Dialogues and Flow

On a given day, there is not that much to Kingstown, a bustling Eastern Caribbean port town, the taxi driver warns about crime and the behavior of the “youth,” people demonstrating outside of a Government building, a road side preacher struggling to complete with the thump and buzz of dancehall tracks from passing cars or from the nearest kiosk.

There is always the modest island restaurant selling Creole food for the office workers or tourist. A nice upstairs-place with decent food and decent paintings for sale, all small, all charming, all colorful and typical, offers comfort if not relief. There is Fort Charlotte looking over Kingstown and which has a small collection of paintings telling the renowned Garifuna story in an old-fashioned schoolbook style. They hang in a dark and dank part of the fort threatened by damp and mould. Artistic endeavor and also history’s predicament are explained by the circumstances. There is also a prison near the fort. There is the very eclectic St. Mary’s Cathedral, the cruise ship terminal and the Market.

Well-known is Nzimbu Brown who does his dried banana leaf collages in a little road-side kiosk near to his home. He has quite a production line going. Browne is a self-taught craftsman and artist who uses the leaves and fibres as a material to construct his collages. The artist claims that he learnt and developed the technique from a Rastafarian colleague who now resides in Ethiopia. Browne has developed a series of motifs rendered in a carefully considered graphic style. He has managed to develop a broad tonal and colour palette as well a range of surface textures. This is best appreciated in his larger works.

Browne is also a musician whose performances and recordings shift between contemporary social commentary, calypso and rapso styles. His work has been exhibited throughout the Caribbean, the U.S.A. and Europe. When not writing new music or performing in the local Calypso shows, he spends his time doing the Kingstown Market and cruise-ship hustle with his smaller more expedient works. These are an easy solution to the absence of any serious debate or the prospect of support for more ambitious endeavors. For Brown ambition is about scale. His subject matter is standard – festivals, well known buildings and vistas of the city. His graphic stylization is quite efficient. The exciting moments are when new visuals phenomena are represented such as a DJ’s sound system or a mini-van taxi similar to what are called Maxi’s in Trinidad or ZR’s in Barbados.

Caroline Sardine and her partner Anthony Washington Lyn have come back to the island...they are the standard story of young artist who have arrived from studying “away” and now “want to do something”. Sardine is an expressionistic painter whose complex images, combining text, drawing and collage become highly idiosyncratic references to personal and political concerns. The artist is a collector of random and personal items which are co-opted into the symbolic domain to create a series of constructions and conceptual objects.

The influence of Art-brut as well as contemporary art movements in the 90s throughout the region can be seen in her work. The artist holds a Diploma in Painting from Jamaica and an MA Degree in Painting from London. She lives and works in St. Vincent as an artist and teacher. On the grounds of her family’s hotel, which was once a Colonial mansion, Sardine has set up a studio for herself. She gives off a quiet confidence and her smaller constructions are discreet investigations into form.

Her partner Anthony Washington Lyn, a ceramicist originally from Jamaica and who went through the same academic institutions in London, is also beginning to set up a studio on the same grounds of the Hotel. One of Lyn’s more expressive works is an installation consisting of an arrangement of small ceramic forms looking like small humble dwellings. The final effect suggested an association between traditional dwellings in North African ancient cities and the lower income communities of informal settlement of Latin America or the larger Caribbean islands.

These artists imagine doing workshops there and making new bodies of work in their new location. They are often in conversation with Vonnie Roudette who came to the island via Trinidad and London, and who completed a mural, on the wall of the resource centre in Glenn. Commissioned by the Ministry of Education, it was made in collaboration with two of her A-level art graduates, Dane Jack and Roland Layne. An artists’ statement says
«The design is a montage made from six different paintings. The composition sets the theme of learning into the context of Vincentian life. Religion, historical heritage and nature are symbolized as the foundation of knowledge acquisition. The upper section has images of arches of St. Mary’s cathedral surrounding a moon-lit sky which radiates light upon an open book which in turn contains shapes symbolizing the windows and doors of opportunity which come from pursuit of knowledge.»

Vonnie Roudette has committed herself to education and collaborative public works. She enjoys working with young people and ensuring their success in the examinations as well as their understanding of visual language and processes. The best work of her students has also been adapted to create a series of small calendar designs annually. Like many in this system she becomes torn between her commitment to her students and her own individual artistic pursuits.

There are, of course, many artist of Vincentian origin living away and pursuing their careers, but these individuals offer and advice and direction to a host of younger aspiring artists in an island without a serious dialogue or appreciation for visual arts production. They are faced with the challenge of forming or shaping that future - interrupting the normal flow of things and the usual low expectations.