(the tentatively titled) My Country My Love

Good Night Nurse!

2009-08-16T11:20:00.001-07:00

sometimes island life seems like a short comedy set in a sanatorium…

Sing a Birthday Song

2009-07-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe it’s been a year already! There hasn’t been much progress yet but how big is any yearling anyway? I will be more resolute and less a slacker year 2, Brownie promise. I guess the project can hardly develop if only, I dunno, 14? People know about it. This year’s plan is to get to know more people and spread the national-pride-propaganda. Go chat-up unsuspecting boys and girls, maybe strip down to my skivvies and prance around in carnival, crash parties, some gorilla art and other skullduggery to get to know my country better, to inspire you a bit and to remind you that this project is not just for artists. It’s for anyone… everyone who’d rather not have Jamaica sink into the deep blue sea and want to see the next day be a bit brighter than the last.
Have a cupcake today lads and ladies and tell a friend,
Candle out,
Jane Instigator.

Kingston on the Edge

2009-07-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

The wizardry that is group art for your viewing pleasure guys and dolls. At the lovely, lovely Grosvenor Gallery those big and small gathered for the Saturday June 20 leg of this year’s Kingston on the Edge, an awesome annual arts festival. My Country My Love was there, jamming to some French jazz and equipped with a big empty canvas, multifarious pastels, and open an invitation to grab a paintbrush and do as the heart desires. Here’s the fruit of our labour. Enjoy!
p.s. there’re more pictures on Facebook
Paint chips aren’t yummy,
Jane Instigator

The Week for Fashion

2009-07-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

It’s June 13 and I put on my best fancy dress and headed to the Stadium for the Saturday catwalk showing of this year’s Caribbean Fashion week.
An hour in my friend and I are nibbling at the biscuits she had stashed in her bag, wondering why we skipped lunch and thinking that the late start is beyond fashionably late and tiptoeing towards obnoxious. Just as we were getting genuinely fidgety the show started with “Art on the Run”, meant to be a fusion of the visual and performing arts and fashion, it was a pleasant enough ode to umm African flags? The Meiling collection was good, if a little disjointed, it took me on vacation, to a party, and into a tub of Neapolitan ice-cream, not my favourite flavour but still sweet. New UK designer, Jennivi Jordan’s collection… textural, orange, red, green, pink, yumminess… the late start is now forgiven… sort of. Another standout, model and author Lois’ collection in shades of grey that made for an oxymoronic menswear inspired, sexy, schoolmarmy and altogether practical collection. There were others; good, bad, ugly, curious (and some built-exclusively-for-passa-passa) but some heavily perfumed soul had arrived late and sat nearby so most of the rest was a blur. I spent the rest of the night blinking and winking (itchy, watery eyes)… fingers crossed that I didn’t appear to be giving Hector Lincoln the eye.
This is the ninth year of Caribbean Fashion Week and each year it has grown, and inspired a bit more development and a bit less polyester in the region’s fashion circle. The 2008 borne Caribbean Fashion Industry Fashion Forum (CAFIF), a not-for-profit-association, has added the super-hero power-packed-punch of teamwork behind the endeavour. 2009 is the dawn of the West Indian Sea Island Cotton (WISIC) project featured in the sum of Sandra Kennedy’s collection. Did I mention that I love cotton like Pvt. Bubba Blue love shrimp? It’s versatile, its comfy and breathable, its natural, and the WISIC is growing fantastic cotton in Barbados, Nevis, Antigua and in our very backyards. It’s then converted to fabric in Europe and Japan where it is in high demand. Hoorah, local industry! I wonder if WISIC is organic? If yes, awesome! If no, there is still work to be done, I hope that’s where they’re headed and that one day it will be processed, more readily available at home.
Cheers to Mr. Cooper and all of Pulse,
Sashay shante,
Jane Instigator

Happy World Fair Trade Day

2009-05-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Have a Happy World Fair Trade Day! Whether it’s that mug of coffee you had at breakfast, the chocolate you picked up in the checkout line at the market, or the rice you have with dinner, they all come from somewhere... some farm... someone’s hard work. Trade has enormous economic and environmental impact and it is never free if it isn’t fair, so today and every day onward try to be more conscious consumers. Visit http://www.worldfairtradeday09.org/ , http://www.fairtrade.net/ , http://www.transfairusa.org/ and http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/trade for information and learn how you can make a difference.

