Thursday, November 11, 2010
Mara Beach Wear 2010
The latest from Mara Beach Wear - shown at BMEX May 2010.
Mara Beach Wear is a collection of hand-painted clothing and accessories. A line of easy-to-wear slip dresses that would take ladies from sunny days to moonlit nights by the water. Using eco-friendly water-based screen-printing inks on 100% cotton with tropical island motifs, Mara Beach is resort wear that locals and visitors would want to wear on a cruise, to a beach wedding or simply sunbathing. Enjoy!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Mara Art, Ann Rudder and Navazoe
at the NCF Crop Over Arts Exhibition, Central Bank, Bridgetown, Barbados. July 2010.
Advocate Newspaper report, July 16,2010. p. 23
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Advertising in Barbados: white-space vs. clutter
An ad agency from Barbados recently won an international packaging award! Look at the product below - why did it attract the attention of the jury?
Well I imagine it’s modern, clean and yet there is this back-to-Eden-(therefore nature)-feel (with the primitive tiki design) an element which has a latent appeal to most people. Above all it’s simple.
Designer Mara Watson Ward of Roger Clarke Associates wanted to break out of the traditional rum packaging mode and to design a rum that looks “sexy” she says. The result a “clean and contemporary design” for Mahiki Rum, blended and distilled at Foursquare Rum Distillery for Mahiki Rum Co. in the UK. The package design won a silver at the 2009 Pentawards, Brussels Design Forum.
No other island in the Caribbean won an award and only 2 countries in the region (Mexico and Argentina) received awards. The top award - Diamond/Best of the Show - went to designers of a Kleenex box.
One Pentaward jury member had this to say about the top design, “A professional designer appreciates something that is attractive, surprising, new, simple and devoid of useless information. The Kleenex “slice of summer” boast all of this at once. This packaging shows great maturity, because the consumer is not bombarded with information that he neither really needs nor wants.”
Remember the bag blowing in the wind in the movie “American Beauty”? So simple, so beautiful, so peaceful. Didn’t need any words, any explanation. Purely emotive.
No other island in the Caribbean won an award and only 2 countries in the region (Mexico and Argentina) received awards. The top award - Diamond/Best of the Show - went to designers of a Kleenex box.
One Pentaward jury member had this to say about the top design, “A professional designer appreciates something that is attractive, surprising, new, simple and devoid of useless information. The Kleenex “slice of summer” boast all of this at once. This packaging shows great maturity, because the consumer is not bombarded with information that he neither really needs nor wants.”Remember the bag blowing in the wind in the movie “American Beauty”? So simple, so beautiful, so peaceful. Didn’t need any words, any explanation. Purely emotive.
We know advertisers/graphic designers here would love to produce this type of work. But their clients want ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ in their ads. Most Bajan ads say “ this is everything we have; come and buy.” They think consumers are so simple or unsophisticated that they have to spell out everything. For instance, the Sunshine Products ad which says “jumpstart your metabolism” . The graphic is 2 jumper cables in a bowl of cereal.
Advertising is visual stimulation and communication that appeal to our emotions and get us to act. Are Bajan ads reflective of the type of stimuli that appeal to our cultural expectations?
Overseas advertising is continuously evolving. Today the industry has moved on and away from the extensive-copy-and-images format to close-ups for a more ‘intimate’ view of a single aspect of their product. That, to me, is when the ad becomes art. And when the product is art shouldn’t this be carried over to the ad?
Advertising is visual stimulation and communication that appeal to our emotions and get us to act. Are Bajan ads reflective of the type of stimuli that appeal to our cultural expectations?
Overseas advertising is continuously evolving. Today the industry has moved on and away from the extensive-copy-and-images format to close-ups for a more ‘intimate’ view of a single aspect of their product. That, to me, is when the ad becomes art. And when the product is art shouldn’t this be carried over to the ad?
