One of the 2016 residents, Navarro Newton, working at Popopstudios. (Photo: Popop Junior Residents.)

Incentivizing Local Emerging Artists
It is a long upheld tradition in ‘the art world’ – that seemingly separate planet where for many it is baffling that one can take an unmade bed or a pile of bricks and call it art. Nevermind the fact this is all done with good conviction and reason – artists of all ages and in stages of their career can embark on the near-baptismal journey of the artist residency. Emerging or established artists uproot their lives and set those roots outside of their everyday – for a period of weeks, months or even a year – and set out to make work and ruminate on their surroundings.

For the Popop Junior Residency Prize recipients, things are thankfully a little bit closer to home. The College of The Bahamas (COB) students Nowé Harris-Smith, Navarro Newton, and Keith Thompson showed the utmost gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity awarded to them, courtesy of a collaboration between Popopstudios, The Charitable Arts Foundation and The D’Aguilar Art Foundation who’ve kindly offered to support the studio rental and art-study trip that accompanies the residency and PopopStudios. The former establishing and undertaking this important incubator for emerging Bahamian artists for the past eight years.

The newly anointed residents will benefit not just from a free studio space and beautiful grounds to work in, but from the active community of artists who occupy the space – including their tutor, Heino Schmid, who will continue to help oversee their development, albeit in a different manner than they might be used to. Schmid emphasizes. “Truthfully, I try to keep the dynamic very different and treat them as emerging professionals who want to work, and it has worked out in their benefit.”

Even in the fledgling stages of this residency, the artists appear keen to agree, and it would seem that they aren’t the only ones who are creatively profiting from the experience, as Schmid adds, “I think all the past residents that we’ve had have really benefitted from the experience and we have jointly benefitted from having them here.”

He stressed this very particular sort of symbiotic relationship between the students and the usual denizens of the studios. In particular, the mutually beneficial way that the prize winners thrive from interacting with the long-standing artists already in the space. In turn, the new residents help inject the familiars with their enthusiasm helping to loosen the rigidity that can come along with having an established practice.

With John Cox (former lecturer at COB, as well as the founder of Popopstudios ICVA), Schmid explains that they nurture this "delicate stage" of their artistic development and the "fragile confidence" associated with these nascent phases of their burgeoning art practices.

Beginnings
All three of the residents come from a rather similar background of art when it comes to their high-school education, two of them spent their years here in Nassau whilst Newton underwent the majority of his schooling in North Andros. Then they were on different paths, aiming towards more inflexible schools of thought in the sciences before they were all plucked up by teachers and committed themselves to the arts.

Thompson was found drawing on lunch breaks and took the BGCSE without attending a class, his teacher giving him all the prompts for coursework and coaxing him to sit the exam. Similarly Newton was commandeered into art in the 9th grade after an almost identical experience, and Harris-Smith found herself changing her major from Biochemistry at the college to a BA in Art Education.

Harris-Smith couldn’t imagine her life any differently and is champing at the bit for her chance to dig into her practice and the space. She hopes to “pretty much gain general exposure and experience of art itself - whether it's through my research or through what I see when we travel as well as developing my own skills: [be it] photography, painting, anything like that.” Harris-Smith has also landed herself yet another advantageous residency for young practitioners – the Caribbean Linked IV residency scheduled to take place in Aruba during August where she will work alongside eleven emerging regional artists and writers along with international scholars, curators and critics. These are just her first two residencies.

Art Abroad + Future Plans
The group all show the expected excitement of not just working in the studio, but also for the prospect of being exposed to more art than they can ever have imagined in a stimulating museum-based trip to New York City. The group will be working with some of our Bahamian greats like John Cox, Heino Schmid, Tessa Whitehead and Kendal Hanna who all call Popop their home, while being inundated with iconic work from the most influential contemporary and modern artists and collections of the past century.

