#sexypink/Jamaican Sculptor

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Sexypink - Jamaican Sculptor Laura Facey asks for assistants from St. Ann’s preferably for her latest production.

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Sexypink - A return to exhibiting - Jamaican Artist Raymond Watson.

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SEXYPINK INTERVIEW - JAMAICAN SCULPTOR -LAURA FACEY

In Laura's own words she recalls for Sexypink some of her feelings about making the monument.

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The Naked REDEMPTION SONG Monument

While conceptualizing the design for the monument in 2002, I struggled over the idea of ‘draping’ my figures. In the end I decided it would ‘date’ the work…thinking, being naked would be more timeless.

After the initial shock of Jamaica’s ferocious response to the unveiled monument, I retreated to my own world to ‘wait out’ the outcome. I realized everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Eighteen years after the installation, Maroon Elder Joseph White, explained to me what the monument meant to him and to Jamaica’s history.

“On Emancipation Day, 1st August, 1838, some plantation owners gave another humiliating indignation to their soon to be freed enslaved — they stripped them of their clothing! —‘Bakra seh, uno free but yu clothes no free’. The naked free who took to the roads were arrested for indecent exposure. Their previous owners would be the ones able to release them. The bolder free took to the rivers with the only thing they had left, their modesty and the fact that if accused of being naked they could claim they were bathing.

Rivers symbolically washed away the horror of their lives (the reason the Emancipation figures stand in a pool of flowing water) and shielded them until they arrived at a safer place (rivers follow roads), to, in theory, begin a new life”.  After the unveiling, yes, I was in shock for the first weeks then I was in awe of this ferocious debate for and against the naked figures, which played out for months.

Truthfully, I did question my decision for making them naked but now, 20 plus years later, I ‘give it up’, rightly or wrongly, as inspiration passing through me!

Laura Facey

a reflection on Laura Facey's Redemption Song...

Sexypink - So often when visualizing a work, you never know why you may get a strong hunch or follow a need to add specific symbolism. As I read Laura Facey's recollections on the creation of the monumental Redemption Song in Jamaica, I was particularly struck by the Maroon Elders' words about nakedness at the moment of Emancipation and thereafter.

I believe that works like Ms Facey's endure because it must. The reaction to the nudity by so many during the unveiling questions how far we have come in regard to slavery itself. It is still debated whether we can put it behind us. It also begs the question of what is freedom itself?

The slave is always reminded of the price it costs to be present. Imagine that the only solace for being stripped of one's dignity repeatedly was to give the impression of bathing as a passive choice. Ms Facey was correct in her instincts about the bare skin, her Adam and Eve, heads held high in the Jamaican hot sun answer the call to their freedom and beyond.

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Sexypink - Jasmine Thomas Girvan - Jamaican born/Trinidad and Tobago based Jewellery Designer and Sculptor - Solo show - Window on Memory. If you are in the area do take a look. If not, always remember that you can see her here.

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The powerful work of Jamaican American Artist Michael Richards.

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When master visual artist Bernard Stanley Hoyes was first appointed to create an outdoor stainless-steel sculpture for the Kingston Restoration Walking Museum Project in Jamaica, it was before Covid. The project, sponsored by the Kingston Restoration Company and the Duke Street Refurbishing Project and funded by the Tourism Enhancement Fund was a heartfelt assignment for Hoyes, a native of Jamaica and longtime resident of California.

Read story here:https://www.marketscreener.com/news/latest/Master-Visual-Artist-Bernard-Stanley-Hoyes-Delivers-Symbolic-Spiral-Steel-Sculpture-to-Jamaica-Durin--35942414/?fbclid=IwAR3crd7CghlLaIPoWM_wkCMxM-ZkX91qV4fv1w51Tc4vYlsLavdoB54XI_o

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Mrs.Edna Manley is considered the Mother of Modern Jamaican Art. The images here are some of Mrs. Manley’s Sculptures of note-: The Secret, Pocomania, Negro Aroused and The Journey