Take Care of You,

Instigator

Happy Earth Day

2009-04-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

Park your SUV’s today kids, its Earth Day! Tell your jumbo-grocery-marts (...you know the ones) NO to Styrofoam, plastic bags and other indigestibles. Replace your light bulbs with energy-savers and plant a tree. Go to earthday.net to calculate your Carbon Footprint and learn more. And tell your legislators we need healthy school lunch programmes and policies to combat pollution and Global Warming sharpish!
Earth loves you so reciprocate,
Instigator

Restart: Art as an Answer

2009-04-02T02:38:00.001-07:00

Hallo Hallo lads and lasses,
It’s been a while so thanks for your continued support after that hiatus. Every now and then life catches you alone in the school washroom, kicks your ass, takes your marbles and steals your lunch money. These last few crazy months have involved death, house struck by lightning, another death, and some time spent in a hospital bed, all one after another with a series of smaller calamities in between. I am however fairly certain that life would be less beautiful without these and other disasters.
I trust you had a happy holiday (whether Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, or long-weekend-off-&-boxing-day-sale) and have made the most of 2009 thus far. Many things have occurred of late in our mad world, a pretty remarkable U.S. election… the results of which left the world with that warm and fuzzy feeling for at least a fortnight, the shoe throwing incident heard around the world, a worldwide recession, and Michael Jackson in the news for his music. Closer to home we’ve been suffering the consequences of myopic oligarch-ism and partisan dogfights. I hope that what is proving to be simultaneously one of the most extraordinary and daunting times in recent history will lead, not to depression and hallucinogenics, but to an iconoclasm of the holy trinity: consumerism, individualism and xenophobia that’s been festering at the altar.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that at this rare juncture we will tighten our belts, roll up of sleeves, put our heads together, take one for the team, kill 2 birds with one stone and many more clichéd but fantastic acts to dig our selves out of the hole. I can’t help but be excited about the opportunities that exist on the flip side of the hard-times coin. The return to production and hard work for reward, the renaissance of culture, science, philosophy, new ideas, slowed-cooked food, playing fetch with Spot, an afternoon spent reading and ART. Art in brush strokes, in point-and-shoot, in needle and thread, in melodies, in words. Personal yet communal, imperfect and progressive… evolutionary. Art as conversation, a chowder, if you will, of collective ideas, all hot and stewy and yummy, art as an answer… to the question of how the hell do we get out of here? I’m tickled pink at the thought of what could be, nay, what will be, when we all come together to make this project, My Country My Love, and all other social art endeavours come to pass. This is our time now… to be art- a collective of spirits, art – sublime change.
That’s all she wrote for now kids,
Please please tell your friends,
Remember, find a penny, pick it up, all day long… you’ll have a really dirty coin in your pocket so wash your hands,
Hasta luego,
Instigator

Baby Steps

2008-09-08T15:23:00.001-07:00

I’ve been biting my nails about this project, still infantile. You can’t undertake a project like this... asking people to give you a piece of themselves without the trade for a bit of you. So to everyone who has submitted, emailed, checked out the blog, and made/clicked approve to a new friend request on Facebook thus far, thanks... you’ve settled the butterflies ever so slightly.

To those who’ve said that their journal page seems too pointless or otherwise deficient to contribute, you’d be surprised at the potential impact of one’s seemingly mundane reminisce on another. Sometimes things that seem ordinary when they leave the tip of the pen or get developed from a negative, that seem meaningless when that journal sits at the bottom of your shoulder-bag or in the back of your closet, gain relevance through the eyes of another.

