St. Croix This Week / Island Art
On third Thursdays (except for April 12), from November through June, the doors of galleries, jewelry studios, and fine retail stores stay open till 8pm to celebrate historic Christiansted's Art Thursdays!
Wind through the streets of town to find paintings, photography, handmade jewelry, fine furniture, handcrafted woodwork, and ceramics from Company Street to Strand Street. This popular series started fifteen years ago as an idea to merge the town's art galleries into a monthly event. Soon jewelry stores (St. Croix has amazing hand made jewelry), and other retailers came on board.
For a relatively small 'island' community, St. Croix has a rich, diverse, and vibrant art scene. Enjoy it all, along with dinner, at one of the many fine restaurants in town. Make a night of it!
See you soon at Art Walks on February 16 and March 15 -- Art @Top Hat, aka Gallery, Bassin Fine Art, Crucian Gold, Designworks, D&D Studio Fine Art Photography, The Goldworker, ib designs, Maria Henle Studio, Maufe Gallery, Mitchell Larsen Studio, The Sanctuary Studio and Gallery, Watch your Step Art Studio and Yellow House Gallery.
 "As far back as I can remember, I have been creating in some form or another. Being from an artistically-inclined family, there were always art supplies around but, whenever I felt like trying something new (and if the materials I wanted weren't readily available), I went about obtaining them by any means necessary in quite a determined way."
"Even though my high school art teacher seemed bazaar at the time, by giving us projects for the year with absolutely no explanation and no instructions, only in retrospect can I now appreciate his less-than-conventional approach to teaching art. So, with no questions asked, we were forced to research topics, and create them to his expectations. To this day, terms like 'chiaroscuro,' 'analogous,' and 'monochromatic' are forever ingrained in my brain, thanks to Mr. Reichart."
Continue reading "Meet Cover Artist Leslie Cramer" »
"I grew up in Marin County, California with a passion for drawing. When I was just 5 years old, my Mom would have me look at something, close my eyes, visualize it, then draw from recall. I suppose this made me very detail oriented! My engineer Father taught me how to draw everything. My parents were supportive and encouraging. While I studied both flamenco guitar and opera, it was graphic art that I was most interested in and, in fact, studied it at the Art Institute of Houston.
I've done illustration, layout, design and airbrush professionally. I have worked with a prominent decorator on various projects such as restaurant murals, paintings and faux marquetry of the banquet floor of a major downtown San Francisco hotel.
Continue reading "Meet The Artist: Susan Snow" »
Elisa McKay, the youngest of eight children and a self-taught artist, grew up in Harlem, New York. After years of working and teaching in the Electronic Data Processing field, Elisa returned to college for a BA in English from the City College of NY. In 1978 she left the big city and migrated to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.
Here she taught English, raised her young daughter, Ayanna, and became a caregiver/companion to her aging parents, Ogese and Hedi McKay. Her father was a musician and artist himself.
Continue reading "Meet Cover Artist Elsa McKay" »
 Toni writes, "I have been a permanent resident on St Croix for 30 years, painting and looking after birds. Originally growing up in Laguna Beach, California, I had a tremendous love of birds and photography from an early age. I was fortunate enough to be given a scholarship for college in that area from the Laguna Festival of Arts. For two years, at Humboldt State, I studied Photography and Wildlife Management. I was good at drawing and painting and the photography equipment was expensive, so I spent the next two years at Long Beach State studying Biomedical Illustration. That is really where I had my training for the detail and rendering. There I was being trained to paint human subjects and worked often with cadavers, but my passion was entirely birds and animal subjects."
Continue reading "Cover Artists Toni Lance" »
Miguel Ferguson, pictured here with classmates Xaise and Amanda, lives and goes to school in Grove Place, Frederiksted. He's a 6th-grade student at the Eulalie Rivera Elementary School and will be graduating from the 6th grade this year.
Today, Miguel is an art student in Danica David's classroom but learned that he liked art in kindergarten. At that early age, his father taught him what he knew and his mother encoueraged him to do his best in art. He draws at home as well as in school.
"I like using my hands and mind to create and I love to use color. I have no favorite color -- I like them all! But my favorite things to draw are people and cars in pencil, markers, or paint," says Miguel.
Continue reading "Cover Artist: Miguel Ferguson" »
Long-time St. Croix resident Caroline Duprey is the "artist-in-residence" at Designworks, located in Apothecary Hall at No. 6 Company Street in Christiansted, where a selection of her work is always on display and for sale.