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Name: Edna Manley 1900-1987 Sculptress

Edna Manley  was born in Yorkshire, England on February 28, 1900 to a Jamaican mother and an English father and died February 2, 1987. She studied at various art schools in England including St Michael’s School of Art, London and privately with Maurice Harding, the animal sculptor. She married Norman Manley in 1921 and in 1922 moved to Jamaica with him. Art as it existed in Jamaica then could not have interested Edna. Sculpture was almost non-existent and painting was limited to a conservative watercolour landscape tradition, practised essentially by amateurs. Yet, her own work changed dramatically after her arrival in Jamaica. There was a tremendous leap from the ‘romantic realist’ studies done up to the time of her departure from England to her first piece of work done in Jamaica, the Beadseller. Shortly after, the Beadseller was to have a male counterpart, the Listener, after which Edna went to England in 1923 with her two plasters. The visit proved fruitful. She had the plasters cast into bronze and she was accepted into the Society of Women’s Artists and had Beadseller displayed in their 1924 Exhibition.

Back in Jamaica in early 1924, she quickly set to work with new carving tools and produced Wisdom and then the Ape. At that time, too, she began to model realistic portraits in clay first of Norman and the two-year-old Douglas and then of a friend, Esther Chapman. Then, testing the possibilities of her new medium, she did a head of another friend, Leslie Clerk in wood.

Edna Manley - The Diggers

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The artist’s various submissions to the exhibitions of the Society of Women Artists began to be noticed and in 1927 two French Journals – Les Artistes D��Aujourd “Hui and La Revue Moderne- singled out her work for praise. In England the interest in her work began to grow and in 1929, Edna returned there with a group of recently completed sculpture including Eve, the Torso of Woman, Boy with Reed and the Ape to exhibit in the Goupil Summer Exhibition.

In London on her 1929 visit, she discovered a new medium. She wrote to Norman, “I’m going eventually to carve stone”. This was the preferred medium of the direct carvers whom she would have been observing at that time, and on her return to Jamaica later that year she began to carve in imported materials – Hopeton-wood stone, Caen-stone, Portland stone and Sandstone.

Throughout her career the artist passed through a series of phases, each representing Edna’ stages in the development of her life and that of Jamaica:

 The sculpture Negro Aroused by Edna Manley on Kingston Waterfront

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Negro Aroused (1935 – 1940): This represented a search for a new order, a vision of a people being awakened to a new consciousness. Chief among her works at this time were Mountain Girl, Negro Aroused, The Prophet, Pocomania

The Dying God Series (1941 – 1948): Works including Before Thought, the Forerunner, Before Truth, Into the Mist. These are at one and the same time her most private yet universal works. In them are elements of a personal symbolism based on her own intimate relationships with her husband and family.

The Public Year and Public Commissions (1949 – 1969): At this time there is intense pressure on family and political life. Works at this time are isolated pieces, usually commissions. these include The Hills of Papine, The Mountains and all the All Saints Crucifix.

A Period of Mourning (1969-1974): This is the period of illness and death of Norman Manley. She does Angel, the Grief of Mary, Journey among others.

Mrs. Manley has played a major pioneering role in the history of 20th century Jamaican art. Her works are in private collections, galleries and public buildings worldwide. Since 1924 she exhibited in many one woman and group exhibitions mainly in London, the United States, the Caribbean and in Jamaica. In 1929 she was awarded the Institute of Jamaica’s Silver Musgrave Medal. In 1943 she became the first recipient of the gold Musgrave Medal for her outstanding contribution and leadership in the arts in Jamaica.

Edna was co-founder of the Jamaica School of Art in 1950.She stopped carving in wood in 1974 with ‘Journey’ and all her subsequent works were carved in clay and cast. Later in 1977 she received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of West Indies, Kingston. In 1980 at the National Gallery Retrospective Exhibition “Edna  Manley the Seventies”, she was awarded the Order of Merit.

There is a specialised gallery devoted to her life and work at the National Gallery of Jamaica.