We have come to the end of the year 2016. It has been a year filled with loss and with the unbelievable happening, but it has also been a year filled with amazing opportunities and door openings. 2017 is a year coming in like a lion’s roar and our futures seem uncertain, but let us go forth together, facing our fears and welcoming the new opportunities that will be opened with the seismic changes coming our way.
I will leave you with a few visionary artists I learned about during my trip to Barbados and hopefully they will inspire you as we head into the new year. I will see you all in 2017!
Nakazzi
Nakazzi Hutchinson is a sculptor, painter and interior designer who is of both Jamaican and Barbadian heritage. She creates life-sized figures and masks out of organic materials. As she said in her artist statement:
I choose my materials for their evocative qualities as well as their metaphysical properties. I am drawn to them by the evidence of life I see in their form, growth and decay in cosmic equilibrium. Collecting these materials is an integral part of my process, and I consider long walks spent foraging in the wild, searching and finding unexpected treasures, one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. I find in the process of peeling away the layers of the tree bark a metaphor for life and I am in essence peeling away layers of myself only to reveal other layers. I am constantly searching for truth, expressing, growing, changing, evolving …..
Fred Odle
“Barbadian Fred Odle has been a professional Artist/Designer for over 20 years, having always been involved in art from young, he signed up for the life long tour of being a professional back in 1984. Skilled in a variety of disciplines in the visual arts, he embraces each one as one and the same, “I see the visual arts as a form of expression and communication, and like language, they sound different ,but have the same meaning,” he says, his experiences in the creative fields involve graphic design, fine art, surface design, cartoons, illustration, finecraft, and product design, he has recently taken up photography . A rabid lover of music, he enjoys an eclectic mix which includes jazz, new age, classical, trip hop and anything electronic. A consummate creative, Fred is always creating and probably sees this as his only addiction.he is also a staunch believer in the unlimited potential of one’s imagination, and sees this asset as one that is under utilize and under developed in us humans and might just be the greatest possession we all have.”
Ras Akyem I Ramsey
Barbadian painter Ras Akyem is a graduate of the Edna Manley School of Art in Jamaica, his work is heavily influenced by the Rastafari Movement and the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. His artist statement is: “Art is an act of magic; an intuitive response to primal/ancestral imperative, a passionate impulse to create or destroy.”
Read more about his work here.
Shakirah Bourne
Shakirah M. Bourne is a Barbadian fiction writer, screenwriter, playwright and filmmaker who recently premiered her futuristic musical, Mirror Mirror, at the Barbados 50th Independence Anniversary Gala in November and is also the writer of the play, Tales of the Obeah Man. She is currently woking on her remake of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called A Caribbean Dream.
Check out the Previous Astro-Caribbean posts and stayed tuned for how I will continue the Astro-Caribbean series in the Black Speculative Arts Movement Conference in the Bronx on April 22nd!
Space:Queens with Damali Abrams and Shervone Neckles!
StoryCraft featuring my children’s storybook idea, Jenny!
Caribbean Comics
Sherese Francis: Futuristically Ancient 