Though perhaps this is because they aren’t solely undertaking their practice for themselves, all three seem to feel a higher calling to add to the rigor of Bahamian art and culture. They are also concerned about the environment of their local space and want to help nurture young groups of artists on their own. Newton shares his ideal plans for a youth art space, “[I’d like to] gather up students from all over the country or all over the island and just have them come together and create … because oftentimes people don’t realize that art is fundamental for expression - regardless of which art form it is”. Harris-Smith seems to share these views, expressing her joy at the thought of becoming the next Sue Bennett-Williams, a teaching pioneer in Nassau whose youth art classes have helped shape generations of artists.

As for Thompson, who has been drawn into the forays of black culture in his art practice, he wishes to dig more deeply into Bahamianness and Bahamian blackness during his time at the studio. His aim is to delve into life as we know it from a cultural sense of civic duty, “because [he feels] like our country is in a state of identity flux” and he wants to do his part to help us unpack our very peculiar state of cultural affairs.

The Popopstudios Junior Residency has its own esteemed legacy and has helped a number of our younger artists find their paths to artistic discovery. It is a genuine philanthropic effort that is meaningful to the artistic community who get to benefit from the project’s merit. The residency continues to provide a key cultural function in the formation of the Bahamian art scene, culminating in just about any format possible, a presentation, a performance, a public sculpture, an exhibition, a book, or a middle finger to the world.

As long as it’s done with conviction and a true sense of justification, it’s all adding to the cultural work we are building as a society in The Bahamas, and we must simply ‘sit small’ and wait in anticipation to see the harvest.

Behind the counter (from left) are Bahama Hand Prints owners Linda Brown and Joie Lamare. Bahama Hand Prints celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. (Photo: NAGB)

Prints are the name of the game with this weekend's Arts&Culture section. As Max Taylor makes a welcome return to multiple methods of printmaking at the D'Aguilar Art Foundation, another group of creatives celebrates half a century of delighting in the art form.

Every day, Linda Brown, Joie Lamare and nine dedicated craftspersons get to work on creating classic prints for another purpose. Many of us have seen them - Bahama Hand Prints' iconic patterns and brilliant colors are quite hard to miss.
And since 2016 marks the company's golden anniversary, multiple generations of locals have had time to get familiar with at least a few of its 100-plus prints.

Sisters-in-law Brown and Lamare are the fifth generation of Bahama Hand Prints owners and are making a special effort to remember the company's founders, artists Helen Astarita and Berta Sands.

Stumbling on inspiration
On a trip to Key West, Astarita and Sands visited a local fabric printing shop, where they saw fabric being hand-printed using one-of-a-kind designs and silkscreens. The two believed the practice would be a lucrative business at home, in The Bahamas, and got to work developing their technique in silkscreen printmaking. They learned to mix ink, design products and sew, and, in 1966, Bahama Hand Prints was born.

An evolution
Since those days, Bahama Hand Prints has changed hands and location, and modified its business model. Today, from its unassuming location on Ernest Street, the company boasts a factory, sewing room, boutique and small but zealous team that maintains a healthy and energized stock and loyal clientele.

For Lamare and Brown, running the company is a dream come true. Growing up in The Bahamas, they'd known the Bahama Hand Prints brand from childhood. They acquired it in 2001, after Lamare returned to The Bahamas from France, where she'd lived for 15 years. Brown had been working as a biology teacher at St. Andrew's International School for 15 years.

"Linda and I and our families happened to be on holiday together, and I said that would be a very cool business to buy and run," recalled Lamare. "My husband had just acquired permanent residency with the right to work and all of the dots were connecting. A good friend of ours said the owner was selling the business, so that started the ball rolling."

The company was then a far cry from what it is today. Bahama Hand Prints was located in Airport Industrial Park, where it consisted of a printing workshop and a small sewing operation that made napkins and other small household goods. For clothing production, the printed fabric had to be shipped abroad to a New York-based factory. Bahama Hand Prints remained in that location for three years before Lamare and Brown acted on their shared vision to grow the company, provide more employment and make it more authentically Bahamian.

