Dede Brown Featured In Bahamian Art & Culture Newsletter

Bahamian Artist Spotlight On Women Artists of The Bahamas

Inspired by the exhibition now showing at The D’Aguilar Foundation, “The F Factor: Female Artists of The Bahamas,” [The Bahamian Art & Culture] newsletter turns the spotlight on a few of the numerous multi-talented and distinctively creative female artists working professionally in The Bahamas and abroad.

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Dede Brown Fine Artist, Designer and Photographer

Dede Brown was born in Freeport, Grand Bahama in 1984. Shortly thereafter, her parents moved to Nassau where she has lived ever since. Brown studied Interior Design & Photography at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia for four years. She returned to Nassau in late 2006 and promptly started job hunting. She landed her first full time position as an Interior Designer at local architecture and design firm Alexiou & Associates. She worked there for three years until May 2010 when she made the life changing decision to become a self-employed artist, designer and photographer. She joined the PopopStudios Centre for the Visual Arts Community in April 2008 and is creating a sculpture piece for the new phase of the Airport Project.

In 2009, she participated in her first exhibition with partner and artist Dylan Rapillard at the Central Bank of The Bahamas. The work exhibited was a series of portraits, exploring Brown’s fascination with the human spirit and how it is reflected in facial expression and human form.

In 2010, she unveiled her “Cherry & Puppet Series” as part of another dual exhibition with Dylan Rapillard entitled “Dichotomy” exhibited at the Central Bank of The Bahamas. This body of work explored the iconography of the cherry and the nature of women in pop culture, drawn as puppets. This series continued into “Peep Show,” an exhibition held earlier this year at Popopstudios.

Brown is currently participating in an Artists-in-Residence Exchange Programme between the Ipswich & Colchester Museum Service and A Fine Line Cultural Practice in England and Popopstudios Visual Arts Centre here in The Bahamas as part of the ‘Stories of the World’ Programme, a project at the heart of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

The residency is entitled Material Response and in it Brown is exploring her Bahamian identity in a foreign place by incorporating aspects of Junkanoo as a symbol that represents ‘Bahamianness’ and gives Bahamians that unique identity that is different from anywhere else in the world.

“My work is mainly based around figurative drawing and painting, primarily focusing on the female form. I work in several different mediums including, inks, acrylics, oils, graphite, collage, and most recently, costume-making and sculpture.

“The current work I am creating explores self identity, and the ‘celebration of life’ through ‘Junkanoo’. These ideas are expressed through paintings and costume. The paintings reflect imagery of seemingly ‘anonymous’ female figures – this has been used deliberately to create a sense of anonymity – something that I often feel as a minority from a small country and that I’m sure many people feel from across the globe. Many of us want to belong, want to be proud of the country we are a part of…so I do not seek to give this work a negative connotation but am merely exploring a subject that I deal with on a daily basis, particularly when not in The Bahamas.” – Dede Brown

During Brown’s current artist residency in England, she is exploring her Bahamian identity by incorporating aspects of Junkanoo in her paintings and in costume-making.

Dede Brown’s “Material Response Artist Residency” Work:

(Read her blog. It’s good.)

All of Dede Brown’s artwork images are copyrighted and photographed by the artist. Photos of Dede Brown by Julie Carpenter. All rights reserved.

Jan Elliot with her quilt, entitled "Ostrich Syndrome"

Popopstudios newcomer – textile artist and quilt maker Jan Elliot recently had a quilt displayed at the Festival of Quilts Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham UK, which ran from 11 – 14 August.

The piece, “Ostrich Syndrome”, was part of the NE5 exhibition at National Art Gallery of the Bahamas last year.

The Festival of Quilts is the premier event of its kind in Europe (organised with the support of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles).

The festival has earned a reputation over the past seven years as the largest, most inspiring quilting event in Europe and boasts exhibitions from leading international artists and groups.

Too often, art classes act in a “academic vacuum” says College of The Bahamas art instructor, John Cox.  To give his advanced students experience in the local art world and to “breathe life into the art program” at the College of The Bahamas, he helps them plan and carry out site-specific art pieces.