So what do you journal about? Yourself? The state of the country? Your socio-political observations? Pissed off rants? Your bliss? Your breakfast? I don’t know. I think we all wet-dream about creating something so amazing that it sets the world exploding. But there’s something so intriguing and inspiring about the humility of a simple snapshot of daily existence that can start a slow burn, it’s funny the things forced out of invisibility when you look at them...

Instigator

July 29, 2008

2008-09-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we were visited by Gustav, a hurricane/tropical-storm/hurricane-again that sat himself on top of Jamaica for much longer than any storm should. In the wee hours of this morning, not yet dawn, wind gusts, lightening, and a loud bang conspired to leave us without electricity. I lay in bed making shadow figures with a fading flashlight, rendered unable to sleep by rattling windows daring the batons to break, and the sound of thunder and roof shingles wrestling the wind. With every crash-bang-pop outside I imagined poor Charlie Brown aflight, never to be seen again, or crumpled under a felled tree…

Today’s news is bleak. Parishes are flooded, and still the rain persists, houses have washed down river, roofs gone missing, farmland toppled and roads and bridge collapsed…

It’s later, the clouds begin to part and I venture outside. What of my dear Charlie Brown? I was 70% sure all I would see were broken potshards in its place, but there it stood unscathed as the sunshine emerged over our heads with a message for me “nature is intrepid, more so than you believe and as a part of nature you are too”… Okay so Mother Nature sounded awful Hallmark just now. I suppose you were expecting something truly epic to emerge from the lips of a parted sky. Call me a cheeseball, but you know what I mean, flood waters will recede and we’ll pick up the pieces and get on with life, hopefully we’ll live it even better.

I wish you well and hope you weathered the storm. May each storm only wash away the worst of us.

Muchos besitos

Instigator

After the Storm

2008-09-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

2008-09-08T12:32:00.001-07:00

Got a collection of works on canvas.

When the Lights Go Out

2008-08-23T19:58:00.001-07:00

Sweet Sugarcane

2008-08-23T19:56:00.001-07:00

Scandal Bag

2008-08-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

I think we might need a bigger bag...

W.W.J.D. ?

2008-08-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

...So Hard to Live in the City

2008-08-12T12:55:00.001-07:00

Got a little inspired with some toy soldiers and Albert Hammond Jr.
Go take a picture kids,
Instigator

And All The Kings Men...

2008-08-12T10:04:00.001-07:00

Bitten Again

2008-08-12T10:01:00.001-07:00

See Jane Save the World

2008-08-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

We Got A Postcard!

2008-08-03T09:01:00.001-07:00

Be Like A Squirrel Girl...

2008-08-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

Incubus, the only band for which I would voluntarily carry the offspring of all of its members, quoted in their most recent biography, Colin Wilson’s (The Occult) assertion that art "... rescues us from our self chosen triviality, to which we are so prone. It is like a deep organ note that makes my hair stir and a shiver run through me. I 'pull back' from life, like a camera taking a long shot with a wide angle lens. I quite simply become aware of more reality than before." … I know it’s a quote of a quote and that can get confusing but stay with me kids.

I don’t know what the dictionary definition of art currently is, but I thoroughly believe that that’s what it should be. Art is a tonic for the ennui and narcissism symptomatic of the combination of routine (e.g. the aforesaid tooth brushing and consumption of sugar fortified cereal) and cultural excess we bathe in everyday. We get so focused on getting to work early to stay at work late to earn money to pay for gasoline to fill the tank to get to work early, that we forget who we are and why we really respond to the beep-beep of our alarm clock every morning. Reflection is our way out of routine, and no process is more saturated with reflection than that of art.

I wake up at dawn one Friday to photograph the sky at sunrise when the air, still cool from the night before, smells like grass and slumber and sound of my thoughts through the stillness remind me why I’m alive. My room is filled with books and dusty magazines from years gone by and dog-eared notes graffitied with doodles in the margins and I’ve become a hoarder of all things random yet sentimental for potential collage. My life is richer for it because it reminds me that my life means more than the capacity to pay for petrol.

