I N T E R V I E W S : Stuart Hahn

Q. You began your career in advertising and then shifted to
art making, tell me about your shift in perspective. Or did
a shift occur?

A. I’d been quietly working at home, away and apart from
advertising all the while I was employed, fulfilling, I
guess, a need to break away from much of the banality in
that field and also the need to lash out at the
establishment – as youngsters need to do. The work was
personal, sexual and private, I still haven’t shown all
of it. So it wasn’t difficult to move out of the
advertising “perspective” into my own
“perspective” – that had always been there and
going on. I should say, though, that despite the constraints
of the job – I mean the straitjacket of having to work to
the strict dictates and whims of creative directors (as the
job could really only entail, after all), I was able to gain
hugely in terms of technique and discipline – PATIENCE!
Nothing is a total waste if you apply yourself. Oh – and
the money wasn’t bad either!

Q. You told me that you went to boarding school in
Barbados. What was that experience like, particularly as it
related to your art learning?

A. That amounted to my only formal education. A wonderful
young teacher right out of art school in England who not
only took me and two other boys to A level before we even
sat our Os, but took us to art shows and various local
places of interest – chalky mount, a village potter society
perched on a hillside ridge where they did everything from
digging the clay to firing the pots in their homemade kilns
- the museum, dinner at her home with her husband who was
teaching at Lodge School a few miles away from Mapps.
I’ll never forget her.
She must have been pretty radical for her time – encouraged us
to experiment, so I did some paintings with grasses and leaves
and berries from the school compound – stuff like that.

Q. I remember when I first saw your work, I was a teenager
and I was so excited by it. ‘Ti Jean and his brothers.’

There were line drawings and coloured pencil drawings and
it was local, yet felt like something you could buy in New
York. Was that your first foray into publishing your
illustrations? And what was the process like?

A. Mostly, I remember trying desperately to NOT imitate Alf
Cadillo who was, and is still, the authentic folklorist of
the day and who so many people seemed to be falling in step
behind in outright imitation. My own models were more the
great turn of the century (20th century!) children’s
book illustrators – Racham, Dullac, Heath-Robinson,
Beardsley, Von Bayos – and the great graphic pieces of Mucha
- who I still revere – shamelessly!
The actual “process” was to try to amplify the
text in the sense of adding to it – not only what was
actually there, but what was also implied – a kind
expansiveness and liberty-taking that I always thought could
only enhance the full experience of the reader and of course
the child looking at the pictures as the reader read. Lots
of detail, too. I know there’s a school of thinking that
for children it should be honed down to the barest
essentials – and that’s fine for those who can make that
work for then – Maurice Sendak, for instance. But my own
memory of picture books is of pouring over the pictures and
picking out the little details – the faces in the bark of
the Racham trees, how the branches of the trees turn to
limbs and fingers, the faces peeping out of the shadows. And
I wanted to give it something romantically magical too, even
though our own folk lore is pretty straightforwardly lacking
in that, is more about frightening little children from
running out into the dark because the douens will kidnap
you! It was not easy – for me – to apply kind of delicacy -
as I saw it – to our own stories. Ti Jean and his Brothers
is NOT a “pleasant” story. But then children also
like to be frightened, too – love stories of things that
lurk in the dark, ready to jump out on you, so……

Q. You do a lot of mythology drawing, elaborate…

A. A natural progression from fairy and folk tales? Basically
stories to tell – narratives to fill out – but of course
much, much more than that. Childhood spent being read to
from the legends and myths of the world. Totally embedded
in my psyche. There was a time when I thought I had to
“creolize” these in order to make them
“relevant” to Trinidad. But that doesn’t seem
appropriate or necessary any more. Myths and legends exist
in their own reality and so I let the drawings evolve by a
kind of intuitive process – something like Rousseau, but of
course very,very different.

Q. How do you work? What informs your process?

A. Hmmmmmm….. Strangely enough sometimes even something by
the very fact its revultion can turn into obsession and
fascination. Indian Hindu miniatures for instance – at
first something so horrible, to me, about the rendering of
the hands and feet, the huge eyes, the total disinterest in
characterization – but I just couldn’t let go of it, and now
I’m doing my own version!
But you want something more specific. It’s all mostly from
literature. The Idea first – the thumbnails – then the
hard work of the actual research and the working up of the
full size picture, which often grows on itself.
Often, too, one picture will come form another, a kind of
self-canibalization.

Q. You did a series on the Kama Sutra, the sexual content
of your work must raise some reaction from the public…

A. You might think so, but I don’t hear any, not to my face,
anyway. Maybe YOU could tell me what the reaction is!
I can say that there is a difficulty with selling that
stuff – here. But that’s a whole other discussion!

Q. What are some of the challenges and triumphs of working
as you do?

A. Challenges? – a great friend said I was an anachronism,
that the stories I draw are just no longer known here and
have no resonance or relevance. They certainly used to be
part and parcel of general education, but no more. I’ve
literally attached explanatory stories to the work for
exhibition in the hope of addressing that challenge – but I
don’t think people read them – well, people don’t read, anyway
- period! And yet those ancient myths ARE relevant – think
Walcott’s Omeros! And of course the Ramayan is with us
in the very flesh every year in rural communities all over
the island.

Q. What do you wish people could know about your work?

A. I thought these questions would get EASIER!
I think I’d like them to know its THERE, see the WORK that
has gone into it – the MANNERS, as Leroi Clerk says! That
the joy of art is actually in the WORK of it. Hopefully that
that can be seen in at least a little of what I do.
Also that there are ways of seeing the world that are new
and different and equally relevant. But let me stop beating
about the bush here. What I’m saying is that gay men and
women should approach their work, their art, in fact can ONLY
approach it, if they are to be sincere and honest, from the
position of their own sexual orientation, and that has its
own value, its own truth. I’m tired of that being
invalidated – here! – by ignorance and intolerance and
prejudice. There are gay artists working here who are
hiding or at the very least side-stepping the fact of their
sexuality in their work – as if that could ever be hidden,
anyway. I wish they could have the honesty and courage to
come out of the closet and work WITH the conviction and
strength of their sexuality, see it in fact as their
greatest uniqueness. Do I have to remind anyone that the
greatest artists in the world (and no quibbling about it!),
Michelangelo and Da Vinci, were homosexuals?
And isn’t the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, among all else
that it is, a paean of love to the beauty of the male body
and psyche? And are we not ALL better for it?

Q. Having the opportunity, what would you like to do, or
have not done as yet?

A. Simple – work and more work – so long as God spare life!

Gallery: Stuart Hahn

Updates:Johnny Stollmeyer

Kindly check out Mr. Stollmeyer’s interview for added information on sustainability.

Keep Goals Not expectations

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it. – Samuel Butler

The international speculation about the value of contemporary art now, has been riveting to read. From the pages of Art News to Art Tactic, the news is at most, mixed.
One of the clear issues made, is that art has taken a bit longer to reflect the economic downturn because of the ‘global market’ phenomenon of super rich in places like India, China and Russia. These have been people who have bought into the art market in a big way. However it is now believed that the same market began to go soft as early as November 2007.
The real concern for many writers on art selling has been, what does this mean for the young and up and coming artist? One writer, Anders Petterson writing for the Art Newspaper recalled the mid nineteen-nineties when the heavyweights then, David Salle, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente and Julien Schnabel’s works were affected greatly. He said that these artists’ works took fifteen years for the market to right itself to the values they should be today. However with inflation, these works may still not be at their true value.
The good thing is that these ‘star’ artists are still very much around, still making interesting works and proving that they are in their profession for the long haul.
Also, in a bit of irony, do artists ever really get the value of their work? Not everyone has the where with all to repeat works the way Jeff Koons has. Most artists remain soberly skeptical to inflated prices I think, and for those who are not, it may be a cut and run attitude. Both ends of the spectrum exist together.
There are a few points that I would like to add to all of the speculations. Art is no different from any other attractive commodity. For many, the desire factor will always be high. It has always been easy to be wowed by the sale of Van Gogh, or even by a Chris Ofili. The artists at the very top are not a huge group, and artists coming out of China and India have indeed been extremely exciting. These people are not going to pack up and quit the profession. Certainly adjustments in costs will have to occur. Certainly many people may find that their personal stock has gone down somewhat. It is so easy to think of all of the art buying frenzy seen over the last few years, in the same vain as the dot.com bubble. However, the art market is still very viable.
I agree with many that at difficult times, the most important tactics come from art proving itself. This means more validation as to why something costs what it costs. This is why I have been writing for some time on the value of work in our own little market place. Art as investment is not meant to be a lose, lose situation. This year we saw the unprecedented decline of many speculated commodities. The world seemed to have forgotten that what goes up does come down.
In the last downturn I remember my art teachers at school being really annoyed by the number of bad bronze sculpture being made. At that time the value of bronze was guaranteed. The fact that this is a global issue shall encourage debate about value and purpose for the buyer. For the artist, it shall motivate from the inside more so than from the perceived tastes of the super rich.
Mankind does this binge, purge all the time. We are all just a bit shell shocked because the ride felt so wild, from the hedge fund multi-millionaires to the bloated auctioning of the works of Damien Hirst. The funny thing is that even if it takes several decades to see this kind of spending again, the world shall spend again. In local palance, we say, “Yuh cyah eat de money.” But you certainly can spend more wisely.

I N T E R V I E W: Susan Dayal

Q.You work with wire, and you create female forms. But you also do commercial work, tell me a bit about that straddling of lines between commercial and art practice. 

 

A. I have been working in wire for about 18 years. I started working in wire in my second year of art school. During that time, I was experimenting with the material and exploring ideas related to feminism, body image, fashion and Carnival. When I graduated and began to try to earn a living with this skill, I began to develop a range of smaller craft items. The first was the little wire angel Christmas tree decoration that I still make today.

SKILL 

      From the perspective of skill, making craftwork consistently for the past 15 years has been very good for me. The craftwork has provided a strong technical foundation for my artwork. It has without a doubt, provided me with many opportunities and challenges that have helped me to develop my technique and skill level. It has also made me a lighter, less serious person. When I make craft work, I am collaborating with the client and that process has made me more sociable and extroverted.

CONTENT

One disadvantage of devoting more time to craft than to art is that craft does not challenge me mentally and emotionally, the way my artwork does. Through my artwork, I am forced to face and express my shadow side, my introversion and my issues.

 

Q. You are a professional Yoga instructor, how does this inform your work?

A. I think that the process of becoming a yoga teacher has affected both the skill and content of my work. For my yoga teacher training course, I had to develop a daily breathing / meditation practice as well as a daily posture practice. The practice of breathing and postures breathing has influenced my work. It has made my focus more intense. The level of intricacy of my wirework has increased to the point where it is becoming more challenging to price the work because I spend so many hours on it.

 

My yoga practice has also influenced the content of my work. Through my earlier work, I wrestled with the issues surrounding women being stereotyped and victimized. Now I am more interested in a more positive perspective of femaleness.

 

Q. You went to India a few years ago, has that influenced your work?

A. India provided a sensory overload. I’ve spoken to my artist friends who have traveled there and I think that we would all agree that the place continues to have an effect on you many years after the visit.

 

What I noticed and what inspired and impressed me the most about India was the sense of creativity. First of all, creativity is seen as a divine gift. Musicians, dancers and would imagine that artisans as well regularly give thanks and praise to God and their gurus. Their level of workmanship and commitment to excellence is truly inspiring.