Caroline studied art at the Manchester Institute of Arts, Manchester, NH, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Ginger Norman Studio, Loudon, NH, and DeCordova Museum School, Lincoln, MA. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England and in the Virgin Islands. On St. Croix she is a regular exhibitor at the Good Hope School's Caribbean Fine Arts Exhibit, while on St. Thomas she has been invited to participate in several group shows at Mango Tango Art Gallery.
Continue reading "Caroline Duprey" »
"I have been painting for over 40 years. In 1965 I graduated from the University of Connecticut with a BFA in Art and taught High School Art for several years before raising a family.
After first visiting St. Croix in 1972 and subsequently purchasing a home here in 1986, I became thoroughly enthralled with the colors, the surroundings and the inhabitants of the island. Though my permanent home is in Connecticut, my heart is in St Croix, where I maintain a studio and paint whole-heartedly while in residence.
Continue reading "Nancy Pistilli Byrnes" »
Isabelle Picard has been a St. Croix resident for the past ten years. Growing up on a sailboat in the south of France, Isabelle spent most of her formative years in Hyeres, a beautiful seaside town on the French Riviera, before venturing off to the far corners of the world. She has traveled extensively, spending much of her time in the French West Indies, New Caledonia and Mexico. She is fluent in four languages.
A mural artist by profession, her work can be seen in private homes and public buildings throughout South Florida, the Virgin Islands and the south of France. Her paintings on canvas have also been collected worldwide. Her style is whimsical, colorful, happy, and has been called modern Caribbean Folk Art. Having studied graphic design in Florida, some of her work reflects a more graphic style. Post baccalaureate, Isabelle worked for several years as the head designer for a high volume custom paintings and mural company in South Florida, before starting her own company.
Continue reading "Island Art - Featured Artist Isabelle Picard" »
DAILY STRIFE is an exhibition commemorating VI-PR Friendship, to be presented at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in October. This exhibition explores individual and collective struggles encountered as one deals with the current political, social and economic situation in the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands communities. Hope, oblivion and chaos are three emotional states that are intertwined with the daily quest for survival and inspiration as we face the same challenges of migration, hurricanes, traffic, decay, consumerism, apathy, environmental threats and economic crisis. In this exhibition, artists from the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico will present photographs, digital images and installations that address the struggle for our "daily bread" and the way we view our daily lives; some with hope and humor others with irony. Over 50 images ranging in size from 10 x 10" to 4' x 3' will be on exhibit for 2 months from Oct. 16 through Dec. Three artists will travel from San Juan, PR to help install the work and participate in the artists' talk that will be held at CMCA, Saturday, Oct. 17th.
Continue reading "Daily Strife" »
 Bonnie Luria has been a painter, a textile designer, an illustrator, a jewelry designer, a city girl and a full time resident of St. Croix for the past 9 years.
A native New Yorker, moving to St. Croix fulfilled her "lagoon fixation" that taunted her for most of her life. "I always saw myself living in a tropical location but, like most of us, thought it was a fantasy reserved for a weekly vacation until a chance encounter with a charming, convincing, and uniquely alluring man who had moved here eight years before I did."
Knowing that if you don't take a chance, chance takes you, she packed up her city tent and pitched it here, marrying her lure and revitalizing her painting career.
Continue reading "St. Croix Artist: Bonnie Luria" »
By Pam Kerschner
 "The novelty of Caribbean island living inspires my "cartoon" illustrations and oil paintings a lot. When I first came to St. Croix, I was compelled to pursue my art and enjoyed the support and friendship of many wonderful island artists. After twenty years on St. Croix, I am currently living in Colorado to help my 90-year-old aunt and my father during their challenging years. I paint Caribbean life while living "out west," and plan to retire soon, still painting, in the Virgin Islands.
Continue reading "Caribbean Living With a Sense of Humor" »
Jane Akin finds her subjects in historic buildings and the plants and animals all around her. You can almost hear the trees swaying and the creatures moving through the bush!
Jane's home/studio is in Estate Boetzberg where she produces four shows a year, as well as commissions, and teaches watercolor and drawing. She is also the Artist in Residence at the Buccaneer Hotel offering watercolor classes twice a week.
Jane has been an interior designer and architecture is still a haunting subject making many of her commissions house portraits. But tropical flowers are her very favorite subjects and, like Georgia O'Keefe, paints them larger than life. This is where her mastery of watercolor really shows its spontaneity--mingling colors, "glazing" one over another, creating luminosity, allowing the pigment to "bloom," and creating texture with salt or dry brush.
