#sexypink/ceramic arts

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Sexypink - Celebrating the achievement of Bahamian Ceramic Artist Anina Major.

(she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to voluntarily establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia, and identity. Often taking form in a wide range of media, including installation, sculpture, time-based video and performance, it references tropical ecologies as well as historical and contemporary ethnography. Her work unpacks the emotional complexities inherent to the transcultural dialogue that surfaces when mapping the migration of traditions versus foreign influences. 

Through her making, Major acts as a cultural strategist and works to inspire critical dialogue around developing cultural identities and building the appropriate platforms for this discourse. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Art Studio Program. Her work has been exhibited in The Bahamas, across the United States, and Europe.

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Sexypink - JACQUELINE BISHOP, writer and visual artist, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and who now lives and works in New York City. She has held several Fulbright Fellowships, and exhibited her work widely in North America, Europe and North Africa. She is also an Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Studies at New York University.

On one hand, the market woman/huckster is the most ubiquitous figure to emerge from plantation Jamaica. Yet, as pervasive as the figure of the market woman is in Jamaican and Caribbean art and visual culture, she remains critically overlooked. In this set of fifteen dishes, I am both paying homage to the market woman—centering her importance to Caribbean society from the period of slavery onwards—and placing her within a critical context. In particular, I place the market woman within a long tradition of female labor depicted in diverse imagery that I have sourced online, including early Jamaican postcards, paintings of enslaved women from Brazil, the colonial paintings of the Italian Agostino Brunias, and present-day photographs, which I collage alongside floral and abolitionist imagery.

I work in ceramics because all the women around me as I grew up—my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother—cherished ceramic dinner plates. These were centerpieces kept in one of their most important acquisitions, a specially made mahogany cabinet. To fabricate the plates, it is important that I am working with Emma Price, a British ceramicist based in Stoke-on-Trent in the former Spode factories. In the realization of the series, that connection imbues them with a meaning that shows the long and enduring relationship between England and Jamaica. For that same reason, British Art Studies is a fitting venue for their first ever publication and partner to create an accompanying film exploring the plates and their themes.

Though the likenesses of none of the women in my family are represented in this series, centering the market woman is my way of paying homage to my great-grandmother Celeste Walker, who I grew up knowing very well, and who was a market woman/huckster/milkwoman par excellence. Celeste was born in the tiny district of Nonsuch hidden high in the Blue Mountains in Portland Parish on the island of Jamaica. Her mother died on the way home from a market, when my great-grandmother was too young to even remember her face. In her adulthood, while my great-grandfather farmed the land, my great-grandmother was the huckster who could easily carry bunches of bananas and baskets of food on her head; the market woman who travelled to far away Kingston to sell in Coronation Market, the largest market on the island. She also hawked fresh fish, and prepared and sold coconut oil, ginger beer, cut flowers, and cocoa beans that were pounded in a heavy wooden mortar. I remember her in my childhood as the milkwoman waking very early in the morning and walking through the district selling fresh cow’s milk. The tradition of huckstering would be passed on to my grandmother who relished the role in her older years. My hope in doing this work is to give much respect to the market women of the Jamaican and larger Atlantic world who have fed, and continue to feed, nations. The market woman is the defining symbol of Jamaican and Caribbean societies.

My work integrates the mediums of painting, drawing and photography to explore issues of home, ancestry, family, connectivity and belonging. As someone who has lived longer outside of my birthplace of Jamaica, than I have lived on the island, I am acutely aware of what it means to be simultaneously an insider and an outsider. This ability to see the world from multiple psychological and territorial spaces has led to the development of a particular lens that allows me to view a given environment from a distance. Because I am also a fiction writer and poet as well as a visual artist, the text and narrative are significant parts of my artistic practice.

Oftentimes I utilize a process of competing narratives to have the viewer participate in the creation of meaning. In my “Folly” series I recount a story I heard as a child, of two tales of a “haunted” house. In time, I researched the history of the house and through a process of photomontage combined photographs I took with archival footage to try and tell the two stories. The ghostly images of the past occupants are integrated into the walls and on the grounds of the present-day ruins. The overall effect is spectral and haunting. I also used this process of photomontage in an ongoing series of ethereal and transcendent “Childhood Memories,” in which characters are often split between heaven and earth. There is a palpable sense of loss in these images as characters seek to inhabit a time and a place long gone.

The “Babylon” and “Zion” paintings are about the Rastafarian ideas of Babylon being a place of captivity and oppression while Zion symbolizes a utopian place of unity and peace. In the Babylon series, I write the lyrics from songs and poems to create text-based drip paintings leading up to the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” in which I use popular dancehall posters to evoke the inner-city Babylonian “walls” of Kingston. The Zion series is comprised largely of monochrome paintings to delineate this symbolic paradise. Glitter is present in these works not only as a representation of the paradise that Rastafarians seek in the Biblical homeland of Zion but also as a commentary on the ‘bling and glitter’ culture that has enveloped much of Jamaican society. Consequently, my work is very much engaged with helping me to understand my heritage.