The latest location is the new building at the College of The Bahamas, the state-of-the-art Harry C. Moore Library and Information Center — fitting since Harry C. Moore was a lifelong patron of the arts.

“I think a lot of people don’t know what a supporter of the arts he was and these pieces bring attention to it,” says Cox. “It presents a present and future effort to make the library a monument to contemporary visual expression.”

Over the next few weeks, Arts & Culture will be examining the installations in this library by his Art 400: Advanced Painting students.

Art by Khia Poitier (Photo by Edward Russell III)

How many Bahamians can say they know their constitution and their fundamental rights?  On the top floor of the Harry Moore Library and Information Center lies the law library if you want to educate yourself, but if you want to take a shortcut, make sure to look over Khia Poitier’s untitled mural in the same area. It’s hard to miss — against a background of vivid tangerine and silhouettes that span floor to ceiling, Khia presents chunks from the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Individual as outlined in the Constitution of The Bahamas.

As a site-specific piece, the choice of the law library is no mistake — Khia’s message is as loud as the shade of orange she uses, and it’s one that advocates tolerance, equality and unity using the language of those who have the power to uphold and change it.

“I think you always make a work with an audience in mind, and I think the people on this floor are the people who are studying now to become the next lawyers, lawmakers and law changers in this country,” she explains.  “I want them to look at it and realize that everyone in this mural is a Bahamian and everyone deserves to have the same rights, the same respect, the same sense of dignity.”

Compared to the other installations in the Harry Moore Library and Information Center, it’s the most politically-driven — a piece that by its very existence creates controversy and leads to change.  But it’s also refreshing, engaging and eye-opening.

“We couldn’t really access that floor when we were choosing our site, but I knew it was the law library, and once I found that out I wanted to take a risk and talk about something that I really cared about.  No where else struck a cord with me,” she explains.

It also seems to be the most permanent, having the appearance of being painted directly onto the walls.  Yet Khia explains she’s worked directly onto thin and pliable pieces of plywood — and yes, she did paint the words by hand, opting not to stencil them.

“Making it was a lot more challenging than I anticipated — I can be rather ambitious,” she laughs.

Indeed, the sizeable piece has a definite physical presence, but its message takes on a loving rather than aggressive tone.

The fact that she painted the words by hand through projection rather than stencil, and with some other members of the art program at COB who were excited about the piece, lends weight to the process of it.  Imbued in the words is the very sense of intention, excitement and hope — and not just for the future society of The Bahamas.

“Recently those of us in the art program were really dissatisfied with what was happening at the College of The Bahamas,” she says.  “I think working on a project like this of this scale and knowing where it was going, it kind of made you feel that something you were doing mattered, and that where it was going it was actually going to be respected.”

Having spent two years earning her Associate’s in Art at COB, Khia would know.  But now she sets her sights on study abroad — she recently got accepted into The Rhode Island School of Design to pursue a degree in Illustration, and hopes to embark on it early next month.

“I’m really looking forward to a change in environment and being around artists that I have no cultural connection to and to prove myself and see that what I have to say is valid and different,” she says.  “I’m excited to see how I do amongst the best of the best.”

While she’s gone, her mural will remain a somewhat audible centerpiece to the quiet stacks of the law library, reminding those who visit the space often about what is truly important to the country — the equality of all who reside there.

“I hope it makes them want to do something about it, because they are in a position to,” she says.  “I can make noise but I don’t have the degree — they can actually do something.  At this point we can’t afford to ignore it because we’re affecting too many people, our community is too small.”

Sonia Farmer, The Nassau Guardian Arts & Culture Section

Mural at the Harry C. Moore Library and Information Centre, The College of The Bahamas. 8 x 38 ft. 2011.

It’s been a year of change for Bahamian artist Margot Bethel.  After years of taking part in group shows in Nassau, she returns to the scene with her solo art show, “Departure”, opening at Popop International Center for the Visual Arts this evening.