 

Q. You studied in Scotland, tell me a bit about your early art learning?

A. When I was deciding on which schools to apply to for my sculpture degree, I looked at a lot of different art schools. I looked at Chelsea School of Art, Central-St. Martins, Kingston University, Glasgow College of Art, Edinburgh College of Art and of course Dundee College of Art and Design. I liked the program at Dundee the best because the program was very well balanced between being structured and allowing students to discover their own voices. I think that a sculpture program has to be structured and directed to a large degree because there are so many processes to learn. However, it also needs to be flexible and accommodating, so that the students can learn how to apply these skills and make images that express their voices and visions.

 

I think that I received the kind of resource and instruction that I wanted. I was also allowed to be myself, to express my femaleness and Caribbean-ness in a very white, male space. Although I majored in Sculpture, I explored photography a lot too and I enjoyed that.

 

Q. You studied with Eddie Bowen and Steve Ouditt, what was that like for you?

A. That was a lot of fun. They were both young, in their mid-twenties and very vibrant teachers. They pushed us and encouraged us to explore and push limits. I loved that. They introduced us to other artists like Jackie Hinkson, Shastri Maharaj, Francisco Cabral and Anna Serrao. As teachers, they supported our growth very well.

 

Q. You did a group show with Irenee Shaw and other regional female artists, tell me about the experience, and don’t you think that we need to have another show like that very soon.

A. Lips Sticks and Marks came about when Irenee had a solo show at CCA in 1998. She invited 2 other artists to speak at her talk, Annalee Davis and Alida Martinez. From their collaboration at the talk, these 3 women artists decided to take things further and expand the idea into a group women’s exhibition, with artists from the region. The show was curated by Irenee, Annalee and Alida and was intended to travel around the Caribbean. They invited Roberta Stoddart from Jamaica, Joscelyn Gardner from Barbados, Osaira Muyale from Aruba and myself to join the group. A catalogue was designed and printed. The show opened in Barbados and then traveled here to Trinidad.

 

Lips Sticks and Marks was a really wonderful experience for me. I was the youngest of the women, and the least experienced. They were like big sisters to me. It was very ambitious and a massive undertaking. I am very proud to have been a part of that.

 

What made this show so special, was that it was curated by women artists. It was a spontaneous response to the connections that Irenee, Annalee and Alida felt with each other’s work and the work of the other artists in the show. They had seen parallels and connected themes in the work of all 7 of us. We were working through issues of gender and cultural identity in the Caribbean space.

 

I would like to see more thoughfully curated exhibitions in Trinidad and perhaps a women’s show could be one of them.

 

Q. What are some of the misconceptions that people have of your process?

A. People may not realise that wire-bending is very hard on the body. That is one of the reasons I began to practice and then eventually teach Yoga. I have carpal tunnel and at times, excruciating back pain that is a direct result of this work. I am however able to manage my injuries with my yoga practice.

 

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I am working on a small collection of craft for Christmas.

 

Q. What would you like to do that you have not had an opportunity to do as yet?

A. I find that technique and content are closely connected. Some techniques lend themselves to expressing certain ideas. For these past 18 years I have been working mostly in wire, though from time to time I experiment with painting, drawing and fabric work. At this point I would like to explore another technique or techniques and devote years to developing my skill level. I think that these new skills will give me the visual language with which I can express different ideas.  

Q. Your husband Johnny Stollmeyer has worked with you in a collaborative way, tell me about this melding of natural materials with wire and some of the places you have shown your work together.

A. Soon after we were married in 2000, Johnny and I had a show together at the Gallery 1234 at the Normandie Hotel. We made several collaborative pieces for that show. Since then we have made a handful of collaborative pieces that have been displayed in gift shops like Scribbles in West Mall (which is no longer) and Rainy Days in Ellerslie Plaza. Presently we do not have any of the collaborative pieces available.

 

Q. There are not many art couples, the Bainey’s, the Cozier’s, these pairings are dynamic, and in every case they manage to be strong together. Have you given any thought to this, and what are your views?

A. Although I enjoy and appreciate the work of the Bainey’s and the work of Irenee Shaw and Chris Cozier, I do not know anything about their working process or working dynamic.

 

It has taken effort for Johnny and I to be able to collaborate because we have very different creative processes. Generally speaking, artists are single-minded and egotistical. Collaborations, like any other relationship require commitment to the other person, compromise and trust so that creativity and spontaneity can flow. In successful pieces, the aesthetics and visions of the individuals can work together well.  

 

Q. You have made work for Carnival, what was the experience like?

A. In 1996, I made a series of headpieces for Peter Minshall and the Callaloo Company’s production, Song of the Earth. That was a very intense working experience. Minshall was my mentor and I met with him a few times and he would express to me what he wanted through metaphor and simple sketches. Then I would go away and with further direction from Kathryn Chan, I would play, explore and experiment. At some point, I arrived at what was required.

 

Q. Your women body cages had a visceral impact on the viewer and the wearer that it was built around. Talk about that.

A. Looking at my earliest work from art school, you can see that I am interested in the female torso. Using the forms of structured garments like bras, corsets and girdles as my starting point, I have consistently explored the idea of an empty garment holding the form or describing the shape of the body that inhabits it.

 

I took that idea further by making corsets from cardboard, wire or mild steel and then taking photos of myself wearing these structures. I was commenting on the torture that is a part of fashion, beauty and body image. In the photos I would wrestle with the costumes. The photos were meant to illustrate the conflicted feelings that I felt towards the stereotypical roles of women and having to dress a certain way in order to get approval from both men and women alike.

 

The series of 5 torsos that I called She Structures, were a social comment on rape. I was thinking of what kind of garment could protect a woman from rape. I came up with the wire torso with a serrated labia.

 

Q. Where do you see your work going in the next few years?

A. I would like to explore sheet metal and push that material on its own, independent of wire, and see what happens. I would also like to learn traditional quilting and explore working in fabric as well. 

 

G   A   L   L   E   R   Y :   Susan Dayal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Year’s Best

     Having not seen everything that was represented in Art in Trinidad for the year, I am nonetheless forging forth with a list of the things that mattered for the year. In my estimation, there were more shows this year than ever. There was also quite a variety of things on display, from traditional work to jewellery and graphic design.

THE BEST of the BEST

Jasmine Thomas Girvin – Jewellery 

Ken Chrichlow – Painting

…………………………………………………..

MOST CREATIVE

Richard “Ashraph” Ramsaran – Mixed media

…………………………………………………..

MOST GROWTH

The Art buyer

…………………………………………………..

BEST TRADITIONAL

Peter Shepperd – Painting

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BEST PHOTOGRAPHY WORK

Abigail Hadeed

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The Art is in the writing

        I do not usually write about writers, but the words of this man, David Foster Wallace, is important enough to reproduce here.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

**If you are automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important – if you want to operate on your default setting- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren’t pointless and annoying. But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars – compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.

Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true; the only thing that’s capital – T True is that you get to decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches pf adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship –  be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life – then you will never have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

On one level, we all know this stuff already – it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need even more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s  that’s what you are doing.

And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default setings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely o the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. 

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yeilded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. 

This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. 

That i real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the ‘rat race’ – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. obviously, you can think of it whatever way you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or nig fancy questions of life after death.

The capital -T Truth is about simple awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over; “This is water, this is water.”

* He had told a joke at the beginning of this speech that he gave to the commencement class of Kenyon College, Ohio.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “what the hell is water?”

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David Foster Wallace died this year at the age of 46. He was arguable the best writer of his generation.

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**Taken from The British Guardian of 20th September, 2008

2 0 0 9

In Memory

Dr. Wilma Hoyte died on the 31st of December, 2008. She shall be missed by her family, friends and the art community. Dr. Hoyte and her husband Dr. Ralph Hoyte  were great patrons of the arts in Trinidad and Tobago.

Their collection was known to be so vast that they had extended the space within which to hang work in their home. They befriended and assisted many artists over the course of careers, some still alive today.

It is hoped that collecters such as the Hoyte’s do not come around only once. For without people who love art, where would we all be?

I N T E R V I E W: Camille King

Q. In 2000 you were working with CCA7 and I met you through the bigRiver residency. You were working with watercolour. Tell me about your work?

A: I love watercolour. It was my first medium in secondary school and never really enjoyed or appreciated any another medium the same way. No other medium allows the exploration of light and colour, the way watercolour does and those areas have continued to be my interest with regard to the medium.
I started out painting still-lifes, which eventually began to include West Indian architectural elements, such as Demarara windows, wooden louvres, and then including landscapes with the still-lifes, such as the plains of Central and South Trinidad.
While living abroad, I began to use the idea of breaking up larger paintings into smaller, fractured pieces. In hindsight, I see that other people saw them as being abstract, Cubist almost, but the idea came from a totally different place. I used to watch the way the glass in the windows outside my office would reflect light and objects differently in each panel. I used that idea to start changing the way I could break up the space on large pieces and then it continued to smaller pieces. After about 10 years working like that, I find myself going back to still-lifes, and enjoying the light and colour again.
One of the main themes explored is that of my space, home, community and self. I’ve used houses, in a simplified form, as a personification of self, in that a house/home holds your stuff, whether literally or figuratively. The body is a vessel which supports all of our emotional, physical and daily weight. Instead of using a body to illustrate, I use one house, or three. Three, relating to the idea of me, myself and I. The symbol of the house repeats often, sometimes very clearly in the paintings, and on other times almost like a secret that no one notices.

Q. I remember that you were not inclined to want to get involved with showing your work in the context of what was seen at bigRiver. How do you feel about being a contemporary artist who does not straddle the more extreme ways of seeing?

A: I sometimes see myself as a contemporary artist and sometimes not. In a way there is a feeling of being looked down on by those who are thinking/saying, “why are people still doing landscapes, portraits, still lifes?” “Why are people still drawing and painting?” To a point, I agree, especially when a lot of artists are dealing with like subjects and tackling them in the same manner. There are so many ways of tackling a piece, so many mediums to explore.
And then, on the flip side, I see my work growing, changing and that the way that I work, and live and breathe is contemporary. My watercolours are abstract according to some people (not moi), and are not ‘traditional’ watercolours, not ‘typical’ landscapes and in an exhibition setting are considered contemporary to others who work in the medium. I am contemporary, or not, according to who I am standing next to.
Q. Where did you study and what have you found working in Trinidad and Tobago has done for you as an artist?

A: I attended university in Miami at Florida International University. I was the only watercolourist in the department. My painting professor said he could not teach anything about the techniques of painting watercolours, he said I knew how to paint, so we worked on composition and thematic elements. Much of my influences, painting wise, have been external to Trinidad. Exceptions being Cazabon, Jackie Hinkson and Harry Bryden. But I adore artists like Winslow Homer and Janet Fish.
Working in Trinidad is a challenge. The creativity and projects of artists in theatre, music and the visual arts are not well supported. I am not sure what T&T has done for me as an artist. I think it is a challenge to show work, get some recognition, especially if you do not show often. Some people manage to show every year and sell well, I applaud them. I do many things that are visual art related but producing enough for a show is very difficult, so it does not happen as often as I would like. And I want to be satisfied with every piece.

Q. Do you think because you work in watercolour, that there is a certain snobbery about what you do as opposed to the Sunday painter and the overtly contemporary practitioner?

