Fresh off a small symposium and art exhibit in the main JAKES building during the recent Calabash Fest, led by poet/artist Jacqueline Bishop to highlight her book, Writers Who Paint...Painters Who Write, comes a major series of shows on Artists of the Caribbean, in New York City.

First, some thoughts from the Introduction on Ms Bishops attempt to take a manageable trio of creative visual artists (including herself) and marry them with philosophy and poetic observations...or is it the other way around?

“Great writers from all parts of the Caribbean have always created vivid pictures in the minds of the readers of their poetry, novels and essays. What we have here, in this beautiful selection of three contemporary Jamaican multi-talented artists, is a continuation and strengthening of a long tradition of the concretization of literary allusions in visual form.

Jacqueline Bishop, so well known for her poems and her ‘artistic activism’ offers us, in her paintings, a series of delicately evanescent webs. We are reminded here of the random patterns of surf on the sand or the midnight spinnings of a spider.

Earl McKenzie’s sober still life paintings have the suggestive power of Giorgio Morandi, one of the greatest masters of the simple object. His up-close images speak in a direct, unadorned fashion of the unexpected complexities of everyday life.

Ralph Thompson’s landscapes and figure studies, reminiscent of such powerful masters as Cézanne or the African-American painter Beauford Delaney, demonstrate a remarkable sensitivity to the expressive power of form and color.”
(Edward J. Sullivan, Professor of Art History & Dean for the Humanities New York University)


In size, cultural scope and freshness of material, the three-museum exhibition “Caribbean: Crossroads of the World” is the big art event of the summer season in New York, itself one of the largest Caribbean cities.}

New York Times Art Review: Islands Buffeted by Currents of Change ‘Caribbean: Crossroads of the World’ Spans 3 Museums
www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/arts/design/caribbean-crossroads-of-the-world-spans-3 -museums.html

In Conversation: Writing & Painting--Jacqueline Bishop
www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol4no2/0402117.pdf

Youth-Full Art Scene: Final-Year Show @ Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts

Haunting, thought-provoking and stimulating are but a few adjectives the young artists would have left on the tongues of viewers to their annual final-year students' show on Saturday, June 2, as they dabbled in several topics:
from governments' deception to obsession, homosexuality to pornography, skin bleaching to black pride, dancehall to wildlife preservation - none was spared.

Working in a number of disciplines such as visual communication, painting, jewellery, sculpture, textile and ceramics, the impressive and well-attended show had several standouts.

Gleaner Link:
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120617/arts/arts1.html