We haven't yet entered the realms of the "clever" ad, as in the Excedrine ad and 3 shopping bags below:
In today's hectic world when people "scan" the media, wouldn't you think that brevity might be better than clutter. Here’re the simple, artful and dramatic ads that jumped off the pages of local magazines I was scanning recently.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Art more that something to match your sofa
My friend Ray recently replied to a discussion on Barbados Free Press (BFP) which started when a restaurant critic writing for the New York Post criticized the art in the gallery, On the Wall in Champers Restaurant, Rockley.
I like his argument that art is not a “decoration, but should be life changing, looking at things from a different angle, be unsettling and upsetting, not something to match your sofa”.
Read his essay below. First, this is what BFP had to say:
Barbados Free Press
November 9, 2006
Food Critics Should Stick To Food – And Maybe Not Even That
My visit to the On The Wall Gallery website was prompted by a largely negative Barbados restaurant review by “Lydia Gordon” that appeared in the New York Post. A stuck-up Ms. Gordon had found fault with not only the food at Champers, but also with the paintings on display.
Art is a matter of personal taste, but after visiting the On The Wall Gallery website one thing is very obvious..
If the drunken, nose-in-the-air “restaurant critic” for the New York Post couldn’t see any Barbados art she liked at all, she had an agenda to write a negative piece for her paper and she did it.
God has given Vanita Comissiong and her friends something special, and any fool can see that just by visiting the On The Wall Gallery website. A Google search reveals that Comissiong’s paintings are for sale in galleries around the world – even as far away as Japan – and the same is true for many of the other featured artists.
Have a look at the On The Wall Gallery’s paintings, and you will know that The New York Post article is just so much agenda-driven trash.
Troubled
November 9, 2006
Why not take the criticism with a grain of salt – and if you are compelled to respond, do so with style!. The counter attack on what appeard to be an obnoxious american on a free dinner pass really prompted alot panic an fear of a few, maybe she hit too close to home?
One Who Knows
November 9, 2006
Troubled – the restaurant critic saw nothing good about bajan art. maybe you want to side with her?
BFP states the obvious and it needed to be said after the NY post writer trashed all bajan art.
Ray
May 9, 2009
I realize that this post is a few years old, but I have strong feelings about this subject so am leaving this reply any way.
Firstly, I’m a Barbadian and I have an art degree, taken in London, UK.
The idea that ‘art’ is just a matter of taste, therefore implying that all art is of equal merit, is, quite simply, rubbish – a very postmodern ideal that left us with some horrid architecture.
Some ‘art’ IS more important than others.
Art is a language, be it literature, music, theatre, film et al. The more educated (on a global scale) a person is about the subject, the more sophisticated will be their expectations.
How can you compare Harry Potter to Alice in wonderland, Daniel steel to Flaubert, Jill Walker (the Barbadian) to giacometti, the films of Lars Von Trier or Ingmar Bergman with James Bond. There is art with a small ‘a’ and art with an ‘A’. The A’s are always either: provocative, nuanced, transcendental (of flesh and culture), disturbing, intellectual, maverick or rebellious, to list but a few – things that make you think, that push the limits. Barbados is a conservative country; there is no market for art of this caliber. As advanced as Barbados is in comparison to other Caribbean islands, culturally it is unsophisticated. In Barbados, value is monetary based, not intellectually; probably arising from the fact that Barbados relies on tourism (a form of prostitution) for sustenance – prettiness is promoted over substance. This is called decoration, or just plain entertainment, not Art. I don’t know of a single art piece by a Barbadian that is in any of the world’s major art galleries. This is not some sort of racism, since there are many African artists who do have pieces in these galleries, but they are not folk artists and do push the limits.
Some years back, I went to an exhibition at the Barbados consulate in London. The Barbadian Ambassador wanted to ban one of the paintings because it depicted a woman giving birth. It was a very innocuous piece of folk art that would in no way have stood up to international standards. Imagine what his reaction would have been like if it was an Andy Warhol piece depicting people injecting heroin, or some other provocative artist. I found the Ambassador’s reaction embarrassing. European representatives and politicians must have a good laugh about his naivety and ignorance behind his back: oh, listen to the small island mind. As a representative of Barbados, it should be mandatory that he be culturally aware! And not be living in some cloud of Victorian values that were invented by the English. The same English who have long disposed of those values.