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Sexypink - A closer look.

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Sexypink - Bahamian Ceramist Anina Major soars!

Join us in congratulating Anina Major for being a 2023 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship! Major exhibited her first solo exhibition in The Bahamas with us in April 2023. We are quite proud of you, Anina!

"Anina Major (New York, NY; b. 1981) draws on the ancient weaving practice of plaiting to create ceramic sculptures, having begun by employing the traditional styles from The Bahamas, her birthplace, and expanding the research to illuminate kinship connections across the Black diaspora that manifest through the act of making. Further emphasizing the historical importance of weaving as a means of communication that can address issues of cultural erasure and preservation through archival engagement, Major’s fellowship will support additional anthropological research, along with legacy planning and professional development opportunities."

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Sexypink - Ceramics in Jamaica - Sharon Norwood - SAVE THE DATE

Join us tomorrow for the opening of our collaborative art installation entitled Dry Head.

This site-specific ephemeral installation incorporates handmade clay coils that depict curly lines or black hair which are both suspended and resting on the ground among other objects.

Sharon Norwood - A peak at her look at ‘afro hair’ represented in ceramics

This is the result of a two-week workshop led by Sharon Norwood with students of the InPulse Art Project and the Edna Manley College.

Location: Edna Manley College Ceramic Department 

Time: Friday May 5, 10am-3pmA few words at 12pm

Free and open to the public.

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Sexypink - Holly Gayadeen has passed.

Rest In Peace.

Ceramic Artist Bunty O’Connor had this to say on his life.

I am sad today to give news of the passing of Holly Gayadeen. Holly was a well known Trinidad artist and member of the Trinidad and Tobago Art Society who started his career in pottery making. He was trained in the UK in the 1960s at Redland Teacher Training College, Bristol in the art of slip decorated pottery. On his return to Trinidad he taught at the University of the West Indies. I was one of the lucky students who attended his evening classes at the Victoria Institute, Trinidad and Tobago Museum. His workshop was a model of efficiency where we learned to throw pots on the wheel, make moulds from plaster of Paris, to glaze and fire our masterpieces. Holly was a gentle, patient teacher who encouraged his students to develop their own style. My condolences go to the Gayadeen family at this sad time.

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Sexypink - TERN is proud to announce our upcoming exhibition, “Evidence of Possibility” by regional artists, Mark King and Rodell Warner.

Barbadian Artist Mark King | Trinidad and Tobago Artist Rodell Warner

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Mark King is a Barbadian interdisciplinary artist working in photography, installation, fashion, and sculpture.

Rodell Warner is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography whose works assume various forms in a process of exploration and rediscovery.

Barbadian Artist Mark King

Together, King and Warner present the “evidence of possibility”, pushing each other past the boundaries of their respective practices at the intersection of fine art, research, and technology.

This exhibition features AI-generated images on aluminum, ceramic sculptures, video prints, and textiles

Trinidad and Tobago Artist Rodell Warner

“Evidence of Possibility” will run from September 20th to November 4th, 2023 with an opening reception on Wednesday, September 20th, 2023, from 6 pm - 8 pm.

For more information on this exhibition, email us at info@terngallery.com.

We look forward to celebrating with you then!

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~Sexypink~ The latest exciting works of Colin Gill.

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~Sexypink/Colin Gill’s latest work now on at Arnim’s Art Gallery. Do take a look.

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~Sexypink~ Congratulations Josh

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The British Council is pleased to announce that Josh Lu has recently taken up his TAARE residency in London at Delfina Foundation in collaboration with colleagues at Gasworks and Autograph ABP.

Joshua Lue Chee Kong (b. 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and collector from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. His work focuses on Caribbean narratives around creolization and the way it has shaped the social fabric of the Caribbean region.

In 2017, Joshua Lue Chee Kong and Kriston Chen founded a Moko Jumbie group called 1000mokos in Trinidad and Tobago. Its objective is to build a community of stilt walkers through informal sessions accessible to anyone who wants to celebrate the history and stories of the Moko Jumbies.

Josh studied at Savannah College of Art and Design where he received his BFA in graphic design. He participated in artist residencies at Red Gate Gallery, Beijing in 2015 and at Vermont Studio Center in 2017. At Medulla Art Gallery, Trinidad, he has had two solo exhibitions - Moulded Memories in 2014 and Paradise in 2016.

His work had been published in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, ANNO book, See Me Here: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraits from the Caribbean, The Draconion Switch e-magazine. Two of his photographic images appeared on the cover of the August 2012 TIME magazine. #BCTAARE #ARTCONNECTS

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~Sexypink~ Ceramic Artist Adam Williams is spending the quarantine making some lovely work. Enjoy.

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                                       S   E   X    Y    P    I    N     K

                                      COURSES | Trinidad & Tobago

This workshop targets visual art students of forms 3-6, pursuing  the sculpture and ceramic component for exams.  During ten 3hr sessions, students will learn the basics of clay sculpting and ceramics, tools and their uses, workroom saftey and design and create 3 pieces for SBA submission. REGISTER NOW !!!