A: Lol! Possibly. Watercolour was originally thought of as the medium young ladies used as a hobby, used in their spare time to show they would make good wives and could occupy their days. Thereby came the idea of the Sunday painter. Men used oil paints and/or acrylics. Artists like Winslow Homer, used watercolour for both quick sketches on site during the war, as well as finished pieces. But generally, oil and acrylics are supposedly more ‘real’ and respected media. That bias of medium has remained centuries later, and even now watercolour is not considered as important or credible as oils, acrylics and now infinite ways of working. People choose a medium that works for the finished product they want. If they choose oils, wire, hair, whatever, it’s a choice. My choice is a medium that I adore and gives me the effect that I want.

Q. You teach at the University of the West Indies, how long have you been teaching, and what have you taught?

A: This is my 9th year at Visual Arts, CCFA as a part-time lecturer. I started out teaching a course about professionalism as a visual artist – writing an artist statement, structuring your resume, contracts, copyright organizing your portfolio, etc. Over the years, the course has continued, and changed a bit, but its format is similar. Right now the course is in the Carnival Studies Unit. I share the course with another lecturer, and it is open to all Creative Arts students.
For a few years I also facilitated a landscape painting workshop. We would go to various places and paint ‘en plein air’. Many students had never worked outdoors before, only from photographs, which was amazing to me. The workshop took us to San Souci, Mt. St. Benedict, Blanchiesseuse, Gran Couva, the Botanical Gardens. I also facilitate a Human Figure Drawing Course, with Year 2/Year 3 students.

Q. You collaborated with your colleague and friend Elsa Carrington Clarke a few years ago. What was that like and are you planning any more pairings?

A: Elsa and I work well together. We do not work the same way, but we work well together. We each have our strengths and we can bounce ideas off of each other. I work hard at not letting life get in the way, but its not always possible. So, it works out if we can jointly get enough work to have a show. The last time was four years ago. We have talked about doing something again, but no official plans.

Q. Your work is in the Chancellor’s office at U.W.I. I have always found that your paintings have a poetry about them, as though they could adorn a Walcott work. There is a light and airy feel to your technique. Tell me about that work?

A: You have said that to me before, that they would look great as illustrations. Thank you. Watercolour is about light, and I use the medium to its advantage. The series with the houses reflect the idea of community, of people, even when you see none. The paintings with people and houses tell a story, encourage a story, such as “It still takes a village” and “The Wedding and the Sanctuary”. They give the illusion of ‘all ah we”, of these people can be any community in Trinidad. I like the idea of wrapping or covering of heads. In many communities, people wrap their hair, but it is so common, we don’t notice it. Rastafarians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Africans, Indians, the list goes on and on. I love colour and watercolour allows that richness. Mine are not watered down paintings, I have had people ask me if the paintings are another medium, because they are not what they expect watercolour to be.

Q. Working at CCA7, you encountered many artists doing many different types of work. Where there any artists whose works or theories you particularly held to, or regarded?

A: I learnt from many of the artists. CCA7 was a great opportunity to see how other artists’ work, what issues interest and affect them. I still follow up on the works of people like Peter Doig, Nicole Awai, Nikolai Noel. I loved the energy of Surekha from India and the depressing but intense drawings of Oscar Camilo de las Flores. Many of these artists had amazing stories to tell.

Q. Did these things have any influence on your work, and if so, what and why?

A: Being around, reading and researching so many contemporary artists, in a way became a hindrance to my work. It became my stumbling block. It took a long time to figure it out. I kept feeling or wanting to work in their vein of thought, and that was not my way of working. So I kept looking for ways to produce a contemporary body of work based on other ideals, and could not. I could not figure out why I was not painting and working, because I was trying really hard to be what I was not. I got over it.

Q. What are you working on now and what are your plans for the next few years?

A: I am back to painting what I enjoy the most, and am doing wonderfully naturally lit still-lifes. I am looking at them from a slightly different perspective, but thinking Janet Fish, Winslow Homer, including a lot of glass, reflections and simple, but textured images.
It is wishful thinking that I would like to continue working at my current pace, but life will not allow that. I would like to have a show in the relative near future, and have it critiqued or written about. It is hard to have work written about by people who know. There are few people qualified to write about art, which is a pity. But I would like to get back to working on a regular basis and enjoy the work being produced. I need a proper studio space to spread out in, and experiment more than I am currently able to.

G   A   L   L   E   R   Y :   Camille King

in-the-distance

valley

Where Art is forever

The work of Matt and Simon Pyke, two motion graphic artists and their partners have recently unveiled a monolithic structured video wall. This structure floats above the pond in the John Madegaki Garden within the Victoria & Albert Museum in England.

http://vimeo.com/2705718

The neverending graphic stream is called ‘Universal Forever.” The artists are using all manner of communication to get this work to the public, going as far as offering podcasts to computer users to access.

You can see both the interview and the work and enjoy the experience yourself.

http://vimeo.com/2705911

advancedbeauty.org

Obamamania

      The excitement over the election of America’s first black president shall continue to crescendo for some time, at least until he makes his first major miss steps. Or, maybe not. Mr. Obama has a way of making people look at things a bit differently.

However, this week, in preporation for the inaugeration of the 44th commander in chief, Washington has unveiled a rootsy exhibition of Obama memorabilia and art.

The show is called Manifest Hope:DC and as expected some of the heavyweights featured are Shepard Fairley and Obay, the latter of the two was seen on the Colbert Report discussing his iconic imagery that arguably may have been one of the major contributors to the Obama mystique that helped propel him into office.

Looking at the works on display, the energy and excitement created is extremely infectious. Who wouldn’t want to be in Washington for such an event? Yet, what is even more remarkable is the extension of that energy that continues to perculate through the works of these artists who were propelled to become part of the Obama message seperately and collectively.

Artists coming together to affect change is something that reads well on paper, but in my experience, it has not been something that has translated well in reality. It always seems best left to graphic designers. In this instance though, the works of graffiti artists, graphic designers and everyone in between has melded so well and produced such a groundswell of goodwill and yes, hope, that as an outsider, I too feel caught up in the heady adrenaline rush of the event.

Manifest Hope:DC starts today and ends on inaugeration day, Tuesday 20th January 2009.

Added Note: Every time I wrote the name of the show, that is called Manifest Hope: dee, cee. I got a smiley face. It was not deliberate on my part. I guess it just goes to show you the level of good feelings in Washington these days…actually the answer is simpler, because of lingo, placing a capital letter next to a colon gives you a natural smiley face ie:D

All images courtesy www.notcot.com

CONGRATULATIONS to McFarlane

          For this carnival the band leader Brian McFarlane chose to portray Africa. For such a broad theme, Mr. McFarlane managed to create a grand spectacle. But not only that, the attention to detail, and the regal nature of every player in the mas was indeed something to behold.

        Mr. McFarlane has admitted to both admiring and following fellow masman, Peter Minshall, and for many of us, his work has been more about imitation with glimpses of his own slant on the subject matter chosen.

This year though, this portrayal of Africa has turned a corner. He has managed to produce a band that really explored much of what Africa is at its best, and he has also included serious social issues without being jingoistic.

       I have always been told by older masqueraders that a large part of great mas making and playing has to do with the awareness of the leader that mas is about theatre, it is about being as panoramic as a big epic film. Mr. McFarlane has  done this with Africa.

I look forward to seeing what he does next.

My Mas

Performance – Jouvert Carnival Monday – on the road
an interpretation of “The Examination of the Herald by Aubrey Beardsley”
Monday,23rd February 2009

Copyright Richard Bolai 2009

Carnival Monday is quickly becoming a memory. Yet a few weeks ago the idea of making a piece for Performance for Jouvert (morning opening) with Three Canal’s band Paradise, was foremost in my mind.

Over the years I have grown wary of Carnival. Last year I felt that it seemed packaged for tourists over residents of the island. The same old warmed over songs and costumes had worn too thin and I was seriously considering spending time away from the country.

But this year I was approached by a fellow artist, as disgruntled as myself. He had an idea to play ‘cow’ mas, the history of which is very interesting. It had been very prevalent at the early part of the last century, but violent incidents marred its continuance.

My agreement to be part of this small band of artists made me focus on the way women are portrayed and portraying themselves in Mas. Of late the Dame Lorraine has been played by women, in many ways a misnomer, as this was played by men parodying women. Today women play it in self parody, and in some ways it is a less than empowering image.

Contemplating this fact, I thought of a way to shift this perspective,and almost instantly I recalled The Examination of the Herald by Aubrey Beardsley. He has two drawings, one with two characters, an older Shylock character with his hand slightly forward, the other younger man, his hands on his hips. The second drawing is of the two men with their genitals exposed.

The image is quite provocative, and it informed my decision to re-interpret the Dame Lorraine. But actually it is incorrect to state that that is indeed what I am doing, as I am not exaggerating the female form in any way, but over-emphasizing the male organ.

I procured materials from a few sources and built the costume in a few days. During Dimanche Gras, I started to prepare the costume, securing my basket that I wore as a hat with a long white plume.My prosthesis placed with much careful twisting of material to anchor it in place. My cape was draped, comfortable shoes chosen and I was ready to go.

One of the interesting things about getting into a character for a performance is that after thinking and planning it for a long time, I always have a moment where I let go. I literally feel the character in every pore of my being, and when this is done, I forget how it may appear to others.

So when I got to my friends’ business place and heard the reaction of everyone present, I was struck by just how strong an impression I was making, and I had not even left the building! Mas in Trinidad and Tobago consists of people wearing traditional costumes, historical or fantasy.

On any given Carnival day, we can see people dressed as bats, Indian warriors, minstrals, Africans, sailors, the Dame Lorraine, which is a stuffed female body with full breasts and bottom, devils of all types, the moko jumbie that goes to several feet above the regular masquerader.

Copyright Richard Bolai 2009

A woman wearing a bouroquite costume, which was the way mine looked at first blush, is not unusual. But a woman wearing a horse costume that is not a horse but a penis is in many ways a unique moment. Carnival is open to so much, and I have seen many memorable types of mas over the years. For myself have found that there is a need for more creativity, and there have been people trying to do just that in their little ways. But much of this work owes so much to one of the most creative and original mas men, Peter Minshall, that many people sit back and instantly say, “We see dat already!”

My choosing to do this in mas was greeted with shock and amazement, and I still have so much to add about what the experience was like, but I am still taking in what I experienced. The woman who came into the band dressed as the Dame Lorraine was instantly assaulted with wine by a short guy who ran up behind her and started gyrating. For me, the reaction was completely different. No one pushed up on me, they approached and asked for permission to touch, to take pictures and to comment.

Much more must be discussed with this mas, and I shall do so further very soon. I am working on something for early March based on dimensional embroidery.

Jouvert 2009

March 20th

               

The shoe company Addidas and iPhone shall be launching a really wonderful project titled, Urban Art Guide. It shall be the first time that anyone, anywhere with the right technology (the iPhone no less) can download an immediate art experience in real time, including never before seen graffiti art.

                          A number of years ago I tried to do something on my own phone for a show that I was having at the time. I love when people use present day media smartly. But moreso, I love when this media can be accessed by all. This Addidas/iPhone project can be seen online as well at www.urbanartguide.com

                             This is a way that the group Galvanize, providing that they had access to phones, could have been able to show people where to go to see work on the street. This idea shall work brilliantly for the Nuit Blanche project in Toronto, Canada, where for twelve hours there is a city wide art event that expands the length of the city.

                              Using one’s phone for Art has great appeal on several levels. The easy availability being only part of it. One can buy Art from one’s phone. Online capabilities are available, so I am certain that many in the world have made this their way to get what they desire.

