Ceramicist mother and daughter duo Jessica and Erin Colebrooke presented their third joint exhibition at Hillside House.

“A New Direction: Mother & Child III” will showcase tile murals as well as large scaled sculpture, but according to mother Jessica, this one will be a slight departure from what audiences are used to.

“The mother and daughter exhibits have always had a compositional link to the theme ‘Mother and Child’,” Jessica explains.

“I have included tile murals that depict that aspect of a mother’s love for her child(ren), pregnancy etc., but the main reason why it is themed ‘A New Direction’ is for the public to be aware that I will also use this platform (the ‘Mother & Child’ exhibits) to display my most recent body of work. So in other words, don’t think too literally on the theme ‘Mother & Child’.”

For her part, Jessica says her pieces in this exhibit focus more on the link between the Bahamian and African diasporas. Daughter Erin, eight, explored her appreciation for “the beauty in people”.

According to Jessica, “[Erin's] figures depict her interest in the variety of complexions, hair colors, eyes, hair styles etc. – girly things that most eight-year-old girls become consumed with.

“At this point in her life, I want my daughter to have fun with the medium, with learning all the technical aspects of clay. Eventually, once she is armed with all the necessary tools for her to stand artistically firm, I would love to see where she ventures.”

This exhibition is also Jessica’s first at the Antonius Roberts Studio and Gallery at Hillside House, which she is very excited about.

“The previous Mother & Child Exhibitions were all done at my gallery (Jessica’s Tileworks Studio) in Gleniston, but this year I wanted to bring it to a new venue,” Jessica says. “I love the space that Mr. Roberts has, I like what he is trying to do for the art community and I just thought that this would be a perfect fit for this period in my life.”

Roberts is no stranger to Jessica. He was her instructor at a Finco Art Workshop in 1988 as well as when she was a student at The College of The Bahamas, prior to her attending Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Though this is the third joint exhibition, the mother of two has also held six solo exhibitions and established the All Ceramics Exhibition (ACE), a biennial exhibition that serves to “bring together the ceramic artists around the country to display their skill/craft on this platform, and part proceeds go towards the Denis Knight Award established in 2009 at The College of The Bahamas for a deserving student that displays a strong portfolio in the area of 3-D art”.

So what’s next for this mother and child? Jessica plans to continue developing and challenging her skill level and creativity, but says audiences shouldn’t be surprised if they see Erin’s name on an exhibition by itself.

Reva Cartwright-Carroll
The Nassau Guardian
Published: May 4, 2013

The exhibition includes work by John Beadle, Jackson Burnside, Stan Burnside, John Cox, Amos Ferguson, Kendal Hanna, Brent Malone, Eddie Minnis, Antonius Roberts, Dave Smith and Max Taylor.

The show was initiated by the Waterloo Center for the Arts (WCA) in Iowa, and filmmaker Karen Arthur to help raise the profile of Bahamian art in the United States and expose Bahamian artists to new audiences.

Karen Arthur and Thomas Neuwirth are directors and producers of several films about Bahamian artists, including “Brent Malone: Father of Bahamian Art”, “Amos Ferguson: Match Me if You Can” and “Jackson Burnside III: Native Son”.

The artists featured in their “Artists of The Bahamas” documentary are also featured in the “Master Artists of the Bahamas” travelling exhibit.

Responding to criticism about the lack of female representation, Amanda Coulson, director of NAGB said: “Those were just the biggest names at the time that the filmmakers kept getting repeated to them, so they decided to put together those names and as a result the show came from that.”

Ms Coulson said all eleven participating artists are no doubt master artists, but she did acknowledge there was debate when the show was first curated about the absence of female artists.

“We are very proud to have it here, but as a result we also curated another show on the ground floor called ‘Single Sex’, which features only female artists. So we did that in order to kind of balance the equation,” said Ms Coulson.

“I think one of the issues is that back in the 60s and early 70s, they weren’t very many female practitioners. People of the generation of Max Taylor and Stan Burnside, they don’t remember Bahamian women at that time participating in art.

Ms Coulson said it really wasn’t until the generation of John Cox, where a lot of women artists became known. She said the idea of the travelling show was that it needed to show the development of artists, which came from people like Amos Ferguson, Stan and Jackson Burnside, Max Taylor, Antonius Roberts and all of these names that art enthusiasts are familiar with.”

