On tonight’s Blank Canvas, our host Amanda Coulson, NAGB Director, welcomes Dr. Eddie Chambers into the studio.
Eddie Chambers, the son of Jamaican immigrants, was born in Wolverhampton, England. He gained his PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 1998, for his study of press and other responses to the work of a new generation of Black artists in Britain, which were active during the 1980s.
Visiting from Glasgow, Scotland, is Nicole Yip, a curator, writer and currently the director of Lux Scotland, who joins our host Amanda Coulson on this week’s Blank Canvas.
With just three weeks left to prepare for this year’s Mixed Media Art Summer Camp (MMASC), the NAGB team is kicking into high gear to get everything ready for the 100 campers who will be engaging in six weeks of fun creativity between June 25th and August 3rd. The NAGB Mixed Media Art Summer Camp, revamped in 2015, serves as an access point for all kids, ages 5 to 17, to art and its history.
On tonight’s Blank Canvas, guest host Malika Pryor-Martin, Communications and Development Officer for the NAGB is joined by Katrina Cartwright, NAGB Education Officer, to discuss the amazing new theme for the museum’s Mixed Media Art Summer Camp, “Back to da Island.” Academic arts practices and techniques will be blended with and inspired by creative experiences and expressions that are uniquely Bahamian. They’ll include strawcraft, shellcraft, storytelling and even incorporate indigenous performing arts like Rake n’ Scrape and Junkanoo.
There is plenty of powerful female energy in the Blank Canvas studio tonight and children and creativity are the evening’s focus. Joining host Amanda Coulson are artist Jalan Harris (left); Krystynia Lee D’Arville, VP of Sales Marketing and Organisational Development at Furniture Plus (second from right) and Nicky Saddleton, Brand Strategist and Consultant (far right).
Coinciding with the Open Studios taking place at The Current at Baha Mar on Wednesday evening, May 23rd between 6 – 8 p.m., Blank Canvas hosts the latest batch of Bahamian artists-in-residence.
Amanda Coulson, NAGB Director, welcomes Bahamian legend Netica Symonette into the Blank Canvas studio, along with artist and curator Angelika Wallace-Whitfield. Angelika has recently taken up the post of Curator at Central Bank of The Bahamas and her first exhibition is a solo show with “Miss Nettie.” Miss Nettie, better know for her career as a hotelier and author, is an intuitive artist whose practice travels off the canvas and onto the walls, bedspreads, garbage cans and other household items at her Cable Beach hotel. The site itself is a “Gesamtkunstwerk,” a piece of loving sculpture that evolves every day.
On tonight’s “Blank Canvas,” NAGB Director Amanda Coulson meets with Mark Aronson, Chief Conservator at the Yale Centre for British Art, a position he has held since July 2007. Art conservation is something The Bahamas sorely needs, yet we have no professionally accredited conservators in the nation to care for any of our paintings, sculpture or other art works. Mr. Aronson is in The Bahamas to view the National Collection and to train local staff on how best to care for the works on a day-to-day basis.
On tonight’s “Blank Canvas,” Amanda Coulson (NAGB Director, far right) hears from the Bahamian artists who were asked to respond to the video and sound installation, “The Slaves’ Lament” by Scottish artist, Graham Fagen, which is currently showing at the NAGB in the exhibition entitled “We Suffer to Remain.”
We are shining the spotlight on Freeport native, artist and educator, Steffon Grant, on “Blank Canvas” this evening.
He joins host Amanda Coulson, NAGB Director, to discuss his artistic practice and share insights on his first solo exhibition “By the Way”, which is currently on view at the Melia Hotel on Cable Beach. Grant attended St. George’s High School in Freeport then moved to New Providence to attend the then-College of The Bahamas (now University of The Bahamas). He studied Mathematics and only came to art later in his college career.