                                It may seem a bit incongruous to talk about desire in a recession. That seems suddenly a bad word. But desire does not go away for lack of money. Desire is available in other forms, even if it is only to aquire images in the mind, and this project feeds that craving for so many of us who cannot just hop on a plane and see the latest works at our own convenience.

                           Addidas and iPhone are calling this a first because it shall certainly be the beginning of something that shall become quite mainstream very quickly.

 

 

 

Making hard choices

     A number of my posts come from conversations with friends in the arts and this one is no different. The issue discussed, was about working in your field commercially and the way that it can affect the making of the work that you really want to make.

In some ways the concern may seem trite. There are many artists straddling this line and doing quite well. There are even artists who occassionally dabble in other things and then transition back into what they do best.

For my friend the need to do both has become wearisome and justifying the need to make money and the need to make art has worn them down considerably, so they are thinking of taking some time away from both. I suggested that there is no right or wrong way in the process of making art, and in my own experience where I feel this same pull and tug too, I have found that the desire to make work is so overwhelming that it can sustain any gray area.

However, for those for whom it is not so easy to flow with the unexpected currents of life, I think that the first objective is to come to terms with the fact that there is no right way, just a way. You must confront the working and do. Ideas come in many guises and the sketchbook is always a good place to amass the creative energy that comes through you.

As a trained designer I find that wanting to make ‘graphic design’ and ‘craft’ also can feel as though I am venturing away from making art, but at the same time, it is all creative endeavours that I am about, and everything I have found myself doing has informed everything else.

So I am saying embrace and accept all of yourself and if the need to regroup is there, do that too, but know that it is just a way to an end.

When Art is not enough

        A parent came to me very concerned with an issue that her teenage daughter is having with her teachers. She was told that she would fail Art at CXC if she chose to do anything outside the narrow parametres of the curriculum.

In one way, this obstacle is the first of many that shall make her hopefully a stronger adult. But it is also one of those maddening things about Art for examinations and for school and Art for life.

Her mother and I both agreed that she would have to adhere to the rules to ‘pass’ her exams, but I suggested further that she continue to explore the side of her work that was considered ‘not exam worthy.’ This week in my teaching I asked the students how many of them draw in their sketchbooks or journals and no one put up their hands. I was shocked at their admission that they are all too busy to draw! This should not be the case at all! They are at a stage where wanting to create should be bursting out of them at every turn, no matter what.

This led me to ask another question, what is happening with Art from a recreational standpoint in Trinidad and Tobago? How many students and artists actually work casually, for joy? We live in times where everyone feels stressed and put upon by the daily dose of  violent crime reportage. I suppose that prevents so many of us from saying that we can have places to go to just talk about art, make art, barter and sell it.

Alice Yard in Woodbrook, is trying to get something going, and there are places like More Vino that show  the work of artists and The Corner Bar shows that art is funky. But yet, what is happening with making work that isn’t graffiti?

I have had students who are making work more than ever, these people have come from a graphic design background and are swamped with their day jobs, but they understand the value of doing other types of work for personal joy.

The students I spoke to really just need to see the huge payoff that comes from making work all of the time. They can be best served with a number of activities where this desire to make work is encouraged for its own sake, or else they are just going to have papers that say that they went to university, but little else to show for it.

Big Dream small guns – Rihanna

The Barbadian phenom, Rihanna has of late been the recipient of much negative press based on an assault upon her by her boyfriend and fellow singer, Chris Brown. The incident has encouraged many vigorous conversations on male/female relationships. The age of the couple,as well as their success and beauty has made many wonder why a young man with everything going for himself could be so violent? Particularly given his single parent status where he has admitted that his own mother experienced domestic violence.

The reaction around the world was swift and divided into two camps, those who felt that she should do whatever she could to be rid of him, and those who felt that their relationship was more complex than the media was letting on, and that they both needed counselling. This was particularly apparent when contrary to much speculation, Rihanna was photographed with the ‘girl beater’ himself, and did not seem to be distancing herself from him.

Today the latest image to surface on Rihanna has been of her exposing a tattoo of a gun that she has on her mid section.It begs the question, has she now gone into the realm of Performance Art? Is the gun some subtle symbol of empowerment? It certainly is provocative.

Many adults are realising that there are alot of young people,including those who are fans of these singers, who think that the whole incident is somehow sensational and deserved. Not only do they not see it as wrong, they see it as something that ‘happens’ and is no big deal.

This divide between the young and old has been surprising to many in the media,like Oprah Winfrey and EllenDe Generes on their shows.
I too have done my own poll with my students who are ranged in age from early twenties to mid thirties. They have found that the Britney Spears ’s and Rihanna’s of the world are more interesting because they  have car crash personalities. The fact that they are singers seems almost secondary to their hijinx.

What is all of this saying about the media? It says to me that negative press is the press of the day. Is it going to be this way always? Maybe not, but it certainly has had a very long run. It began when language and lryics went from sweet and sexy to hot and raunchy.

We have to look at ourselves and ask whether we have made the media what it is? We can always turn off whatever offends, but in the meanwhile, we also created much of what offends and we have to admit to it, but moreso, ask why it has appeal at all?

Imitation is usually second best

Maisaa Moses’ painting superimposed with Shalini Seereeram

This morning I opened the paper to be regaled with images that looked like a poor copy of an artist whose work usually gets a lot of attention and regard from the art buying public.

There are a number of issues going on here, all of them with the potential for an emotional response, and that would be unfortunate because it would cloud the point.

It can be argued that in all art making, copying is a sincere form of flattery. An artist is impressed with another artist’s process and wants to achieve that same feeling in his/her own work. So, that person is observed closely and eventually to tell the work apart becomes nearly impossible, Braque and Picasso for example.

Yet, with these two artists, Braque had an excellent track record and he was not in Picasso’s shadow but a colleague and equal.

In the case of the work in the papers today, the observation is about money. The questions I ask, is, surely the gallery involved must realise the similarity between the two artists. They must be marketing this similarity deliberately. If so, what is the advantage to the copied artist?

For the other person, working in very close style to the first, it may be perceived that they genuinely do not know that they are so closely matching the other person. However, this is a tiny island, and the likelihood of this person never seeing the other artist’s work is hardly likely.

So it is down to flattery, and an innate desire to make work like so and so, which in itself is not a crime. To show this copying also is not unethical. The argument is that the image is not exactly like the other. But in this instance, this is not the case, the copy screams the name of the original artist.

For someone aware of many artists works in Trinidad and Tobago, to meet up with this obvious mimicry, makes me do a double take.

It can be argued that Brian McFarlane is copying Peter Minshall, and he still has to traverse the space around him, making it his. He is not soulless, and the argument is provocative and worth discussion. Perhaps it is the scale on which the work is presented that makes the argument more expansive and worthwhile.

To copy has its challenges. What is the seduction, and will the elements of this seduction produce something that has depth in itself? Can what has seduced be enough?

Ultimately the artist is made to either hold to the seduction as their guide, or learn from it and continue to grow. But within that, there still is the marketing of a style that will have a shelf life. What would that be, remains to be seen.

Can you spot the difference?

Fake Art – The Bane of the Art Industry

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery, while this may hold true in some situations, this adage is blasphemous in the art circles. Throughout history, whenever an artist through his perseverance and talent has made a name for himself, there have been others lurking in the shadows waiting to piggy-back on his success and make a quick buck through rip-offs.

The monster of fake art has constantly raised its ugly head to plague contemporary Indian art. It does not even spare the new kids on the block ! One prominent ‘victim’ was none other than Subodh Gupta who has made a name for himself both in India and internationally, he who some regard as “Damien Hirst of the East!”

The perpetrator of the crime was a hole-in-the-wall operation – Sahil Art Gallery, which is owned by Shyamsunder Desai. This gallery not only sourced the fake artwork but also doctored evidence to show that it was a genuine painting, they had a certificate of authenticity, and even had a photograph that showed Subodh looking at the painting in the gallery, which had obviously been tampered with.

The matter was brought to the attention of the authorities by Anubha Jayant Dey, director, Bodhi Art Gallery, New Delhi. They had been alerted to the issue when Sahil Art Gallery announced an exhibition of 82 artworks by “12 renowned artists”, Subodh Gupta is represented by Bodhi and so they investigated the matter. In a covert operation with the help of the police they recorded the transaction of the sale of the fake work for Rs. 80 lakh on hidden camera. The price range for an original work runs into crores. The police have arrested the owned of Sahil Art Gallery and have confiscated all the 82 artworks pending further investigation. However, scandalous this heinous crime may seem, it is not the first time that Indian contemporary art has had to grapple with the problem of fakes.

In 2007, Mukul Dey Archives “Chitralekha” who are regarded as authorities on important documents, printed information and images of early 20th century Indian art, declared two works by Jamini Roy which were to be auctioned by Bonham’s auction at San Francisco on 18th June, 2007, as fakes. These works were then withdrawn from the auction.

In 2006, another auction house – Christie’s, had to withdraw six works of Indian contemporary artists due to doubts regarding their authenticity. Sotheby’s too had in earlier auction in the same year chosen not to auction some works displaying “a better to be safe that sorry” attitude.
In 2004, Anjolie Ela Menon had her assistant, who had been with her for 20 years, Hamid Safi, arrested for producing fakes of her paintings and selling them off. Safi claimed that he had a recording showing that he completed most of the artist’s works anyway, a claim that was denied by the artist.

These are just some of the scams that have grabbed media attention; there have been many others where unscrupulous art dealers have tried to pass on fake art to unsuspecting buyers. Sharan Apparao, owner of the Chennai-based Apparao Gallery, estimates that “every year, about 20-30 fakes of important paintings and 50-100 fakes of (less) important paintings get released for the markets globally.”

There are essentially four ways in which these forgeries are created:
* Copy the work exactly without the signature.
* Change the medium, for instance, if the original work is in oil, the fake would be executed in watercolours or acrylic.
* Change the direction of key elements in the composition – for instance place the tree on the left rather than the right as in the original.
* Carry different elements from different works of a single artist and incorporate them in one artwork

There have been rare instances where the family of an artist who has passed away has authenticated fake works for pecuniary reasons.

It is reported that Kolkatta is fast emerging as the main centre for producing fakes where out of work art graduates make a living by working for these ‘fake factories.’ They are proving to be so successful because more people these days are into the purchase of ‘names’ without having much knowledge of the artist’s style and preferred medium, for them purchasing an artwork at less than market rate appeals as a ‘good deal’. It’s after all a matter of pure demand and supply.
India lacks an institutional mechanism for certifying artworks. While the Indian art market is becoming more transparent it still has miles to go before the first time art buyer can be assured that he is buying an original.

For most buyers and collectors, it is advisable not to purchase from shady art dealers. If the work is being priced much lower than the artist’s current market rate, that alone should set the alarm bells ringing, as was the case of the Subodh Gupta work being scalped by Sahil Art Gallery. It still remains to be seen if any of the works being sold by Sahil Art Gallery are originals.

Besides, it is also advisable to purchase the works of young, talented artists whose works are assuredly original and who have an immense potential for appreciation. Also, galleries like bCA Galleries, who follow the international norm of having artists being officially associated with them, can guarantee that you are purchasing an original work.