“I think doing a solo show was a challenge I think I felt I needed to push myself towards,” she says.  “For some reason, despite having a difficult year, I decided this would be the year for that.”

The work is a departure from her previous medium of expression.  A carpenter and builder by trade, Bethel’s functional and object-based work is well-known locally.  However, in “Departure” she creates abstract paintings with sculptural elements that allude to the passage of time and the inevitable human condition of loss and recovery.

One of the central series of paintings in the show, “Protozoan”, all hold layers and layers of paint and finish which Bethel applied over a period of months to uniformly square pieces of wood — portraits that are, in effect, of time.

“Technically I could paint them forever,” says Bethel.  “But the idea I was going for was trying to get a visual sense on a two dimensional frame of what it feels like to experience time.”

“It is very subjective and personal; all the symbols and patterns in the painting are personal to me but what I wanted the viewer to feel was a depth to the painting, a falling into the painting.”

Indeed, in these pieces, symbols drift in plain view and, upon closer inspection, linger below newer applications of paint, creating the surface of some murky and ominous body of water that yields no reflection or bottom.

Viewers may find in this exhibition — and especially in her more interactive or sculptural works — a tension between the organic and the industrial, as elements from her carpentry are evident in the building techniques, tools and materials used playfully to create fine artistic work.

“A lot of times when I’m having to form a functional process in my carpentry, for example when I have to remove wood from a piece in order to fit something together, there are tricks of the trade that involve markings on wood,” she explains.  “I’ve always been attracted to textures that I’ve learned can be created on wood, and as I’m working I’ve always thought I’d love to play around with this a bit, to see what happens when I deliberately make these markings show up.”

In this series of work, titled “Ascension”, darkly-painted wood is physically burrowed into with a mechanical saw, creating gorgeous patterns that are akin to seismograms — recordings of tumultuous and earth-altering moments.  Or perhaps they are flashes of light in a dark expanse — fleeting moments of clarity.

Indeed, Bethel’s work deals with the very nature of chaos, but also the resilience of the human spirit, for in no series is one panel more or less chaotic than the other.  Instead, they simply create a movement and a depth through which the patterns change and change again, expressing that human lives are in constant states of change, coming to an acceptable — but unsettling — conclusion of adjustment.

“Science is now talking about something that a lot of spiritual leaders have been talking about since the beginning of time, and that’s that time is not linear,” she explains.

“So then you can say yes, it’s cyclical, but they’re saying that we cannot really understand how time works; we can only approach it, and approach it linearly or cyclically.  But it’s possible that everything is happening at the same time.  That’s another way of saying that this is the only moment that counts.”

But human beings hardly live their lives that way — defiantly rigid even in the inevitable face of  change, for fear of what happens after consumes us.  What does it mean to live a life without another person?  Is our biggest fear that we go on living?  What then?

The textual element in her work alludes to this, as lyrics from two separate songs spell out the despair and anger that spring from this transition: “No me quitte pas” (“Don’t leave me”) and “Je ne quitte pas.  Jamais, plus jamais” (“I do not leave.  Ever, never ever”).

“I thought, this is perfect because this speaks to the emotions surrounding the process of departing and being departed from,” says Bethel.  “I think it’s something we all want to hear when death comes our way or when we lose somebody we love, when a relationship ends, all those things.”

And yet Bethel’s work registers the marks of time, the way we keep within us some emotional souvenirs of the past and hopes for the future, the way we salvage some pieces of the life before with which to build our lives after.

Fittingly, the body of work is created mostly from leftover and discarded materials of her commercial jobs — wood panels and house paint and various finishes — becoming a tribute to the very themes she mediates upon.

“I have been trying for a very long time to make a marriage or communicate a relationship between my day job and what some people might call art — something that’s not necessarily functional,” she says.  “But there’s always an element of some other life that the work had.”

“Departure” opens at Popop International Center for the Visual Arts tonight at 6 p.m. and continues until September 3rd.  For more information call 322 7834.

