7 News Belize

Belizean Art With Mexican Flavour
posted (December 15, 2010)
They are called the artisans with a plan and five Belizean artists are opening their show at the Institute of Mexico in Belize right now. The artists are Ellen Staine, Emmeth Young, Janice Young, Jill Burgess and Myrna Manzanres. According to the artists, the overall object of the exhibit is to make their works of art be known in Belize and aboard. Seven News caught up with 2 of the artists yesterday.

Janice Young - Bamboo Artist
"We call the exhibit "Artisans with a plan" because we are 5 artist and we have a big plan. We have several plans. Gill have her own plans, my friend Ellen have her plan, Mrs. Myrna have the Creole plan, so it's a combination."

Monica Bodden
"You are in charge of the Bamboo plan?"

Janice Young - Bamboo Artist
"Yes that is my plan the bamboo plan."

Monica Bodden
"You care to tell me a little bit about it?"

Janice Young - Bamboo Artist
"Here I have my work and I also have work that was done by some students that in May and June of this year the Creole council did s project that was funded by SIF (Social Investment Fund) and it was held at the SIF building on St. Thomas Street and so the plan is for us to work with the youths, we want to involve the youths."

"Here we have different works as I said its 5 of us and so to my left we have the work by Gill Bergess and Emmeth Young. Gill did the painting, Emmeth, he did the drums and the maracas to my right and then we have Ellen, she did the cultural dolls. We have the Chinese, the Creole, the Garifuna, the Indian, the Mexican and she also design hats, she design bags, t-shirts and then we have Myrna Manzanares, she have the Creole display; we have the kiss kiss. We have the fly brush, we have the old time grata and we have literature, we have the Creole calendar and we have books."

Myrna Manzanares, President - National Creole Council
"Sometimes we tend to forget the youths right but the whole idea is for them to see what is there, look at what their talents are and see how they can invest their talents into income generating because things is getting hard and those elderly artist who will not be around so they have to train somebody to take over."

Monica Bodden
"So for those who are interesting in doing an art piece, probably join a bamboo club and so forth; how do you go about doing that?"

Myrna Manzanares, President - National Creole Council
"It depends on the type of art like for example through the national Creole council we've thought the bamboo, we've thought the basketry, Janice did the bamboo and we have the guy from Gales Point who did the basketry. We have on display the diamond plot that hardly anybody knows how to do. Also the paintings - people can link up with any of the artist that they are interested in and work along with them."

Tonight's opening of -Artisans with a Plan- is opened to the public and entrance is free. The exhibit will run until December 28th.



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