Till such time that India has some regulatory authority and benchmarking in place for art, all art buyers – Beware!

http://www.desicritics.org/  and as seen on the site thisishowitshouldbe.blogspot.com

reprinted by permission

Green Porno

The actress, model and famous daughter of Ingred Bergman, Isabella Rossilini has come up with the most beautiful and intelligent documentary series since the likes of Carl Sagan and Jacques Cousteau. She uses soft scultpures of all types, and discusses some extremely adult subject matter with great humor and sensibility. Not since “Sister Mary explains it all,” have I seen such delightful short bits of information delivered with so much freshness and creativity. You can catch the shows on U-Tube or get the Sundance Channel.

International writers block

Can a local artist be satisfied when they show abroad and the writing on them is not substantial?
I had the opportunity to read some writing on a promising local artist recently, and I was very excited and happy about the fact that the person had succeeded in taking their vision further. They have worked a very long time, and have kept their focus for several years. They have shown abroad before, so I was expecting a really good bit of Art writing on the person’s work.
To my surprise, I found instead a confection. A puff piece of particular delicacy. The person sounded more like a curiosity than the actual hard working Artist that they are.  The references given were to another person long since dead, and no reflection on fellow contemporary artists working in that oeuvre were mentioned. I was left quite cold.
One of the most difficult things to reconcile with writing on an artist, Is that most artists who are more than just Sunday painters, want proper critique. They want to know that their work is moving someone in some way. They want to know that they are making connections with their audiences as well as their peers.
When someone writes a piece and gives no other information than  what the catalogue provides, or no more than perfunctory information it frustrates the reader who loves art and wants to know more about it. It really does a dis-service on all levels, because it provides no further dialogue on that person. It puts the work in no category and moreso, it provides no room for growth, for the Artist or the subject matter. It assists in continuing certain work along a stalled path because there is no friction to feed off of. So for those artists who get angry with critiques, actually, the anger allows for some sort of abstract awareness of a position or positions that lead somewhere. Exactly where remains to be seen, but it encourages a history of sorts for the two players.
Yet, when there is full agreement of what is written, it also implores the artist to proceed apace. For the work is never for an audience of one.

Addendum

If the foreign writer has very little to connect the work of a West Indian artist, can you imagine the difficulty in finding the local research to give an interview or review ! To find good information, you have to know some  older artists who live and work in the island. But also, you have to know what is fact and what is simply conjecture. You would have to know the history of the place, and a close history at that, as the writing would be less about innovations in art, and more about dates, times and influences.

To me this is an urgent situation. There are very capable people who can do this, but I believe that there is no financial value in it for them, so they decline. Perhaps memoirs may be written in the future and from that, a history can be culled.

D E S I G N E R Interviews:Tanya Williams

Q. Tanya you started at John D and now you are doing some very interesting work. Tell me about your training and your new work.

A:      John D training was a really great experience for me because I was always really interested in Art but I didn’t think becoming an artist in the traditional way I saw it being done in Trinidad was what I wanted to be. Visual Communication Design opened me up to a whole different creative, expressive world to me that I wasn’t aware of and it’s been growing ever since. I think for me it really opened my mind up to really be able to express myself and experiment and communicate in a language that made sense to me in a way that Art and CXC and A Levels didn’t do for me.

Q. Your Dols are done in a style that are thickly painted and colourful. They are almost like cotton candy. But they have an unsettling undertone…

A:     Yes, I like to play on the pretty and the ‘not so pretty’ idea or meaning of things. I think the style of the work is really underdeveloped in a way that I not only find interesting but really expressed me the best I can and how I see things and myself as a process. I love, love colours, I love paint, I love how it spreads and paste and moves. I love how rich it is like the bright colours and the pale colours and the emotions they evoke sometimes pulling your mind into a childlike frenzy.

The Dols as characters are so fun to use to tell stories. Their young appeal, their adult poses, situations or expressions, express an innocence and naivety. That innocence and naivety however comes at price that can sometimes be a downside and it leads to discomfort.

Q. The images of women in smeared makeup was really wonderful. How many drawings did you do and what was the inspiration for those?

A:       Hmm… I think I did 5 of them . I have 2 that are pencil drawings. (I may not actually finish them sadly because I have a commitment problem) I at times have the attention span of a 5 year old. Those really came out of a moment. Something really upset me. Somethings said that I thought was unfair and hurtful and I was convinced that If i wasn’t a girl of my temperament then It wouldn’t have happened that way. And it made me angry how people viciously and thoughtlessly try to smear your efforts and get you down when you are starting to feel like you’re making steps.So i thought, I’m a girl smear me why don’t you! It’s only make up!

Q. Your blog feels like a private diary. I like that your work seems a bit autobiographical. Is that your intention?

A:        I don’t know if it is so much that it was intentional more than it just happened to evolve that way. I’ve always kept diaries and sketchbooks. I’ve even done a little book; a put together of drawings, design and poems I did one valentines for a boyfriend at the time when I was all in ‘lala land’ about him… I’ve always expressed myself this way or in some way similar. I think I’m just generally open about myself and my feelings etc. much of the time to my own detriment. So the blog developing that way is inevitable I think.

Q.What shall you be working on next?

A:      At the moment I’ve been challenging myself as suggested by a friend, to explore the bunnies/dog that I put in most of my work. That character is very important for me, it expresses a lot and hides which is very much my personality. So I’ve been doing what I call ‘the bunny study’ . This work is a bit more surreal and ethereal but also more organic than the Dols. I am just exploring this direction for a while in hopes that it enriches the Dols and my future work.

Q. Tell me about your work for Draconian Switch.

A:       My work in draconian is old! … At the time it was very, very intimate and revealing for me and it was the first time I had ever shown pieces of my work and was so open about it. (It was scary and I was nervous) I’m not even sure what to say about it. It was a very self analytical ‘visual diary’ .Some of that work I started at John D 5 years ago. I think as a designer it really just started off as a way for me to get out ideas and notes and those notes and ideas started to become very personal as oppose to just a way of figuring out work. So really I put out my diary for all to see in Draconian Switch.

Q. You are the only girl a midst the design heavy weights Marlon and Anderson, yet you bring your own vibe. How do they motivate you and vice versa?

A:       Marlon is my biggest challenger! At times he’s my teacher to and he’s always my ‘go-to designer friend’ he really pushes me when I’m not doing it myself and he reminds me to congratulate myself when I do good work and not need other people’s acknowledgement .
I admit to feeling unappreciated and getting negative at times and Marlon along with the other great designer friends I have really encourage me (when I’m not driving them crazy)
Anderson’s super talented, but I think he doesn’t do half as great as he can and people are already so impressed by him and that drives me.
I love having friends that are so great at what they do and it makes me want to do the best at what I do. Not ever trying to compete with them but really working to define my own style and not try to be ‘a guy’ at this ‘design business’.

Q. What would you tell young women today that want to be designers?

A:      If you love it. Not Like it but LOVE IT. If you are passionate about it and continually work at it. If you enjoy fighting your way through a problem to find a beautiful solution you will be great at this, boy or girl. And if you are lucky and you are doing it right you will not only discover amazing design solutions but also you may probably discover some cool things about yourself and it’s a journey worth the effort for any girl.

M  O  R  E   D O L S : June 8th,2009

 

D E S I G N E R Interviews: Marlon Darbeau

Q. Let us talk about your latest work and work backward. You just exhibited some work that was quite exciting… 

A: Yes , I participated in ‘NEXT’, the first annual group exhibition featuring what’s new + what’s next in innovative furniture and related accessories, lighting and body adornments at BECA gallery, New Orleans. It was quite exciting particularly just coming off of my debut show ‘En Route… Of Bridges and Barriers‘ last December at Alice Yard. The work I had on show is called VERB, it is a multi-functional furniture/sclupture, the thing is this happened so organically I wish all work could be like this.

A year ago I began exploring ideas about developing a new identity for myself, I thought that the symbol i was using at the time wasn’t relevant anymore, that thought led me to the notion that what i did every time I had a design problem to resolve was an act of both intention and intuition. That idea was translated into a circle cut in half i.e the left & right side of the brain. Then i asked myself the question ‘how can this 2D thing become an object that had life, that was kinetic, so i started doing models of this idea. By adding a core cube with slots to carry the 2 half disc fins on either side the object was able to be configured in different ways, while showing it to someone it fell and it continued to roll and that was the ‘happy moment’. I then got a friend of mine to photograph a 6” model which I coloured in opposing hues to heighten the tension between the two fins. At the time Richard Rawlins initiated a project called ‘Six Pieces in the Hall‘ at the agency and i had to mount work as part of the creative team, so we then choose the best 6 frames that conveyed the object in movement, this then became ‘A Dance Between the Intentional and the Intuitive‘.

One year after while working on ‘EnRoute‘ I met Christopher Cozier who in seeing the work i was doing referred me to the BECA gallery call for entries, this was the perfect opportunity to transform ‘A Dance Between the Intentional and the Intuitive’ into a functional object and in one weekend i built a 42” working prototype and submitted the work, nine days later I was selected. The final work was built with the help of David Burke- Joiner and Terry Smith- Architect.

Verb as it is now known is a title suggested by Dave Williams, because the users ability to choreograph the objects movement based on there desired needs. I think this project is a beautiful example of how the dynamics of intention & intuition works.

 

Q. How do you keep going with your personal projects when work overwhelms? 

A: Well, its kinda hard sometimes managing agency work and my work, also i have to manage life as a husband and father, so it is always a challenge. The thing is I am beginning to understand how much agency work has influenced my projects and vice versa, although I must admit my work probably benefits more because I serve as both author and client.

Q. You have a son, does he look up to you all mooney eyed when you do your sketches and objects? 

A: He is particularly captivated by the act of making, him being able to identify the images he sees is always a fun thing. Every so often he jumps in to make his own or play with a model i have made.

Q. Who are you admiring at the moment in the way of design?

A: At the moment the work and stories of Lawrence Weiner, Stefan Sagmeister and Shigeru Ban. I am very interested in how art, design and architecture converge, for that matter convergence to me is key, so observing there approach to there work is enlightening.

Q. If you had unlimited resources, what would you call your dream project?

A: I am not sure I have a dream project what I do know is I am very concerned with being able to keep the momentum. So i guess maybe it’s how do I design my career.

Q. You, Tanya and Andersonare all doing exciting stuff. Tell me about your collaborations?

A: What is really cool is we all trained and graduated from John D at the same time, we’ve become great friends over the years, we even ended up working together in the same agency.

I wouldn’t say we have collaborated on anything tangible just yet, but certainly we have been each others driving force. So I guess our collaboration has been working together to ensure we fulfill our personal creative objectives.

Q. Is there anyone locally that you would like to work with, or have worked with, on something that took/takes you out of your comfort zone?

A: I would really like to design for theater, although i have assisted Mario Lewis on a number of stage projects, me being author, idea and manager of a project would be a grand experience. The dynamics are so different from the usual challenges i am accustom to.

Q. What are some of the misconceptions you have found about what you do, and wish people would understand.

A: I can’t think of any, but just in case. I AM A GRAPHIC DESIGNER.

Q. I remember your early work at John D, do you use anything from school in your everyday work life now?

A: Not any specific style or iconography, but my process, thumbnails / Ideation has been one of those things that have stuck with me. It is easy for graphic designers to get over confident or complacent with ideas which keeps them from exploring greater possibilities.