Continue reading "Jane Akin" »
By Nina York
 Why should real art have to be serious? Why can't a painting that makes you smile be as valid as a somber one? At Christiansted's Yellow House Gallery, owned and run by long-time resident artist Judith King, originator of the charming cover art of this issue, you are guaranteed a few chuckles as you view her paintings of the St. Croix scene.
Located in a charming old wooden townhouse on Queen Cross Street between Company and King Streets, this gallery is Chicago native King's favorite venue among the sites she has occupied. She arrived here in 1967 with her parents after having obtained a BA in art from Knox College in Illinois.
Continue reading "Meet the Artist That Makes You Smile" »
 Designworks, located in Apothecary Hall at No. Six Company Street in Christiansted, opens the 2008-09 Art Thursday series on December 11 with "The Red Pennant," a collection of new paintings by Designworks' own "artist-in-residence" Caroline Duprey.
Caroline studied art at the Manchester Institute of Arts, Manchester, NH; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Ginger Norman Studio, Loudon, NH; and DeCordova Museum School, Lincoln, MA.
Her work has been exhibited throughout New England and in the Virgin Islands where it is available at Designworks and Twin City Cafe on St. Croix and Mango Tango Art Gallery on St. Thomas.
Continue reading "What's New at Designworks" »
SOCA is a visual arts organization based in St. Croix. Founded in 2006 by Norma Krieger, Maud Pierre-Charles, Roy Lawaetz and Nii Ahene. This group of well known professional artists formed the core team which spearheaded the effort to build a successful visual arts organization in the USVI. SOCA's mission is to foster and promote Caribbean aesthetics and the artistic expressions of the Caribbean visual artist.
The "Artist Circle" -- Arts Fest presented a day of two free art workshops for children and adults; a musical performance; a panel discussion of artist dialogue; an award winning film presentation and an exhibition of SOCA members works in the newly renovated gallery space. Artists were invited to come and sketch the historic Fort Frederik site and create a work of art during the course of the event.
For decades Stephen Larsen has been shooting images around the world. His travels have taken him to the ends of the earth including such places as Antarctica, Australia, Africa, Central America, Himalayas, India and Laos.
Continue reading "Stephen Larsen's Photographic Artwork" »
Gallery owner/artist Th.r.se Trudeau welcomes you to Mauf. Gallery, where she exhibits her own work and that of other local and international artists on St. Croix, USVI. Located at Crucian Gold, on Strand Street in C'sted., Maufe Gallery shares space with jewelry designer Nathan Bishop. There is often a new exhibition every month, and other activities such as live music and performance art pieces taking place. Check the local newspaper, or call for more information about current events at the Gallery. www.maufegallery.com Tel. - 332-4556 C'sted Map #96
This is home to the artistry in glass of Jan Mitchell and the evocative photographic artworks of Steffen Larsen. Watch glass work in progress and shop for gifts in a restored historic building on Company Street, the heart of Christiansted's SOHO (South of Hospital Street) district where the arts are alive. www.janmitchellcollection.com
Island Map 132
Tel. 719-1000
Located on Queen Cross Street in Christiansted, this charming West Indian studio/showroom is a delight to the senses. See Judith King's whimsical paintings and miniatures of local life and historical settings in an eclectic mix with her handmade jewelry, nature masks and other wall art.
Christiansted Map #7
Tel. 340-719-6656
|
Island Art Directory: • Walk This Way - Christiansted's Art Thursdays
• Meet Cover Artist Leslie Cramer
• Meet The Artist: Susan Snow
• Meet Cover Artist Elsa McKay
• Cover Artists Toni Lance
• Cover Artist: Miguel Ferguson
• Caroline Duprey
• Nancy Pistilli Byrnes
• Island Art - Featured Artist Isabelle Picard
• Daily Strife
• St. Croix Artist: Bonnie Luria
• September Cover Artist: Luca Gasperi
• Caribbean Living With a Sense of Humor
• Jane Akin
• Meet the Artist That Makes You Smile
• What's New at Designworks
• SOCA Celebrates Art
• Maria Henle Studio
• Stephen Larsen's Photographic Artwork
• Maufe Gallery
• Mitchell-Larsen Studio
• Yellow House Gallery
• Maufe Gallery
• Historic Photographs and Artwork - St. Croix Landmarks
• Mitchell Larsen Studio
• Walsh Metal Works Gallery
• Yellow House Gallery
|
|