Participating artist Stan Burnside said: “This show came out of the heart of one of our major collectors here, the founder of the D’Aguilar Art Foundation, Vincent D’Aguilar. He spoke with Karen and all of the filmmakers because they wanted to do a show about a group of Bahamian artists and they had asked him to select. To the best of his ability, he chose a selection of artists whose works he was familiar with. As a collector, he was excellent and he really got to know your work.”

“I think in those days there weren’t any women working, and certainly Mr D’Aguilar had a vast knowledge of the work being done. I think he watched the development over the years and these were the artists he knew over a 30 year span. However there are a lot of females who are worthy of salutation,” said Mr Burnside.

For Max Taylor, he said it was a privilege to be part of the show.

“When you think of an artist like Kendal Hanna, we are sort of contemporaries and we came from the same generation. Then you have other artists like John Beadle and John Cox. I think with all of us going together, it was a great experience for every one of us individually,” said Mr Taylor.

Dave Smith said when the show was put together some years ago he was familiar with all the artists. He described them as a dream team. It was an honour to represent the country and it was an honour to show with those artists,” said Mr Smith.

By Alesha Cadet
The Tribune

How Does one capture the essence of a bubble on canvas, and create each bubble uniquely? Veteran artist Antonius Roberts was faced with this task when he began developing the concept for his new show “Bubbles” three years ago.

View the collection (1.9MB PDF)

The show features 22 pieces of acrylic on canvas and paper, and a hanging blown glass installation. The show opened last Thursday at the Central Bank of the Bahamas Gallery and will remain open for three weeks.

Roberts determined that creating bubbles with simplicity, floating freely through air was the best way to exhibit their nature. By strategically using colour, he was able to make the bubbles appear to have movement.

“The pieces are similar but different. What is so interesting is that people are making those distinctions. And you can see that in the movement. The bubbles have movement, they are not still or repetitive. I made them similar and different because I was painting the same concept. I thought, how do I capture the essence of a bubble. I can just do it once or I can just do it over and over,” he told Tribune Arts.

click poster to enlarge

Mr Roberts’ artwork often penetrates beyond the superficial and obvious. In”Bubbles” exhibit, he opted for simplicity, intending for the exhibition to be playful and childlike.

“It is meant to be celebratory and it is meant to actually encourage or motivate the viewer to think about a moment in their life when they felt light, when they felt child-like. Particularly, when I was a child growing up I liked running and jumping in the sea.

Every-time I splashed, bubbles would come up and every-time I dive even without a mask, bubbles would come up. Those bubbles to me were just so exciting because they were created by air under clean, beautiful, turquoise waters,” he said.

The paintings were also designed to capture the aesthetic qualities of Bahamian waters which Mr Roberts said is often taken for granted.

“When I think about the Bahamas and our ocean, I also think about how lucky we are to have such a beautiful environment. Our waters are just so different: from Exuma, Abaco, Eleuthera to Grand Bahama. When I was given the opportunity to do a piece for the international airport I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful to try to capture that beauty that we take for granted in the Bahamas, but in the form of a bubble to hang inside the airport so that as people come and leave they can celebrate this beautiful, clean, translucent, transparent bubble,” he said.

“The reason why I wanted this exhibit to appear so simple, because I am hoping that someone will see and appreciate that life is also but a bubble and the same wonderful waters that we celebrate could one day evaporate like a bubble. A bubble is so beautiful yet it is momentary. The bubble will burst one day and its up to us to appreciate and celebrate that.”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the hand-blown glass sculpture. Glassblowing is a technique that involves inflating moulten glass into a bubble with the air of a blowpipe.

Mr Roberts said he wanted the glass sculptures, which hang from the ceiling of the Central Bank Gallery, to capture the essence of the waters in the Bahamas. He said glass was the best medium to capture that since the lightness and transparency of water can be clearly seen through the sculptures.

In the near future Mr Roberts hopes to suspend 150 of the hand-blown glass sculptures at the new terminal in the Lynden Pindling International Airport.
Being conscious of the interior design of the gallery, Mr Roberts only mounted his work on the white wall spaces. He did not want his work to clash or fight with the marble walls in the gallery.

“The marble wall is an installation in itself and I did not want to compete with that. I just wanted to work with the white spaces. That is why I do not have a lot of pieces but the exhibition still feels full. I am not interested in filling every space because I wanted the art work be part of the architecture of the gallery and not fight with it,” he told Tribune Arts.

Mr Roberts is involved in several other projects that will launch in the upcoming months.