Q. What shall you be working on next?

A: There are a couple of projects on the way, I am working on what i think is a very cool packaging design for 12 the band soon to be launched album. Then there is the stools that were part of my show En Route, I am trying a different material and making approach from the first incarnation , really hoping to bring it to market soon or they will be print and video designed to market the stools. I also have this project i started about 2 years ago called Shape Of Things (SOTS), this is an attempt to comment on the state of things based on an energy sector driven economy and some of the challenges we face or should i say consequences of being a developing nation.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

D E S I G N E R Interviews: Anderson Mitchell

Q:    Your email and other affects have the words, bleed art on them. Tell me what art and design means to you.

A.     Art is everything and design is its subset. Design is as much of everything as you want it to be, and also much of other things.

Good design in the realm of advertising includes risk.

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

–Woody Allen

Most tend to think they know what “cutting edge”, “innovative” or “groundbreaking” means, but they really don’t cause they are not willing to take the risk and therefore… very little is “cutting edge”, “innovative” or “groundbreaking”, and therefore much of that fails.

Q:      You have always been driven, from your high school days and then at John D, what would you tell the young artist about working that you wished someone could have told you?

A:    … nothing …

You have to realise your own design practice. All the good advise I got in school, didn’t make sense to me till I realised it on my own, through WORK.

Education is important, but when you go to art school no one teaches you ART or DESIGN. Teachers show you practices or techniques that allow you to discover YOURSELF.

… but … not that it matters…

1. Learn design. It is a practice and it can be learnt.

2. Design exists in art, wether you realise it or not.

3. It’s HARD!

4. and go to school

Q:     Tanya, Marlon and yourself are a group. Give me the history and the plans that you have for yourselves.

A:     Right now most of my colleagues are making headway in totally different directions,  which I like.

Tanya has been doing her thing at Above studios and is extending her industry knowledge and design portfolio.

Marlon recently did his installation and NEXT exhibition in New Orleans, while progressing his knowledge in Industrial design.

And I have been working primarily in web animation and interactive design. A major problem that exists in Trinidad and Tobago, is the lack of collaboration. Every one feels that they can do EVERY thing for themselves. Specialization has proven to be very useful in the growth of most industries. We intend to make that happen as long as we aspire to be the best at what we do.

Q:     What projects are you working on separately?

A:     I don’t know what “they” are working on… I’d say, that we have headed our separate ways together…

But I have been doing a lot of work with Spice Carnival, Photographer Mariamma, and several other clients that desire web animation and web design… and of course I work in advertising (bleah!!!).

Spice Carnival Band… I hate that industry, but when given the opportunity to make a difference, I had to take it. This was a group of young people who knew what “cutting edge”, “innovative” and “groundbreaking” meant and intended not to be a Tribe or Island people band. As a result I was able to show them how far GOOD design can push a GOOD product, and now they will settle for nothing less…

Q:     What are your views on design in Trinidad and Tobago?

A:    I think that Design in advertising has suffered for years through improper practices and flawed theories invented by persons who have no right to make “Design decisions” in the first place. Unfortunately, designers tend to make the best stable salary through Advertising.

I think that we are heading in the right direction. The availability of information (i.e. COSTTAT, UTT and also informal sources like the internet and libraries) is allowing us to get more sophisticated in the world of design.

Q:    What sort of design interests you now and why?

A: 3D design, Comic art, interface design, web animation and photography.

The public has developed a huge misconception that designers are “tech” people. LOL I think that most will find that lots of REAL designers hate the limitations of their computers. Basically, designers are technophobes, which is the reason why most of them tend to stay away from web design and other technology based forms of design. My love for technology and the internet is currently being used to try to keep design responsibility away from the computer technician.

___________________________________________________________________________

P    O     R     T      F      O     L      I       O   :  A n d e r s o n   M i t c h e l l

And here’s a sample of my work

http://www.mariamma.com/christmas/
http://www.strictlyhighgrade.com/
http://www.artzpub.com/
http://www.spicecarnivalband.com/
http://www.spicecarnivalband.com/alt/evite_ml_09/

Falling in and out of love – Concept verses Presentation

Sarah Lucas’s installation brings back fond memories of Damian Hirst and Tracy Emin

One of the hardest things to reconcile as a student is presenting a concept in a professional way if you have very little experience at it. I remember when I was in college and survey time came around. This provided an opportunity for students and faculty to see the best of the semester. Students were allotted a specific space, and it was up to you to co-ordinate that space.

What this exercise did, was it encouraged you to see your work beyond the concept. It helped you to build character as the artist you were purporting to be, because in presentation, you literally had to stand by your work and have it represent you. One semester a student decided to do a twenty foot image of himself in caricature, hanging from the ceiling in chalk pastels. Another decided to put his entire portfolio on film, and consider that his work in presentation. Did these things work? Yes and no.

This is not only true in school, this is also true in the real world with showing work to the public. Today, Art is tested as anything and everything. The artist Cai Guo-Qiang works with fire, smoke and explosives. Sarah Sze works with chaos theory and Sarah Lucas works with cigarette butts and produce and is one of my favorite British artists at the moment. These works are not package able, nor easy to characterize, yet what these artists have in common, besides very strong concepts, is an ability to craft their thoughts into resonant, dynamic imagery. It is very easy to argue, what about work that does not look neat, clean or even healthy? Take the many works using meat in the last decade. Or taxidermy?

There are many people who deliberately misrepresent Installation Art as something beyond what it is. Installation Artists like the very famous Christo sell representations of their works that are transient. At the end of the day an artist is a professional, wanting to make a living like anyone else, and art is a fickle profession as Andres Serrano of the famous Piss Christ may attest. Today’s Art Star may be tomorrow’s window washer. The flexibility of what is Art shall always swallow and spit out its progeny. It plays no favorites. Art is best understood in the future.

Cai Guo-Qiang produces artworks with fire and explosives – (visually uncontrolled)

With that said, we in the present respond via a series of markers. Some of them are technical ability, concept, skill, intention and presentation. But of late, for some, it is also is it hard to understand? Am I revulsed? Then maybe it is good. No one wants to be caught sleeping at the wheel of the next art trend. Again, when I was in college there was a guy who had great skills, he could technically render anything to look like the real thing. However, he lacked something very crucial, concept. He was reduced to being a good draftsman because of it. When I started teaching, I came across a student who had great concepts, but she could not make them jump off the page to save her life. This reduced her to a position of idea person, needing someone else to bring her vision to light.

It is very true that presentation can make something very droll, exciting and filled with more meaning than the thing ever intended. The same can be said for concept, where more can be read into something than is actually there. These challenges of perception is one of the many things that prove that art is far from easy to do, but more so, that the argument of what is good and what is not, is not so clear cut.

Sarah Sze’s kinetic chaos motifs

Photography

A shoulder injury when he played cricket professionally as a young man in India led Poras Chaudary to teach himself the art of taking pictures. Mr. Chaudhary has produced some of the most energizing, chromatically dense imagery of the Hindu festival of Holi that I have ever seen. Holi is also known as the Festival of Colors. It is a popular Hindu spring activity observed in India, and the Indian Diaspora. I came across his work during the festival, and revisited it again today, so I decided that I had to post his exceptional work.

“The fact that I am able to capture a moment in time that is never going to come again is simply very exciting for me, and the fact that nobody can ever replicate it… No matter what…”

Mr. Chaudhary has been working professionally since 2005, and already his eye is extremely distinct. He has had no shortage of awards, from Digital Camera Magazine’s ‘Photographer of the Year’ award in 2006 and the National Geographic Traveler’s photo contest Merit Award winner in 2008.

References

http://www.poraschaudhary.com/, http://blog.watersavesgas.com/ http://www.lightstalkers.org/poras, http://www.topphotos4u.info/?p=756, http://www.desinuts.com/

Art Futures

Art is best understood in the future, So you may as well be aware of yourself from now. Some artists are so calculating about this that that should be their art in itself.(For all of us who just want to make good work, there are a few of us who want to make mischief. Yes my friends, the art world, although not a clocked, regular job, still comes with the pesky characters, who are willing to take you down for nothing other than sport. These people have an eye on their image, and god forbid that you should point out that they are sometimes less than the greatest thing in the world.

No, the local art world is not filled with everyone holding hands and helping each other through the uncharted ground, and alas, if you choose to write about it, god forbid, you have now crossed over into no-man’s land of ostracism.

There are people who are not going to be friends with you just because you didn’t go to the same schools they went to. That’s absurd enough. So you can imagine when you come across the helpful professional who tells you that they have been looking at your work and they like what they see, and as you walk away they hatchet you with someone else, it happens all the time. You wonder, what is their agenda?

Getting the truth out of people in the art world is a difficult thing. You never know what some people really mean, think and stand for. There is a great deal of fear in many artist of a certain age. No amount of education or accolades seems to help them. This may simply be a quirk of personality. But in my experience, some artists in my island are harder to befriend than those from the region and beyond.

I think that it is very clear that just as in the literary world, there are artists whose personalities leave much to be desired, and so we must look to the work to draw our real references.

We must also realize that in today’s world, the more troubled and colourful the life, the greater chance at being written about. Bad behavior seems to be its own reward.

While there is nothing wrong in looking at one’s legacy and working towards it, it is the bodies that you leave in your wake, destroyed for pettiness that is nothing to be proud of. You can get ahead without meanness. See your career from a good and not a ruthless place.

So bad, it’s good

In the nineteen-eighties that phrase was coined, and it stuck. When I hear it today it sometimes makes me smile, but at other times I cringe. My reaction is extreme because when it comes to art, there is the belief that there is some truth in that statement.

I have seen the public and even students of art retract their opinions of work because they are told that it is famous or prestigious in some way. They shrink back and defer to the speaker. Sometimes this is necessary, as certain types of art in a historical context requires that the viewer understand why it matters.

I am not talking about those times. I refer to people who like and love art. People who have an opinion and when the person who made them feel uncomfortable moves away, they mutter their real feelings to themselves.

I hear more often than I care to recall, that artists are crazy and weird and that art today is shit. Again, like the saying, I have two feelings on that. I get dismayed at times, because so many other professions trawl from the experiences of art and sell these concepts back to the same public that make the negative statements to begin with. It bothers me, so I must look at both arguments.

No one likes their profession denigrated. Art has a big heart, it can take all types of experiences. If it were personified, It would be a good soul. Expression of thought is subjective. Not everyone is going to like what they see. Taste cannot be taught, nor should it be used as a tool to divide, but it is used in this way, and in other ways as well.

Educating yourself about expressions and schools of thought is always good for aesthetic, esoteric, existentialist and other reasons. Yet, at some point, education ends and thinking for yourself begins. As the Psalms said, “when I was a child I spoke as a child, but now that I am a man, I put away childish things.” Some say, I may not understand it, but I can appreciate it. Or I can give it some thought. Others might say, I know what I like and I don’t like that.

Whatever the opinion is, art is made for looking, and for the experiences that come through the maker. The creator needs an audience and the audience needs an experience. Yet to others they will still say, that it’s shit. So let them be.

Chris Ofili: The Virgin Mary
Ofili’s work is made up of paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin and elephant dung on linen.

*My note….sometimes Art is shit!

Image referencehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-10704194503,00.html

I N T E R V I E W S : Michelle Isava

 

Michelle Isava

A r t i s t S t a t e m e n t

My work thus far interrogates gender issues from a personal desire to unravel human complexities concerning areas of discomfort and prejudice as I interpret it. So doing, I weave together the personal-psychological experience with various theoretical discourses. I allow the message to decide my method and so I am not limited to specific medium and, or genre. This has led me to explore and be enamored by Performance and Video Art.