"We really needed to expand the production so that we could manufacture everything here," said Lamare.

At the time, Western New Providence was largely undeveloped, and the eastern end of the island seemed to be the best bet for establishing a lucrative headquarters, complete with a boutique. The company was set up a stone's throw away from the eastern Paradise Island Bridge.

The move was a good one. With the addition of new staff, and engagement with local artists, Bahama Hand Prints was able to add to its collection of print designs.

Keeping things fresh
Over the years, the company had already acquired designs by Astarita, Sands and a young Brent Malone, who designed the pattern of a wall hanging for the company. Creative Nassau Co-founder Pam Burnside, Lamare and Brown have also contributed to the company's print stock. And in more recent years, artist Dylan Rapillard, was able to add to the collection of prints.

"Dylan came on-board nine years ago," said Brown. "He started out as a printer, but he evolved into a print designer over time. It got to the point where he was creating three or four new designs each year for a while there and really grew the repertoire of prints."

Having such a comprehensive stock of prints keeps Brown and Lamare both busy and excited about freshening up inventory.

"The best part for me is the artwork," said Brown. "It's the heartbeat of the company. If there wasn't any artwork, there wouldn't be any Bahama Hand Prints."

For Lamare, it's the process that's the special part. "I just love laying that fabric down on the table and hearing that squeegee run through the screen. And then you lift that screen up, and it begins to move to the next frame. It's like opening a Christmas present," she said.

They are not the only ones excited about the company's prints. Customers travel near and far for their very own Bahama Hand Prints piece. According to Brown and Lamare, being off the beaten path hasn't stopped international die-hard quilters, cultural enthusiasts and even celebrities from making their way to Bahama Hand Prints for a peek at the production process and a browse through the well-stocked store.

"This is just an incredible institution to keep going," said Lamare.

Brown added: "I hope it continues to be successful and embraced."

They have no plans for slowing their momentum. It is their hope to establish a presence on the rapidly expanding western end as well as in Downtown Nassau, but in the meanwhile the duo is simply interested in "giving Berta Sands and Helen Astarita the recognition that is really due, because they were the ones with the original vision".

For more information on Bahama Hand Prints, call 394-4111 or visit the company's website bahamahandprints.com.

The music, films, art and iconic photographs of The Bahamas were recently on display in Beijing, China, as Bahamians participated in the 2016 Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange as part of the overall 16th Meet in Beijing Arts Festival which annually attracts hundreds of artists from around the world.

Bahamian artists performed at the highest level and were well-received at this Beijing world celebration of the arts.

The 16th Meet in Beijing Arts Festival opened at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) on April 25, 2016 with a Spring in China and Canada themed concert.

Chinese Vice-Minister of Culture Ding Wei, and former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps, attended the concert.

Ding addressed the audience before the concert saying, “Since its inauguration in 2000, Meet in Beijing has developed into a comprehensive international arts festival. After 15 successive sessions, it has presented diverse and fabulous cultures and arts through performances by more than 30,000 artists and 1,000 art troupes from 115 countries and regions to the Beijing audience.” (http://www.chinaculture.org/2016-04/29/content_769698.htm)

Commonwealth of The Bahamas Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, His Excellency Paul Andy Gomez stated that “these are very exciting times for the development of culture in The Bahamas,” and that “The Bahamas was well-represented in China by all the participating artists.”

The Latin American and Caribbean Music Festival segment of the cultural exchange took place April 30 through May 2.  Bahamian musical groups Visage, Fred Ferguson and the Tingum Dem Band, along with Fred Munnings Jr. and the Goombay Dancers, represented The Bahamas at the highest level and were overwhelmingly embraced by festival attendees.

Visage presented an amazing 30-minute musical narrative of all original Bahamian music, which included 6 transitions and a choreographed routine. Visage band leader Obie Pindling says “this created an exciting visual to go along with the narrative.” Pindling says, "All music performed by Visage was original Bahamian music, either recorded or performed by Visage band members.” He added, “It was an honour and a privilege to have the opportunity to represent The Bahamas on this level.”