By JEFFARAH GIBSON
The Tribune
Published: Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Hillside House presents Flower of Dreams: A collection of floral paintings by Lisa Quinn of Bermuda.

Exhibition opens at Hillside House on Thursday April 11, 2013 from 6 – 9pm

Schooner Bay Institute for the Arts & Sciences is a not-for-profit organization seeking to advance the understanding and stewardship of our cultural and environmental assets through multi-disciplinary research and outreach.

The Institute is headquartered in Schooner Bay, a traditional harbour village on the Bahamian island of Great Abaco that has become a leading model and proponent of sustainable development in the Caribbean region.

The facility itself is an 1800 square foot building located on a 100-acre tract of Crown Land at the entrance of Schooner Bay designated as communal farmland and an economic empowerment zone for all of South Abaco.  An art motel with 15 beds, a kitchen and a dining room/ study as well as a clinic with conference rooms and offices are all part of this dynamic and flexible facility.

With a nightly bed rate of $40, this is a comfortable, affordable base for visiting scholars and artists, complete with all of the resources required to facilitate productive research and collaboration in a unique environment teeming with ecological diversity.

Schooner Bay Institute for the Arts and Sciences is a place of idea generation where global and local expertise combines to promote the sustainable growth of South Abaco and the islands of The Bahamas.

Visit www.schoonerbaybahamas.com for additional information

Cuba and The Bahamas share a common cultural and geographic space. Characteristics that goes back to the prehistory of both archipelagos. Our entrance to written history on the deck of Colombus’ ships only have days of difference.

Larios Gallery western wall

The annihilation of native populations, the Spanish colonization, and the African population forced dislodgment are historical causes that condition the cultural community we share. Only the small detail of having different metropolis thwarted a communication that should have been natural as in the time of Arawak navigators.

The exhibition seeks to contribute to our cultures’ mutual rapprochement, to our identities acknowledgment, to the formation of our people’s unity that constitutes our only cultural future survival guaranty in times of homogenizing globalization.

Larios studio-gallery hosts one of the featured exhibitions and has much in common with Bahamian and participating artist Antonius Roberts’ studio-gallery – Hillside House. Both are 19th century historical buildings housing art creation. Both Larios and Roberts restored and adapted their building but preserved its original integrity.

Both Larios’ and Roberts’ rehabilitation was supported by institutional sponsors and artists’ work. The community of origins, intentions and collaborative culture of is an essential foundation for future joint actions. A route begins with this present exhibition.

“This Is How Much I Love You” John Cox

In this exhibition, Antonius Roberts’ work deals with ecology and personifications of natural forces inspired in mythological figures of African origins. He is also interested in Bahamian history preservation. He frequently uses recycled material rescued from ancient buildings restorations to recreate aspects of historical sites.

Also participating are Bahamian artists Heino Schmid and John Cox. Heino’s work depicts a representation of Bahamian common life legitimizing it from the academic school codes tempered with expressionist gestures.

John’s featured piece” This is how much I love you” was the singular piece showcased in the Vicentina’s de la Torre Academy of Arts Gallery.

Bahamian Arts & Culture

The tour will begin earlier at 9:30 am and have a new point of departure. Whereas in years past, patrons gathered at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, they will now depart from Dockendale House on West Bay Street in buses provided by Bahamas Experience Tours (the event’s official transportation Sponsor), allowing for the NAGB to become a formal stop on the tour with their exhibition “Single Sex”. Offering a range of interpretations on portraits of females exclusively by female artists, the NAGB display will provide a refreshing spin on traditional portraiture.

Meanwhile, at the D’Aguilar Art Foundation, the exhibition “Disrobed” will delve into the unclothed human form as interpreted by a selection of Bahamian and international artists, addressing the inspirational and controversial roles of nudity in the art world throughout history.

At the Antonius Roberts Studio and Gallery at Hillside House, the exhibition “Ripple” will also bring many artists together, but for a fundraising cause. Work by more than 50 artists will go towards arts programming such as local residencies for Bahamian artists.

The beautiful outdoor area of Stingrae Studios will hold an exhibition of realistic artwork under a variety of pleasant everyday themes by the artists Malcolm Rae, Erlin Carey, Toby Lunn, Quentin Minnis, Craig Roberts and Ana Wassitsch.

In a group show at the College of The Bahamas’ Harry C. Moore Library and Information Center, students will offer innovative and experimental takes on the theme “Kinetic”, bridging the gap between painting, sculpture and ceramics.