The moments spent with scissors, camera, pen and ink remind me of how existent reality is and was and will be. And the first post on this blog, the beginning of this communal art endeavour has taught me how genuine reality is and how exciting it can be to forget oneself and revel in the symbiosis that is art.

I’m thinking that today we all work on forgetting, even for a minute, what we do, and consider who we are and who we’re meant to be. Let us be artists.

If you don’t know who Incubus is… shame on you because they’re lovely.

Mail-me-E-mail-me-Blog-me back,

Peace and ummm something that rhymes with peace,

Instigator

Downtown: No Releases Were Signed

2008-07-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

It amazes me with every wander through Downtown that it has become a-okay to watch cultural history peel away with every fallen brick, poverty and waterlogged paint in the name of hearsay. What will we think when all comes tumbling down and the dust settles on what could have been and never was?
Muchos Besitos,
Instigator

We're On Facebook!

2008-07-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

Come visit Jane Instigator. Make her your Facebook Friend today!
Don't forget to join to our group too: My Country My Love

The Elephant in the Room

2008-07-29T15:19:00.001-07:00

Dance, dance around the elephant in the room as the floor below cracks under the weight of injustices never forgotten. In times hard and fast, parliamentary gridlock digs a ditch from whence new flowers will grow. Maybe it's the fantasies of a simple-minded lass, punch-drunk on news tv overload. But I feel a shift in the wind and with it a progression towards the change that needs to be.
Tell me what you think whether in art or prose. What's super-cool is that we don't even have to agree. Maybe you like the elephant dance, it is what it is. And pardon my bouts of dyslexia, case in point the "dialouge" meant to be "dialogue" in the sketch above, there'll be plenty more where that came from...
Eat your peas and carrots kiddies,
Instigator

Paint, Print, Something!

2008-07-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

We're Still Here

2008-07-29T15:14:00.001-07:00

Ocho Rios: You Can See That Bloody Courts From Space

2008-07-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

Here are two pics overlooking Ocho Rios that I like...so I figured I'd send it to you :-)
Denise
p.s. i sent this email out to every other person on my contact list...i love the idea!!!

My Country My Love

2008-07-22T18:42:00.001-07:00

At 20-something I’ve found that my friends are all over the place. Fresh out of school and rife with indecision; bored (and/or disenchanted) with their first job; stuck in traffic; backpacking through Europe; yelling f-you’s at the now short-circuiting mobile phone that they dropped in the tub while trying to simultaneously text and shower last week; nursing last night’s hangover under their covers while trying to get the gum (let’s hope it’s gum) out of their hair. But what connects some of us is that we are Jamaican, and connects all of us is that we want to feel, on our deathbeds, that our lives had an impact, not soon forgotten. This is your chance to have consequence.

The Project is tentatively christened… My Country My Love: A Labyrinth of Jamaican Journals. Here’s how it goes:

(1) E-mail something!- a thought, a story, a poem, a photo, a piece of art, whatever… seriously feel free to submit any-anything... mycountrymylove@hotmail.com

(2) Mail it to me if you prefer at…

‘(the tentatively titled) My Country My Love: A Labyrinth of Jamaican Journals’

P.O. Box 275

Kingston 9

Jamaica W.I.

(4) Add your name and location or sign it anonymous if you’d like to remain a mystery

(5) Content once contributed becomes the sole property of G’Tanya Forbes/ ‘(the tentatively titled) My Country My Love: a Labyrinth of Jamaican Journals’ and may be published in a selected collection of works, a part of the proceeds from which will go to a to-be-announced Jamaican n.g.o.

(6) All visitors to and residents/ citizens and/or lovers of Jamaica can supply.

Next time you feel exhausted with your ritual tooth brushing and your bowl of Coco Puffs pick up a pencil, a camera, an embroidery needle, superglue… and reflect on the significance of Jamaica on you and you on Jamaica.

Congrats you’ve made it to the end.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.