Any Barbadian artist who has serious things to say will leave the island, no doubt for a more cutting edge city where audience expectations are higher, where people aren’t so easily shocked, if they are at all shockable, that is.
Sargeant
May 10, 2009
Uh Oh …. Here come the Sharks in formaldehyde as great art crowd again to teach us poor islanders a thing or two
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-of-making-money-how-does-a-dead-fish-sell-for-16312m-and-whos-writing-all-the-cheques-769504.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living
Ray
May 11, 2009
That’s where you’re wrong. I’m no fan of Damien Hurst. He is a con. Selling ‘art’ to people who know nothing about art. Again, big bucks looking to invest.Try picking on someone less populist. Speaking of him is like quoting Freud.
Ray
May 12, 2009
To be fair, I should really explain why I dislike Damien Hurst’s work.
As I said, art should push limits and break boundaries. Irony can be one of the most effective tools for achieving this. Irony can be wonderfully subversive – Oscar Wilde being the most famous example. But the way that Hurst uses irony creates boundaries. He plays with ‘in jokes’ to such an extent that only the initiated will understand.
But, upon having said that, I do realise that when Hurst first came on to the scene (late 80’s), there was a stagnation in the art world, especially in Britain, and it needed a shake up, in much the same way that Punk revitalised the scene in the late 70’s. But now, as is so often the case with any enfant terrible, the art world has moved on and it is Hurst who is stagnant. Hurst is no longer an artist, but a marketer. And I think he would agree. He did say that he wanted to reach a point where he could make really bad art and get away with. So that tells you a lot about the multi-millionaires who are investing in his work now. It is in this respect that he is subversive; the idiots who buy his work don’t realise that he is mocking them. They’re too blinded by their quest for prestige. But… their investment will pay off. The pieces will take on a life of their own and other wealthy idiots will pay even more for them when resold. It’s very much like those anti-racist films that attempted to show the stupidity of the skinhead movement. Who were these film’s most diehard fans? The same stupid skinheads that were too stupid to see that the films were portraying them as stupid.
If you look at some of Hurst’s earlier work, not the pieces that make it into the tabloids, you will see there is certain genius there. But he has chosen the route of a cynic instead.
This is why when you hear someone say, oh my five year old could do that, you know they are speaking from ignorance. They know nothing of the background, the history, the evolution that led to that point. No artist sits and says I’ll flick some paint on a canvas (Jackson Pollock) and just call it art. An awful lot has led to that thought of flicking paint on canvas. And in Pollock’s case, every flick was controlled and intentional, and filled with meaning (feeling).
Any how, I felt I needed to explain more fully my view on Hurst, since he was used as an (bad) example. He’s as mainstream as they come. I’m sure I’m wasting my breath. Like I said, it’s a language, and if someone cannot speak that language and is unwilling to learn it, then it will always sound (look like) gobbledygook. Art does not just decorate, it requires an active role from the viewer: thought, research and questioning.
See entire discussion on:
http://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/beautiful-barbados-art-vanita-comissiong-and-friends/
My friend Ray recently replied to a discussion on Barbados Free Press (BFP) which started when a restaurant critic writing for the New York Post criticized the art in the gallery, On the Wall in Champers Restaurant, Rockley.
I like his argument that art is not a “decoration, but should be life changing, looking at things from a different angle, be unsettling and upsetting, not something to match your sofa”.
Read his essay below. First, this is what BFP had to say:
Barbados Free Press
November 9, 2006
Food Critics Should Stick To Food – And Maybe Not Even That
My visit to the On The Wall Gallery website was prompted by a largely negative Barbados restaurant review by “Lydia Gordon” that appeared in the New York Post. A stuck-up Ms. Gordon had found fault with not only the food at Champers, but also with the paintings on display.
