Arts: NG presents "Explorations" this Sunday

The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to present its new exhibition, Explorations 3: Seven Women Artists, which opens to the public on Sunday, May 31, 2015, as part of the Last Sundays programme for that day. The guest speaker will be Taynia Shirley and there will be a musical performance by Kelissa.

Explorations 3: Seven Women Artists, the third edition of a series of exhibitions that explore the big themes and issues in Jamaican art, asks the question whether any concept of women’s art is relevant in Jamaica today. This exhibition, which was curated by National Gallery Senior Curator O’Neil Lawrence, features the work of seven mid-career female artists who are based in Jamaica or of Jamaican origin and work in a variety of media: Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, Judith Salmon, Miriam Hinds-Smith, Prudence Lovell, Kereina Chang Fatt, Berette Macaulay and Amy Laskin. Viewers are invited to explore whether there are any commonalities that set these artists’ works and careers apart from those of their male counterparts and whether there is any justification to label them as “women artists.” Each of the featured artists has produced a statement on the subject that will be reproduced in the catalogue and the exhibition text panels. More information on this exhibition can be found on the National Gallery blog.

The poet-scholar Tanya Shirley has been described as “a startlingly bold writer with a particular gift for highlighting the telling detail in her vivid and arresting poems, which variously contain portraits of lovers, colourful eccentrics and family snapshots that capture the elusive magic of childhood memories, and reveal those paradoxical truths which all families strive to conceal.” She was educated at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where she now teaches between time spent elsewhere in the Caribbean and the United States, and she obtained an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. She has published her poetry in journals such as Small Axe and The Caribbean Writer, and in New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology, which was edited by Kei Miller, and So Much Things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets. Her debut collection, She Who Sleeps With Bones, was published in 2009 and she recently launched her second poetry collection, The Merchant of Feathers.

Kelissa McDonald was born and raised in the hills of St Andrew, Jamaica and was inspired from early on by reggae and Rastafari. With her parents as the lead vocalists in the reggae band Chakula, there was constantly music pulsating from her home. Her music has evolved into an expression of her background as well her stimulating living experiences in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Ghana. At the moment, Kelissa resides in Jamaica where she continues to make positive and conscious music as an avenue to express her diverse experiences and to inspire and uplift others.

Admission on Sunday, May 31, 2015 is free but donations are gratefully accepted. The doors will be open from 11 am to 4 pm but the opening speech and musical performance will start at 1:30 pm. The National Gallery gift and coffee shop will be open. Explorations 3: Seven Women Artists will be on view at the National Gallery until August 8, 2015.

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Visions of Ethiopia II: Sister Joan & the Shashemane faithful

Joan could not conceive.
For several years, she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to have children. Then, they took up the offer to repatriate to the Shashemane district in Ethiopia, as part of an imperial decree granting land for resettlement - primarily as a reward for material and moral support given by the African Diaspora during the pre-WWII occupation of the country by Italy.

The move proved fortuitous, and not only in terms of her fertility. Today, some 26 years after crossing from West to East, Joan is the mother of six, the younger ones still teenagers. Moreover, the couple are successful entrepreneurs in the community and are at the forefront of securing ongoing development (the region already boasts an upscale resort and an expanded and upgraded secondary school.

Then there's the regal- looking Gladstone Robinson, NYC-born, but no stranger to either Jamaica (where he befriended Mortimmo Planno among others) nor to Ethiopia, where was among the original "pathfinders" who started the Shashemane settlement. Hispioneering ways extended to his chosen vocation, pharmacy, and he opened the the first Black-owned pharmacy in the city of Asmara, thriving among no less than eight Italian-owned establishments.

Those remarkable folks, among others,were part of a revealing and marvelous documentary, the final in a series printed by Dr Anta and Shiva Merritt, a series aptly titled Visions of Ethiopia. The series also focussed on the human/spiritual wonders that the monolithic churches of Lalibela, the holy city(see URL). Carved out of the bedrock sometime around the 11th Century, the churches, themselves amazing, also hold an amazing collection of unique Ethiopian crosses ( including one with the now dreaded swastika design co- opted by Der Furher himself.)

Part travelogue, part social and religious history, part development activism, Visions of Ethiopia is a much-needed antidote to the misinformation and myth about the only unconquered African territory.

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Visions of - and for - Ethiopia

If you are among the unenlightened whose concept of Ethiopia involves famine and poverty (notwithstanding the present drought in neighbouring Somaliland), then prepare for an adjustment.

Firstly, Ethiopia is roughly the size of the American state of Texas and, save for a brief occupation by the Italians in the run-up to WWII, has never been subject to a foreign power.

Among the unique features of this ancient colossus is Lalibella, where churches carved out of solid rock have drawn pilgrims and other visitors for centuries. The stone churches, with their impressive craftsmanship and haunting iconography have been featured in many a travelogue, but what many of those visitors don't know, or just haven't shared, is that the surrounding communities, almost exclusively agrarian for millennia, are woefully underdeveloped.

At least they were until a group of committed young professionals decided to do something about it. Armed with university degrees and, more importantly, with a burning desire to see and implement change, the organization, Save Your Holy Land, has set about introducing modern communications, water systems (including a reservoir to support agriculture) and other projects aimed at increasing self-sufficiency among the residents and providing abase for community-driven improvement that will modernize without sacrificing the area's invaluable cultural and religious patrimony.

The future includes the construction, in collaboration with San Diego, California-based Sacred Places and Sactuaries (SPAS), of a multi-purpose center encompassing arts and entertainment, academic study, and skills training.

Drs. Shiva and Anta Merritt, founders os SPAS, shared pictorial highlights of their Ethiopian sojourn in a slide show that forms part of their "Visions of Ethiopia" program me done in collaboration with the arts- friendly Great Huts resort in Portland. Talking the audience through the images, the couple gave an expansive and movingly personal view of the dignity, strength and resourcefulness of the people determined to make something worthy of their gifts, despite the serious challenges of human and capital resource constraints. The film was accompanied by a display of modern Ethiopian religious art, honoring the established traditions, but smartly updating them.

The name Lalibella, which derives from the legendary king who spearheaded the construction of e churches, means "the bees recognize his sovereignty" -reportedly because a swarm of bees attended the future monarch at his birth. The inititatives depicted in this film, it is intended, will bring a swarm - controlled that is - of activity to the area with the aim of preserving it's vital treasures.

The monoliths of Lalibela

Taking kids out of the exploitive tourist trade and into productive activity

Other members of the group brought satellite communications, cell phones, set up a hospital and built a reservoir.

Cranial psychotherapy

Gashe Haile Tedesse, artist who reproduces sacred articles from the Holy Land