On tonight’s show we examine two projects that aim to tell the Bahamian story from a different perspective.
First we meet portrait photographer Scharad Lightbourne who is launching “I AM WE.”, a campaign comprised of creative portraits of diverse Bahamian people, based on their background culture and life experiences.
Photography is in focus on tonight’s Blank Canvas, where we meet two young Bahamian photographers with recent exhibitions and a book publication.
Delton Barrett has his first solo show opening up at the D’Aguilar Art Foundation. Entitled “Nurture,” his portraits and conceptual works in this series try to answer questions that explore whether we are the products of nature or nurture. Delton shares how he became interested in photography as a medium and how he taught himself the techniques he uses in his craft today. Follow him on Instagram at delton_b.
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.
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.”