Art is a matter of personal taste, but after visiting the On The Wall Gallery website one thing is very obvious..
If the drunken, nose-in-the-air “restaurant critic” for the New York Post couldn’t see any Barbados art she liked at all, she had an agenda to write a negative piece for her paper and she did it.
God has given Vanita Comissiong and her friends something special, and any fool can see that just by visiting the On The Wall Gallery website. A Google search reveals that Comissiong’s paintings are for sale in galleries around the world – even as far away as Japan – and the same is true for many of the other featured artists.
Have a look at the On The Wall Gallery’s paintings, and you will know that The New York Post article is just so much agenda-driven trash.
Troubled
November 9, 2006
Why not take the criticism with a grain of salt – and if you are compelled to respond, do so with style!. The counter attack on what appeard to be an obnoxious american on a free dinner pass really prompted alot panic an fear of a few, maybe she hit too close to home?
One Who Knows
November 9, 2006
Troubled – the restaurant critic saw nothing good about bajan art. maybe you want to side with her?
BFP states the obvious and it needed to be said after the NY post writer trashed all bajan art.
Ray
May 9, 2009
I realize that this post is a few years old, but I have strong feelings about this subject so am leaving this reply any way.
Firstly, I’m a Barbadian and I have an art degree, taken in London, UK.
The idea that ‘art’ is just a matter of taste, therefore implying that all art is of equal merit, is, quite simply, rubbish – a very postmodern ideal that left us with some horrid architecture.
Some ‘art’ IS more important than others.
Art is a language, be it literature, music, theatre, film et al. The more educated (on a global scale) a person is about the subject, the more sophisticated will be their expectations.
How can you compare Harry Potter to Alice in wonderland, Daniel steel to Flaubert, Jill Walker (the Barbadian) to giacometti, the films of Lars Von Trier or Ingmar Bergman with James Bond. There is art with a small ‘a’ and art with an ‘A’. The A’s are always either: provocative, nuanced, transcendental (of flesh and culture), disturbing, intellectual, maverick or rebellious, to list but a few – things that make you think, that push the limits. Barbados is a conservative country; there is no market for art of this caliber. As advanced as Barbados is in comparison to other Caribbean islands, culturally it is unsophisticated. In Barbados, value is monetary based, not intellectually; probably arising from the fact that Barbados relies on tourism (a form of prostitution) for sustenance – prettiness is promoted over substance. This is called decoration, or just plain entertainment, not Art. I don’t know of a single art piece by a Barbadian that is in any of the world’s major art galleries. This is not some sort of racism, since there are many African artists who do have pieces in these galleries, but they are not folk artists and do push the limits.
Some years back, I went to an exhibition at the Barbados consulate in London. The Barbadian Ambassador wanted to ban one of the paintings because it depicted a woman giving birth. It was a very innocuous piece of folk art that would in no way have stood up to international standards. Imagine what his reaction would have been like if it was an Andy Warhol piece depicting people injecting heroin, or some other provocative artist. I found the Ambassador’s reaction embarrassing. European representatives and politicians must have a good laugh about his naivety and ignorance behind his back: oh, listen to the small island mind. As a representative of Barbados, it should be mandatory that he be culturally aware! And not be living in some cloud of Victorian values that were invented by the English. The same English who have long disposed of those values.
Any Barbadian artist who has serious things to say will leave the island, no doubt for a more cutting edge city where audience expectations are higher, where people aren’t so easily shocked, if they are at all shockable, that is.
Sargeant
May 10, 2009
Uh Oh …. Here come the Sharks in formaldehyde as great art crowd again to teach us poor islanders a thing or two
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-of-making-money-how-does-a-dead-fish-sell-for-16312m-and-whos-writing-all-the-cheques-769504.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living
Ray
May 11, 2009
That’s where you’re wrong. I’m no fan of Damien Hurst. He is a con. Selling ‘art’ to people who know nothing about art. Again, big bucks looking to invest.Try picking on someone less populist. Speaking of him is like quoting Freud.