A r t H i s t o r y

2008 Womantra-this was performed for the launch of galvanize2. Again it is inspired by feminist theory. It tries to show that linguistics shape notions about gender. The word forms reality. Out of this women have been conceived as a hole, a lacking, etc, so to play with this problem I play with the word hole as whole. I’m asking a question, I’m asking that we rethink the metaphysics of woman. So I repeat the word whole and by vocalizing it, its spelling makes which whole/hole I speak of indiscernible…it could suggest many things such as the hole is whole! A statement of empowerment and independence. I also draw concentric circles on the floor creating/ manifesting/ claiming my space.

I also did performances for the International day against violence against women with the silent silhouettes project. I thought of myself as an interceder for all those killed as a result, I really did not know what I would do but it ended up that I ran in panic doing a body count…18 for 2008 when you ad police reports and news paper reports. It was performed both at Brian Lara promenade and at U.W.I. it also included giving the silhouette figures flowers to represent the unfortunate relationships that took their lives. As men typically give women flowers to buy there affection in a promise to love and not harm I wanted to give them flowers after death to show that the promise of love was broken. The videos are on youtube bellow are the links to Michelle Isava’s work:

.

Michelle Isava at Alice Yard, Trinidad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQv-A6NOyUA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg9OAbUTadE

I N T E R V I E W

Q: You have been doing Performance, discuss how you came to choose that form of art practice.

A: I came across it kind of accidentally I would like to say, while learning about postmodernism I came to realize that there is nothing inherently wrong with me but that I am just a symptom of this period…I exist only as I relate to systems and this has helped me accept myself because it actually makes sense. I am nothing more but more this I did not know how to fit or where, but this term has become a context and ‘performance’ is just another that would not be as it is now without that term that it attaches to

Q: You have a strong interest in women’s issues and you have intimated to me that gender studies is at the core of some of your concepts, elaborate on that for me.

A: I have fallen for theory, an obsession to make sense of the world I am in, but at the same time I know these theories are not truths but a creative attempt to make connections. That is what I like; and in that way I am acknowledging that nothing I do is ever new but rather it develops from ideas that already exist. Woman’s issues are important to me only because I have to question what it means that I may be seen as a woman, everything is always a problem I insist and so I am grateful for theory so that I do not have to be raving by myself, the dead could take up arms with me

Q: What are your plans for the next year?

A: i can not think that far, one never knows what will happen plus there are always various responsibilities to negotiate and balance that I do not want to try anything more ambitious than thinking and producing from the place I live from to really decide what to do next…two years

Q: What advice would you give the UWI freshman?

A: The University is your Universe do not expect to be taught by lecturers provided for you and neither in classrooms, instead choose what you want and seek it…everyone is a teacher and everything is a lesson…otherwise you are limited

Q:Who are some of your favorite artists and why?

A: I like David Blaine- Human Endurance exercises plus intense awe and innocence at the end of his ‘performances’ therefore it is anti performance. I like alex grey for his business sense he has created a subculture around his art. I like Hannah Wilke, Carollee Schneeman and Gina Paine for how they use their sexuality. I could keep going on and on there is so much to appreciate

Q: What are you reading now?

A: The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera and The Medium is the Message- Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

Q: What project are you working on at the moment?

A: Repeating Woman- it is about locating myself between Trinidad and Venezuela…

Q: You discussed with me your Venezuelan background, has that informed any of your Performances?

A: It has not really but it is a definite part of my general discomfort; something that I am very eager to work on soon.

Q: I named you best new artist of the year last year, with your performance at Alice Yard. Talk about the preparations for that work.

A: That video was of The Play The Machine it is literally about Post Modernism. It was one of my final year pieces and it was performed live to an audience at Studio film club. It involved doing a storyboard for its different sequences. It is highly symbolic and it seemed as though it wrote itself, so preparation then became a matter of acquiring the right kind of help and props. The three main sections can be divided into Being the Machine, The Consequence and A Return to Fatalism. If given the opportunity I would love to stage it again with a production team to support me.

Q: Do you think that issues of the body and gender politics will continue to impact your work? Or do you think that it is but one aspect of yourself that you are tapping into?

A: It is definitely an aspect of me, but it is a major one. So I do not know if it will ever be finished with me because I do not think these issues ever really end.

Q: If you could meet one of your influences, what would you like to say to that person?

A: I do not think I would be able to speak I would just stare

Thank you Michelle.

the aquisition buzz

A friend just bought a painting that he had his eyes on. He does not buy art or anything for that matter, without careful consideration of its purpose. This work spoke to him, and he was delirious with interest for it. This got me to thinking about this power of Art, the other side. Where, a piece of work speaks to the viewer and opens up their wallet in an instant.

I have heard arguments made my artists that a work is sometimes chosen more for co-ordinating with colours of rooms than for its own merit. However, when the heated desire to purchase is met by the purchaser, a room is thought about, to place this heavenly object.

Of course a view to where it shall fit in is in the consciousness. It is an object of desire, and it deserves pride of place.

When he got it home and unwrapped it, it took on yet another dimension. The dimension of bringing home the baby.

He stood and stared at it, and felt himself making plans and decisions around it. It was exciting. He could not just hang it up just yet.

It was speaking again to him of pride of place. Suddenly everything else that looked fine, seemed to need to be moved or adjusted so that it could breathe.

Finally, when friends are invited over, the new work will be unmistakable in its nook. It will draw smiles and comments and a straighter walk from the owner. When night approached, to turn on the light and to glimpse the work will be as much a moment of joy as it will be to get up in the morning and to see it under different light. It shall always bring a smile, a delight in its details.

There are not many things in life that you can say that about. That is the power of art acquisition.

D E S I G N E R : Chewah

 

CH3W@H

Q: Can you give me a quick rundown of your body of work, a sort of mini resume?

i’m a designer

tattoo artist

wall mural painter

art director

videographer
I am an Artist from birth, my mom allowed me to paint my room.
Placed in every art competition under twelve.
Then I did signs and tee shirts designs for high tide tee shirt co.
I have 18 years in advertising marketing experience,
doing retail and product ads, won awards for packaging
did murals for brass festival and coca cola youth festival. Designed and painted silk wings for island people mas.
Worked as an art director for westwood park did the logo for the program and also lighting tec and second camera.
art directed numerous music videos for earth tv for alyson hinds 3 canal, krosfya,
and more recent, ncc mural project

Q: You have a long mural painting at the infamous Paddock wall in the savannah, how did this project come about, how long did it take and what was the preparation like?

this landed in my lap being involved in carnival productions for over 22 years and having a position as an art director at CMB advertising when we got ncc 2009 as a client i was able to design the look of carnival so to speak, by doing stage/stands, walls and booths around the Savannah and judging points, the mural at the paddock was a dream come true for me, its a depiction of ‘jouvert tu las lap’ it took me two days to do and preparing for it was easy for me cause i don’t draw on the wall first, i paint by colour meaning i see it in my head and flow onto the wall with intuitive ease

Q: You also have a mural at the central market, just outside the capital, what was that project like?

that was a kaleidoscope paint co. project again this was done in quick time one day i had no cover and i did in the middle of the dry season, so no stickin the mural was symbols that we commonly see but in a row they tell a story

Q: Do you come up with concepts and then find ways to get the work made? What is your process?

i am an ideas man and constantly do sketches for example shelshok lifeline project the name is not original but the thought is, life should not hang by a thread, so i did the logo on gauze and stitched the text with embroidery thread.
What ever comes my way i can add to it with an informed perspective

Q:  Your body is also a canvas, how many tattooes do you have now?
over 44 sittings
my tattoos is my diary ‘ my calendar of events in my life

Q:  Do you have any art influences? Who do you admire at the moment?

life,
i’m liking my environment, where i work it’s a battalion of creatives: richard rawlins, dave williams, indra ramchran anderson michell, rodel wanner, tracy huchings, marlon darbau, marilyn morisson, ‘big up’

Q: What are you reading now?

photoshop tutorials

Q: What music are you listening to at the moment?

it comes in waves but sizzla, capleton, beene man, Vybz kartel
eminem, system of a down, lady gaga playin in meh truck

Q: What’s your next project?

my art exhibition (17) w in june on the 17, thus the name

Q: You did some flourescent coloured illustrations for erotic week, a Dave Williams project, tell me more about that.

i used raw porn and separated the tones and replaced it with childlike hyper bright colours it just feels different, it sets another mode in yuh brain i suppose we associate colours and assign feelings to them

Q: Can you give young designers any advice on getting into what you are doing?
observe and keep it simple

 

 

Latest CH3W@H

“I draw on everything!”

More  CH3W@H

too sexy for the page

As I ended my interview with Chewah and I looked at the page. I realized that the final image was his most explicit. I found myself chuckling over this, as my site is called sexypink, and it has been bereft of anything to do with sex for so very long. The Chewah image brings home the idea that there is much more to encounter in art in Trinidad and Tobago.

In the next few weeks sexypink shall be able to look at a great deal of local imagery done by artists of all abilities, as an erotica week has been suggested by a few creatives in the world of advertising. My next interview should be with at least one of the group.

Dave Williams is a Dancer, Performance Artist and Copywriter. He is the force behind the drive for more imagery of a sexual and sensual nature. I shall discuss with him the thinking behind this project as well as a background into his body of work.

I N T E R V I E W S : D a v e W i l l i a m s

Dave Williams from Big River 2, Trinidad, 2001

Q: I recently got an email from a friend telling me about an erotic week. I understand that you are the person behind the project. Tell me about it.

A: I’m just one of the people on the project. Christian Alexis, graphic designer and artist first approached me with the idea. We pulled in Richard Rawlins, another designer and Terry Smith an architect. Since then a few other people like Lisa Allen-Agostini, Darren Boodan and Rodell Warner have joined the Erotic bandwagon.

This is an interesting question for two reasons. The first is that I, like the other people on our team, will be involved in selecting the work that comes in from our public call to artists to submit work. The next is that finding time to make work and manage this thing is a lot. But all of us are practicing artists as well and we want to show work.

We also don’t want there to appear to be a conflict of interest and we want the selection process to be fair as well as appear fair. We’ve figured out a great and transparent way around this.

As you might know, we have six different venues on the Erotic Art Week circuit, all within walking distance of each other. We’re thinking of using one venue to host what we’re calling an organizers exhibition. It’ll be one of the stops on the route.

Q: Why did you get involved? Because I think it’s exciting. And it’s a great way to celebrate a part of us that we keep so hidden on the one hand, and so exposed on the other.

A: Take a look at what Carnival is. Which ever hand it’s on, we don’t talk about the eroticism that is implicit in the lives we live. A wonderful part of our beings is driven by our sexuality and I believe that when this is suppressed it can become perverse and unwieldy. We hope EAW can open the public discussion on the blurry lines between erotica, perversion and porn.

Q: Dave, you work in advertising, along with Richard Rawlins, you seem to be trying to break barriers about advertising. Can you elaborate on that?

A: It’s a pretty personal point-of-view, but I think that over the years creativity and storytelling has been overshadowed by publicity in terms of what clients need their advertising to do. Creativity is also not a premium item in our education. Cold, hard cash and empirical science are what they tell us we need to have and know to be good, successful people. I think there is a recession in our creativity and this deficit is really what drives us, Richard and us, to try doing more to contribute to the world round us. And, do you know that when you tighten your belt, your posture improves – you automatically stand taller. This could be a good time for creativity.