“Two Points of View” at Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts will place the works of Kendal Hanna and Eleanor Whitely side-by-side. Though the exhibition will explore the similarities and differences in technique and perspective in the work, it is also a testament to the long friendship shared by the pair as they met each week to paint and draw a live models. Ceramic work by Imogene Walkine will also be on display on the porch.

Meanwhile at the Liquid Courage Art Gallery, a new gallery on the Tour, two artists—Dennis De Caires, born in Guyana, and Bahamian Maxwell Taylor—will showcase their woodcuts and paintings in “Stories”, drawing upon Caribbean folklore and history.

Finally, the Doongalik Studios Art Gallery will present “Su An Ty—A Symphony of Sound and Sight”, showcasing indoor and outdoor displays of metal bells by Tyrone Ferguson, ceramic bells by Sue Bennett Williams and dazzling Junkanoo-inspired pieces by Andret John.

Be sure to secure your spot on this year’s tour by reserving your $30 ticket today at the Doongalik Studios Art Gallery, #20 Village Road (394-1886), or at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas on West Hill Street (328-5800).

For more about Transforming Spaces, find them on Facebook and online at www.transformingspacesbahamas.com

Photo caption: Transforming Spaces 2013 Committee members Back Row (l-r) Katrina Cartwright, Alistair Stevenson; Front row: Sonia Farmer, Jay Koment, Pam Burnside, Tessa Whitehead, Jaime Lewis. Not shown: Amanda Coulson, John Cox, Malcolm Rae, Antonius Roberts

Ever wonder what it would be like to watch artists and their work in progress? Passers-by and gallery visitors will get that chance this weekend during the second Sketch24 fundraiser for Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts.

Sketch24 kicked off at 12 p.m. Friday when several Bahamian artists and people who just wanted to participate began drawing for the event, which lasts for a full 24 hours and ends today at 12 p.m.

Participants sign up for as many hours as they choose and agree to give Popop whatever drawings they produce. The drawings by well-known and up and coming artists are then all sold for $300 or $500, based on the size of the drawings.

Popopstudios Founder/Director John Cox said anyone is welcome to participate.

Artists are provided with the material and media to create whatever drawings they choose — abstract, from a model or from memory. Popopstudios also provides food and support to all participants, particularly those who draw late into the night and early morning.

The event started with Sketch24 partner Antonius Roberts at Roberts’ Hillside House Gallery on Cumberland Street, giving the fundraiser visibility and providing passers-by in busy downtown the opportunity to see and participate if they so chose. At 6 p.m. Friday, Sketch24 moved over to Popopstudios, until 12 p.m. today.

At the end of the process, the drawings will be exhibited and sold in aid of the studio.

“We take all of the drawings, and between noon and six, we install them in the gallery at Popop and we exhibit them,” said Cox. “We will have an opening so people can come in and see the work. An exciting thing about it is that all these different level artists participate, like really well known artists. Last year, we had people like Kim Smith and Max Taylor and Kishan Munroe participating, as well as COB students, and anyone who wanted to participate, but all of the drawings were the same two prices.

“Regardless of who the artist is or the size of the paper, as long as it’s on one side or the other of the scale of the paper, it’s that amount of money. And I think people like the idea. It’s a fun thing to do for the people that actually participate because it’s a bit of a party. And the people that come to [the exhibition] like the immediacy of the drawings just being finished hours before. They like the fact that you can’t really get much more original than that.”

Some of the participating artists include Cox, Heino Schmid, Antonius Roberts, Allan Wallace, Kendal Hanna, Jace McKinney and Michael Edwards, as well as members of the COB art department. Proceeds from Sketch24 will go mainly towards the residency program, which is one of the main pillars for the studio.

The Popopstudios Artists in Residence program exists as an extension of the gallery’s mission to promote, expose and engage new and challenging developments in contemporary art. Through the program, international artists are invited to spend one to three months working and living on the gallery grounds. During their time at Popopstudios artists are asked to give a public presentation of their working practice as well as coordinate a one day workshop targeted at school children. Artists staying for longer periods are also invited to put on a small exhibition of the work they’ve produced while in The Bahamas.

Sketch24 is also sponsored by Scotiabank, Dunkin’ Donuts, Coca-Cola, Burns House, Butler & Sands and The Pro Gallery.

By Reva Cartwright-Carroll
The Nassau Guardian
Arts & Culture
Published: Saturday, February 2, 2013