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~Sexypink~  A new Q&A conversation is available! In his exchange with Marsha Pearce, artist Thomas Haskell talks about the relationship between working with clay and ideas of representation. He reflects on the role of liminality in his practice and gives insight to his Mas‘Queer’Raid series.

 Read the conversation here: https://bit.ly/3fGjWUp

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~Sexypink~ A Look at some of the Catapult Voucher WInners.

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Sonia Williams has worked extensively regionally and internationally as a Theatre Artist, Arts Educator and Researcher in African-Caribbean culture. She was a Watson Fellow to Nigeria 1989 (USA) and won the Governor General Award for Excellence in Drama 1998 in Barbados. A Frank Collymore Literary Endowment winner in 2017 and 2018 for her poetry, she has published two books, a novella This Too Will Pass and her prize winning poetry Embodied Knowings. For Sonia, theatre is a liminal space, of myth-making, that evokes communal memory in the collective consciousness – she puts the pieces back together again to meet the needs of the audience.

Birthed in St. Kitts and raised with a cacophony of familial influences, the truth of my lived experience echoes the term ‘emerging artist.’ Exploring the boundlessness of identity and expressive communication, I’m preoccupied with language, it’s presentation, and component words/phrases, especially with regards to how they translate what’s important about who we actually are. The fundamentals of how use words are used for meaning, for impact, and even for frivolity, influenced my choice towards collegiate education in visual arts training. Furthermore, I’ve developed focus on Branding and Identity Design in multi-disciplinary contexts that capitalize on strategic creative thinking and implementation.

Lisa Codella’s creative practice is inspired by what she calls “the perfect imperfection of Nature” and by the history and legends of The Bahamas. Born in Nassau, Lisa earned degrees from The College of The Bahamas, and the University of Miami (1989) leading to a career in corporate communication until she abandoned the board room for studio life and pursued her calling as a full-time artist. Today, she lives in Grand Bahama, where she balances her time between her home studio, 143 Pottery, and her retail outlet for her ceramics and other handmade Bahamian gifts, Coastal Mojo.

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~Sexypink~  Special Surinamese artist 'Soeki' Irodikromo’ died Today the famous painter, maker of ceramic art and Batik, Sukidjan Irodokromo, died in his native country Suriname. He turned 75 years old. Soeki leaves the world special works of art. Sukidjan Irodikromo was born June 20, 1945 in Pieterszorg in Commewijne District. From 1963 to 1967 he attended a course at the Cultural Center Suriname (CCS school for Visual Arts conducted by Nola Hatterman) in Paramaribo. Back then, American President Johnson bought a painting from him, and a week later, Soeki was told that he was receiving a grant from STICUSA (Cultural Cooperation Foundation with Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles) to go to the Netherlands and study there. From 1967 to 1972 he did the free painting and chart at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam and from 1971 to 1972 he deepened himself into the ceramic. Afterwards he continued his studies with a batic training at the ASRI in Jogyakarta, Indonesia.

Back in Suriname he introduced batik painting there. Both in his batik cloths and oil paintings and his ceramic (vases and images), Irodikromo achieved a large production of almost constant quality. His work is in collections spread all over the world. He also made the illustrations in various books. From his admiration for Cobra expressionism, he started working in a style that connected the half abstraction of Cobra to themes and symbols from Javanese mythology. With this he was the first Surinamese artist to bring together tradition and modernity in his own idiom. Sukidjan Irodikromo's works of art are inspired by the Wayang game, Kantjil and Anansi tori. He is among the generation and caliber of Erwin de Vries, Ruben Karsters, Rudi de la Fuente and Paul Woei. Important message he leaves us is: ′′ Let your kids go to school. That gives them power. In the Netherlands I had adjustment problems and language problems. But that didn't stop me from moving on. I dared, because it's about the quality of my work ".

Family background

His parents were farmers. The plantation life used to be very simple. Grandpa and grandma could teach us nothing but work, because for other things they had neither time nor knowledge. Working with a ' berang ' (houwer) and ' pacol ' (hoeing) was the only thing that was taught them. Building a house was done with 'gotong royong' (mutual assistance). Neighbors and family helped each other. A lot of ' teloh ' (cassave), ' gedang ' (banana), fresh fish, such as ' teri ' (salted little fish) and ' ikan asin ' (salty fish) were eaten daily. Sometimes the family had nothing and ate rice with the oil in which the fish was baked. Meat was only eaten when someone threw a party and with 'Bada' (Sugar Fest). Father Irodikromo would have saved up for new pants for the kids.

People in that time believed in ' kersane Allah ' (God's will). ′′ I leave it to tomorrow's day was what people said. Closing the plantations was quite a vein release for many families. Also for the Irodikromo family. They subsequently used the possibility to purchase land on the plantation Koewarasan, which the family moved to.

http://www.oas.org/artsoftheamericas/soeki-irodikromo