Q: You are the only male Performance Artist in Trinidad that I am aware of. Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me about this history.

A: I’ve never thought about my work or myself in this way. I’m still trying to recover from the question. Suddenly a huge responsibility just landed on my shoulders. I actually hope I’m not the only one.

Q: Talk to me about your signature Performances.

A: Still recovering from the last question. I think a signature performance or pieces are ones that the audience or public identifies you with. ‘Piece of Mine’, ‘The Finger’ or ‘Mannequin’ are pieces that people ask me about the most. Work with 3Canal also has a big audience.

Q: You are a dancer by training. Does this inform much of your work?

A: If it’s my work in advertising, it’s too many ways to count. Space, timing, rhythm and form are a big part of dancing, just like they are in creating ads or any piece of art, or any piece of organised communication. Dance also uses the art of drama and abstraction, it is also a direct communication with an audience. I think I’m always trying to create this kind of theatrical, live interaction in my advertising work.

Q: You have your own dance company, tell me about your company and the works that you have done and plan to do.

A: First floor Studios is a more seasonal unit that a group of dancers that work together full-time. First floor and myself seem to be transforming into something that is becoming increasingly interested in video and television. I think that the prospect of reaching more people is attractive. And my experience in advertising and performance are now merging into one lane. I want to reach more people, and TV and the internet have the power to do that. Besides, there is so much dumb shit on the TV now – I have shit I want to do to.

the best chain letter I ever got (or) How to be an Artist

1. Being an artist is a choice; no applications, no qualifications!

2. The fact that you are making anything at all is a huge triumph!

3. Be an art lover, even when it feels like your art doesn’t count.

4. Appreciate the work of your peers – they are NOT the enemy.

5. Art is the ‘wonder’ process; I wonder what would happen if…

6. Art is an experiment; FAILURE is part of the process.

7. Being ‘gifted’ is a responsibility, to give, not blow your horn.

8. Making art is hanging yourself out there, it makes you brave.

9. Avoid acting like what you do in your studio is a cure for cancer.

10. Art is not a contest, no one needs to prove themselves.

11. Letting and making are equally important choices to the work.

12. Having fun with your work keeps you working.

13. Preserve your individual voice, we count on that from others.

14. Art means making sense of life; recognizing your connection.

15. Trust your gut; your critical voice is a nay-sayer.

16. Your creativity is your power, exercise it, fire it up.

17. You have no control outside the studio, inside it’s yours.

18. Live well within your means; recylcle what others cast off.

19. Making art is a priviledge, don’t expect support for doing it.

20. Don’t mortage your art, stay out from under debt.

21. Make gifts of your work – you are the source – just make more.

22. Don’t ignore the content or impact of your work. Listen to it.

23. Get feedback; have at least one person to show your work to.

24. Artist’s statements need to be plain truth; keep it simple.

25. Treat dealers, and anyone else who handles your work, well.

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This is a hundred point list. I shall continue to add twenty five more points as the weeks go by.

I N T E R V I E W : Warren Le Platte/James Hackett

Q:  Hello Warren. I met you as your lecturer at John Donaldson Technical Institute. You and James were in the evening class.
You were both deeply interested in drawing, particularly drawing your own animated characters and had a connection from then, but you met each other before John D, is that so?

A: Yes, we met while we were both attending Trinity College, James was in a form just below me, he was at first an artistic rival then a close friend and one of the people responsible for getting me seriously involved in collecting comics. We developed a relationship from there on that has lasted till today.

Q. How long have you and James been working together?

A: This year would make it about 13 years…ish?… takin over the world is easier with a partner in crime.

Q. How do you come up with your concepts and executions?

A: Well it really depends on what it is, depending on the subject matter either one of us can take a point and develop the idea that the other can add to.. but usually we adopt a traditional comicbook kinda format… he pencils, I clean-up, ink and colour… wait nah.. I doin most of de work… steups.. he’s ah bastard.

Q. What are the two of you working on at the moment?

A: At the moment we are workin on revivin “Pooraj and Mammoo” two characters we developed while we were in John D… strangely enough… lol.. well.. actually they came alive an afternoon we duck class… lol.. and I think it may have been your class.. sorry… but I kinda stickin real bad with that.. I might end up being beaten if I don’t do something soon… lol

So I should take some of the credit then…where meh royalties! lol.

Q. What are you working on separately?

A: Separately we have a few projects in de works, I guess james will tell you about his, I am in the process of continuing to develop my painting style, I never saw myself as a painter but so far so good…  workin bigger which i’m not really used to but it’s kinda fun. Apart from that i’m also experimenting and dabbling in animation (need tuh upgrade my computer if I wanna get into any serious stuff otherwise it might explode.

I’m tryin to finish up and publish a story based around our local folklore and traditional Carnival characters, i’ve posted a few chapters on my profile on facebook to get feedback from people… very positive so far… also… developin a cartoon character named HYMC man… and doin ah cartoon series on his adventures… should be funny… with more than a smattering of obscenity and lewdness… lol … of course if all else fails… i’ll be walkin around collecting bottles… (that’s my fall back plan..)

Q.What are some of the challenges you face as Illustrators?

A: Locally we are not shown the respect we deserve and are viewed as less than artists, most people are not willing to pay for your work so is always ah fight dong scene, they want stuff done… usually last minute and then either back track or beg off when comes time to pay, it’s quite frustrating.

Q. You, Warren, Jason and a few other artists put a very interesting exhibition together many years ago at the Trinidad Art Society. Tell me about that, and discuss whether you have plans to do another one.A: The exhibition on comicbook art was a great experience, and there were quite a few entries, I would love to do another one, it would be interesting to see how everybody’s style has developed after roughly 7 years, having said that, I guess we’ll have to see if people have the time in which to produce work for another exhibition of this sort… we’ll see I guess…

 

Q. Your online comic is ridiculous! Irreverent and hilarious, will it ever become a sitcom? Share the concept behind it.
Thanks so much. Do include images of yourself and James as well as a few images of the work.

A: Well… as you know I’ve always been interested in cartoons and cartooning and I got an opportunity tuh do some stuff. Firstly with NP, they had an internal newsletter that came out every month or two I think… they provided me with the material and I was basically jus supposed tuh illustrate it.. tuh be honest some of the jokes I really didn’t understand and I guess they were supposed tuh be funny to the staff workin there… but I tried to make it visually funny so anybody readin it could ketch some kicks.

Around election time, Newsday did a kinda mock political party and I was asked to do a cartoon character for it, ah kinda mascot someting nah, apparently it was a hit because after that I was asked by the editor-in-chief if I would be interested in doing a weekly cartoon for the Sunday paper.

Of course I said yes, (at the time just thinkin i’d try make some extra money for as long as I could.. or they would let me…) I had no idea how I was gonna maintain a cartoon every week, I was not a big follower of political issues or even thought much on social issues.. where de ass I gettin material from every week tuh do a cartoon? But I said to myself, “yuh eh go get anywhere if yuh doh try ah ting…” so I did. I still can’t believe that it’s going strong over a year later. I’d like to think i’m kinda funny at times and I can make people laugh by being silly… I just try to transfer my personality onto the page and into the characters.

I try to make the cartoons visually funny as well as the content so there is more of a chance tuh get ah chuckle out of people… now there are times when I’m not too sure how the joke will be taken, but then there are times when I am literally laughin while I’m drawin the cartoon.

An example would be the cartoon I did on the swine flu, that was personal fuh me because I love pork and ah mean all kinds eh… roast, stew, geera, bake, ah guess yuh could say I am ah pork mout and tuh find out there was now swine flu? WTF!!! I was upset, then I think I overheard or read somewhere that somebody thought swine flu was man-made so I started thinking about what the conspiracy theory on it would/could be (fuelled by too many episodes of fringe and The Unit) I came up with some ideas on who would have the most to gain from not only swine flu, but bird flu and mad cow and any other sicknesses that may affect animals… of course!!! captain vegetable!!!!! THE PIECES ALL FIT!!!! YUH CYAR SEE???? IS HE DAT DO IT!!!!! FUCKIN BASTARD!!!!!!

Also I focus on stuff I know personally, like the evolution of the primary school bag and the de-evolution of the secondary school bag. I try to push the envelope and see how ridiculous I can get before I tell myself, “nah warren… yuh not serious”. If it will ever become a sitcom? lol… who knows… we’ll see…

http://shizzies.com/ten4/

Sexypink U P D A T E S

From time to time Sexypink updates existing interviews. This week the posts for Chewah, Tanya Williams and Wendell McShine have been extended.

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Thoughts on erotica week

The decision to have a seven day exploration of sexual material exhibited in seven locations in Woodbrook and St.Clair has spawned many conversations, at least it has done so for the people I know, who love art of all kinds.

 Erotic work is not an automatic choice. So perhaps that fact is a big part of the decision to choose it as a theme. Apart from painting the female nude, there is very little that one can call sensual work in Trinidad and Tobago.
Perhaps the vibrant colour palette of Sarah Beckett? Or the abstractions of LeRoi Clarke and Ken Chrichlow, the sense of intimacy is not usually considered as the foremost intention of most
artists practicing in Trinidad.

The first thought that springs to mind is to wonder what is considered erotic to some?
From what I have been able to observe from the open call seen on Facebook , I concluded that nudity is the obvious answer to ‘erotica week’.
The deadline for the work was  extended and the suggestion made for edgier material.That produced an image or two of bondage.

Is this a surprise?

Trinidad is a contradictory place where self expression is concerned. Here is a country where for two days before Lent, people gyrate in overtly sexually explicit dance, dressed in the least they could get away with on the street.
The music is also sexually suggestive.

Yet the art is as tame as it can be.

When I have discussed this with artists the reason is a bit cloudy.
On the one hand, the practicing artist will tell you that the public is uninterested in paintings of the human body.
Yet Martin Superville paints the form almost exclusively. He attempts to show intimate moments in village life.
Sundiata also paints the human form.

On the other hand, the idea of using the sale of sex to the public is not given much thought by artists. People instantly say that it is limiting, it’s been done in other countries, and painting the nude form in not the interest for them. Nor is the idea of  suggesting the emotions of sex, sensuality or erotica necessarily the cause for working.

Shalini Seereeream has begun to play with the idea of the sensual form in her body of work that takes on a rich tradition of Indian miniature history and caribbean underpinnings. She has attempted to explore female sexuality through her techniques.
Then on a more contrasted note the Performance artist Michelle Isava looks at female identity in her work.

Yet, for every artist attempting to expand their range, the desire of most artists to play it safe becomes more and more overt.

One can expect the sensual theme from Stuart Hahn, whoes media choice is coloured pencils. His work is steeped in classical themes of sex and death.

Then, in Tobago, the German artist Louise Kimme’s sculptures of Tobagonian peoples, have a natural sensual energy in spite of their clothed bodies.

This brings the discussion back to the question of what is erotica?

It certainly is not necessarily the nude form.

My friends and I agree that in order for a reasonable discussion to be had on erotica, we cannot look at the limited material of Trinidad and Tobago.
Yet, this decision to have a series of works that one must walk to is a good idea. It is an event focused around Art and it should be encouraged further.

Being the first attempt at such an exercise, it will have challenges. The plan is to have a number of activities, from spoken word and music to art, for people to enjoy, as they enjoy a drink in a bar or a lime at a studio space.

 Will this ignight thought? Hopefully it will. But more over, it should produce even more interesting work in the future.

UPDATES:Marlon Darbeau for Erotica Week

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