Sonia Farmer The Nassau Guardian Arts & Culture Section

A hit following its 2008 release, the film “Artists of The Bahamas” builds on the momentum surrounding its debut at the Bahamas International Film Festival. Last November the artists of the film were featured in a city-wide exhibition encompassing six galleries and three weeks. Now the artists prepare for the next big event: an exhibition at the Waterloo Center for the Arts in Iowa.

The event is scheduled for October of this year.

The Waterloo’s director and curator traveled to The Bahamas for the November exhibition to begin initial research. They met and interacted with the artists of the film at that time.

“They were very impressed with the extensive Bahamian art that they were able to see, and meeting with the artists while they were here added a really special dimension,” said Pam Burnside, who organized the city-wide exhibition with Dawn Davies and Saskia D’Aguilar. The simultaneous shows featured works from their private collections.

The artists of directors’ Karen Arthur and Thomas Neuwirth’s 2008 film include Kendal Hanna, Max Taylor, Dave Smith, Eddie Minnis, Stan Burnside, Jackson Burnside, Antonius Roberts, John Beadle, John Cox and the late Amos Ferguson and Brent Malone.

Below: Artwork by Popopstudios founder John Cox from his series “I am Not Afraid To Fight A Perfect Stranger” and by Popop’s resident artist Kendal Hanna for the exhibition at the Waterloo Center for the Arts in Iowa.

Waterloo curator Kent Shankle said that the film raised the center’s interest in learning more about contemporary Bahamian art and artists. Home to the largest public collection of Haitian art in the world, the Waterloo Center for the Arts also holds a significant Caribbean collection. The collection includes numerous works by Amos Ferguson and several other Bahamian artists.

“We were really struck by the quality and diversity of the work because it’s so dynamic and interesting,” said Shankle, who works closely with the center’s director Cammie Scully, in an interview yesterday.

“We wanted to do more research on the work and we were actually disappointed to find that there wasn’t more information online about these wonderful artists. We thought about what can we do to change that,” he said.

Shankle said that the group who traveled for the exhibitions in November enjoyed the experience and were impressed with what they saw.

“It was a real joy to get to see the incredible collection. The [National Art Gallery of The Bahamas] is a wonderful resource; I was very impressed and of course I was most impressed with the talented and thoughtful artists. It was a real treat to get to engage them in conversation and hear about their work and their thoughts and their process, and in a wonderful setting. The Bahamas is a magical place,” he said.

The October event at the Waterloo Center will include a symposium featuring the artists, an artist residency with one of the artists, musical performances, a screening of the film and the exhibition.

The center also hopes to tour the exhibition to other spaces in the U.S.

“We’re very excited about every opportunity that we get to show to the rest of the world that we’re deeper than sun, sand and sea and fancy drinks on the beach,” said artist Jackson Burnside.

“We’re a people who think and who feel and who have emotions and are living as any sophisticated culture anywhere in the world. Every opportunity we get we grasp that; that’s what an artist does, expresses the soul of the people.”

The organizers said that the Ministry of Tourism and the Department of Culture are supportive of the venture.

Buoyant about the opportunities the exhibition abroad are expected to bring, Jackson Burnside highlighted decades-long efforts to boost cultural confidence in and exposure for the arts.

“By the year 2020 more people will be coming to The Bahamas attracted by our art and our culture, our heritage than those who come here for the sun, sand and sea. It’s no longer a dream. It’s becoming a reality,” he said.

Thea Rutherford Nassau Guardian

Dede Brown, one of the artists at Popopstudios, has been in England participating in an Artist’s Exchange Programme with the Ipswich & Colchester Museums and A Fine Line, for the ‘Stories of the World’ Programme set up for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

She has been blogging about her experiences and activities… check it out.

Harry C. Moore Library And Information Center Spotlight On Alistair D. Stevenson

Too often, art classes act in a “academic vacuum” says College of The Bahamas art instructor, John Cox. To give his advanced students experience in the local art world and to “breathe life into the art program” at the College of The Bahamas, he helps them plan and carry out site-specific art pieces.

The latest location is the new building at the College of The Bahamas, the state-of-the-art Harry C. Moore Library and Information Center — fitting since Harry C. Moore was a lifelong patron of the arts.