Ray
May 12, 2009
To be fair, I should really explain why I dislike Damien Hurst’s work.
As I said, art should push limits and break boundaries. Irony can be one of the most effective tools for achieving this. Irony can be wonderfully subversive – Oscar Wilde being the most famous example. But the way that Hurst uses irony creates boundaries. He plays with ‘in jokes’ to such an extent that only the initiated will understand.
But, upon having said that, I do realise that when Hurst first came on to the scene (late 80’s), there was a stagnation in the art world, especially in Britain, and it needed a shake up, in much the same way that Punk revitalised the scene in the late 70’s. But now, as is so often the case with any enfant terrible, the art world has moved on and it is Hurst who is stagnant. Hurst is no longer an artist, but a marketer. And I think he would agree. He did say that he wanted to reach a point where he could make really bad art and get away with. So that tells you a lot about the multi-millionaires who are investing in his work now. It is in this respect that he is subversive; the idiots who buy his work don’t realise that he is mocking them. They’re too blinded by their quest for prestige. But… their investment will pay off. The pieces will take on a life of their own and other wealthy idiots will pay even more for them when resold. It’s very much like those anti-racist films that attempted to show the stupidity of the skinhead movement. Who were these film’s most diehard fans? The same stupid skinheads that were too stupid to see that the films were portraying them as stupid.
If you look at some of Hurst’s earlier work, not the pieces that make it into the tabloids, you will see there is certain genius there. But he has chosen the route of a cynic instead.
This is why when you hear someone say, oh my five year old could do that, you know they are speaking from ignorance. They know nothing of the background, the history, the evolution that led to that point. No artist sits and says I’ll flick some paint on a canvas (Jackson Pollock) and just call it art. An awful lot has led to that thought of flicking paint on canvas. And in Pollock’s case, every flick was controlled and intentional, and filled with meaning (feeling).
Any how, I felt I needed to explain more fully my view on Hurst, since he was used as an (bad) example. He’s as mainstream as they come. I’m sure I’m wasting my breath. Like I said, it’s a language, and if someone cannot speak that language and is unwilling to learn it, then it will always sound (look like) gobbledygook. Art does not just decorate, it requires an active role from the viewer: thought, research and questioning.
See entire discussion on:
http://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/beautiful-barbados-art-vanita-comissiong-and-friends/
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Festival Art Gallery, Barbados.
Many of Barbados' top artists, including Fielding Babb, Alison Chapman-Andrews, Ras Ishi, Ellon Lewis, Don Small, Victor Collector, Neville Legall, and Arlette St. Hill displayed a collection of original watercolours, oil paintings, pastels, ceramics, mixed media collages and wood-carvings at two major national festivals in 2009.
These artists were invited to take their art out of the established 'indoor gallery space' and show their latest work at Oistins Fish Festival (Easter) and Bridgetown Market (August). An excellent opportunity to reach and introduce art to a different and wider community who might not visit galleries.
The Festival Art Gallery is the brainchild of artist Arlette St. Hill, who partners with art lover and collector, Kathy Yearwood in this important artistic adventure which brings art to the people and supports local artists - young and old.
For more information
Contact: kathyyearwood@hotmail.com or asainthill@hotmail.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The creative combination of fabrics, leathers, natural fibres and other indigenous materials is what makes a Navazoe handbag unique.
The 2009 Navazoe Collection - inspired by the beautiful flora of Barbados - is made of West Indian Sea Island cotton and silk screen-printed with a colourful frangipani motif, specifically designed for this collection. 
The Navazoé Collection is available in Barbados from Roslyn of Barbados at Pelican, The Women’s Self Help in Broad St. and Soma at Quayside.
A Navazoe handbag bridges the gap between fashion and art.
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