Fred Ferguson of Tingum Dem band said “opportunities such as these represent a monumental opportunity for Bahamian musicians and I am hopeful that a rake and scrape and Junkanoo component will be added to the presentation in the coming years.”

Ambassador Gomez stated that “Fred Munnings and the Goombay Dancers were the opening act at the Caribbean Food Festival and they immediately got everyone involved, followed by the great Caribbean talents Mr. Killa, Rupee, Everton Blender and others. Fred Ferguson and Tingum Dem are unquestionably the number one house band in The Bahamas and their performances were flawless at 798 ART ZONE.” He said, “Bahamians who see Visage perform often may not appreciate the impact that they have on an international audience because they really put on a musical and dance show in Beijing.”

With a direct focus of introducing Caribbean films to the Chinese public, the inaugural Caribbean Film Festival also kicked off on May 6 through 8. The opening night film was ‘Trailblazer: The Mychal Thompson Story,’ and the film’s director Gina Sealy was on hand to participate in a lively Q & A session after the film.

Other Bahamian film selections in the festival included the award-winning ‘Gentle Giant: The Andre Rodgers Story,’ also directed by Sealy, and ‘My Father’s Land’ a documentary by Tyler Johnston and Miguel Galofre which explored the life of a well-loved Haitian gardener Papa Jah, as he returns to his homeland from The Bahamas, to visit his 103-year-old father.

Ambassador Gomez says that “clearly Bahamian Director Gina Rodgers Sealy is at the top of her game with ‘Trailblazer’ and ‘Gentle Giant: The Andre Rodgers Story,’ which were presented with Mandarin subtitles for the benefit of the Chinese audience, and which were very well-received and the audiences got to know a lot more about the best of The Bahamas.”

Other Caribbean and Latin American nations participating in the event included Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Argentina, Dominica, Suriname, Brazil, Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua and Barbuda.

Sponsors for the event included: The Government of the Bahamas; Sir Franklyn Wilson, Chairman of FOCOL; Ivylyn Cassar, Vice-Chairman of Equity International Bank and Trust Limited; and Robin Nichols, President of the Palm Cigars and the Directors of Paje Investments Limited, China Arts and Entertainment Group and Instituto Cervantes Beijing. Ambassador Gomez stated that without the 11th hour sponsorship by Sir Franklyn Wilson, Ms. Ivylyn Cassar and Mr. Robin Nichols the event would not have been the success that it has turned out to be.

L-r: Bahamas Embassy, Beijing, Consul Julie Campbell; Bahamas Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China His Excellency Paul Andy Gomez; and Bahamas Award-Winning Film Director Gina Sealy.

Deputy Director, Ministry of Culture, Beijing, China, Jin Liang; and Bahamas Award-Winning Film Director Gina Sealy.

Gina Sealy, Bahamas award-winning film director, addressing festival attendees.

Bahamian artists.

Visage in concert.

Visage in concert.

Bahamas Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China His Excellency Paul Andy Gomez, right.

By The Embassy of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Beijing, China.

Judges make difficult decision for Earth Day Colouring Competition!

Primary school students throughout The Bahamas picked up their crayons and showed off their creativity this Earth Day for the Big Blue Earth Day Colouring Competition. The judges reviewed over 300 entries and selected the masterpiece of Dinaj Major, a student at Nicholls Town Primary School in Andros, as the overall winner. Dinaji was awarded a BNT family membership (for four) and two hundred and fifty dollars worth of school supplies from Bahamas Waste.

Andros Student Wins Earth Day Colouring Contest

“When we launched this competition we were not sure what to expect,” said GM of Bahamas Waste Francisco de Cardenas “We only had one entry at our office, but when we found out we had over 300 entries from around The Bahamas, I was overwhelmed. I wanted to see them all!"

Over 300 Entries for Competition!

Source: Barefoot Marketing