“I think a lot of people don’t know what a supporter of the arts he was and these pieces bring attention to it,” says Cox.  “It presents a present and future effort to make the library a monument to contemporary visual expression.”

Alistair Stevenson. Photo by Tara Woodside

Over the next few weeks, Arts & Culture will be examining the installations in this library by his Art 400: Advanced Painting students.

On the second floor of the Harry C. Moore Library and Information Center, weaving along the space between windows, lies a test.  It’s Alistair D. Stevenson’s installation “Contagious”, and it’s a veritable rorschach exercise—does the stained plywood drilled into a series of seven low-relief sculpture panels resemble a creature crawling along the wall?  A relief map?  A birds-eye-view of islands?  Coral reefs?

There’s no doubt the shapes themselves are organic, something which the artist — who is completing his B.Ed in Art Education — aimed for.  He’s hoping that students who sit in the space gain some appreciation for the beauty of nature and life as they take a brief break from their work to study the installation.

“In my work, I like organic forms and nature.  I like the feel of an organic space in a refined environment,” Stevenson says.

“I’m not a huge ‘green’ person, but I think just to enjoy nature is important, especially in New Providence which is developing into a concrete jungle,” he continues.

“We don’t focus on nature so we don’t focus on the little wonders in life.”

But nature is both beautiful and destructive — a two-faced coin that Stevenson draws upon to create tension in the piece.  Such abject pull is the very thing that draws its viewers in despite some underlying discomfort.

For in the end, these ink blot tests may prove not to resemble physical objects at all, but rather embodiments of decay, which in itself possesses the reminder of the passage of time.

Somewhat like a rusting hull, the piece transforms in each panel between windows, their holes becoming craters and falling away.  The middle panel itself is almost entirely eaten away, suggesting some decay from the inside out—or a metaphor for change, as viewed linearly, the shape fills out again after melting away, seeming to recover.

With a title like “Contagious”, perhaps then the question posed to the viewer is this: Is the piece the infector or the infected?  Is it the shifting amoeba, able to evolve in strength and intelligence to inhabit its hosts, or is it the host itself, the slow onslaught of disease becoming visible?

“My approach was to explore the metaphorical and literal meanings of the word contagious,” explains Stevenson.  “In a literal sense, disease is so prevalent — our fear of it, washing hands and hand sanitizer — and just the fact that it’s spreadable causes phobia.”

Yet the piece acts as a social observation as well—the way human culture itself evolves as humans essentially, thought popular vote, invent and do away with the very objects of our world and the evolution of those objects.  Think of fashion trends, for example, or the evolution of the computer, and factory farming or industrial farming.  What’s “contagious” catches on, deemed so by popular culture.

“Metaphorically the concept concerns people and population — how we move from one area to another and how we unify or stand as individuals — how we ‘go with the flow’ or express ourselves as individuals,” he continues.

This aspect too, raises many points not just about the destructive tendencies of human nature, but the overarching realities of change, whether by time or my man’s hand.

In the end though, anything you may see in this piece has meaning.  The beauty lies in that exercise of looking and recognizing the abstract and the abject, the reflection of the self.

“I would like people to see the message itself, but I like it when people can see themselves in the work,” says Stevenson.  “When people can have a conversation about your work and find part of it they relate to, I enjoy that as an artist.”

As one of the participants in the Art 400 class that got to draft a proposal and design a piece for the library, Stevenson feels honored his work is seen by so many peers in a space dedicated to a man who believed in the arts.

“The fact that we were given an opportunity to put work in a space that honors a patron of art, as an artist myself it feels good.  I imagine he’d be proud of us,” he says.

“What I enjoyed was the independence of working on it.  In the end it was just great to experience working on this project,” he continues.  “I think there’s a need to place sculpture into the environment — you can get people to enjoy nature in an area that lacks nature.”

Sonia Farmer The Nassau Guardian (Published in The Nassau Guardian, Arts & Culture, August 6th, 2011)

NOTE: Alistair is one of the three junior resident artists currently at Popopstudios.