Sara Lawrence. Proud mother, former Miss Jamaica World (2006) and soon-to-be medical doctor speaks candidly to FIRST about her career and lack of sleep.

Probably you are I told Afflicted. On one hand Bruce Golding’s become the fall guy for decades of garrison politics from both parties but on the other hand, he did lie.

And then, our Prime Minister was the politician who famously distanced himself from garrison politics far, far over the hill with the National Democratic Movement. Well, until he wanted the top job and had to rejoin the Jamaica Labour Party to get it. (more…)

Jamaica has become a violent and heartless country where most people have become desensitised to things that would make people in civilised places pass out. Something is blatantly wrong but everyone goes on with their daily life like everything is fine, wake up my people and smell the stench of death around us.

We need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the person must have been involved in some kind of mix up to justify the violence that is perpetrated against them. This is the excuse we use to reassure ourselves that things are not as bad as it seems. Some will wait for a general feel good march or some kind of PR feel good stunt that makes uptown people go back home feeling like they have done their part in curbing the violence… (more…)

Exhibition opening May 23 at ROKTOWA, 11- 4pm. Entrance is on Pechon St, downtown Kingston (opposite the old railway station). Laura will be doing a collaboration with the Haitian artists – a nine night for the victims of the earthquake with installation.

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If you didn’t know where you were going it would be pretty hard to find the place that Jamaican artist David Marshand calls home. The entrance runs just off the main road leading out of St Ann’s Bay and is easy to miss unless you know that the entrance you are looking for resembles an over-sized rabbit hole.

Surrounded by dense thickets and a few mangy-looking cats, the rocky pathway leading up to David’s house (or what’s left of it since he set it on fire a few years ago) is surely an appropriate pre-introduction to the eccentric, scraggly-haired, wild-eyed man who lives in this cavernous concrete shell on the seaside.

There are no windows or locked doors in this place. Just space, lots of space and a guy who looks born to play the role of a shipwrecked castaway who has wandered around an uninhabited island for the last 50 years.

I first heard about David from my friend Maxine Walters who has a significant amount of space in her home dedicated to his work, including the piece below titled “Ultimate Wannabe”: a wearable rendition of Jesus Christ, complete with moustache.

“He’s a f***** riot”, she exclaimed with glee as she demonstrated the wearable Christ, “I just wanna buy all of it! I mean look at this thing!”

The next day, Maxine brought me to meet him and to secure a few more pieces from the walls that surround his small plastic-covered cot which sits in the center of a room cluttered with papers, paintings, sculptures and cat shit. It’s quite a sight, made all the more interesting by an algae-infested swimming pool just outside his doorless-doorway, and David’s story about his short tenure (3 hours) as an art-school student in New York (presumably before he was deported from the United States for smoking ganja):

“They kept bringing out all sorts of girls and they would take their clothes off. All kinds of girls; skinny girls, brown girls, white girls and one time even a big fat Chinese one! They wanted us to draw them and to concentrate on making perfect lines but all I kept thinking was if I could make one of them squirt! I just couldn’t sit there and draw girls, it was driving me crazy. And the streets were calling me. This was New York City in the sixties so I didn’t give a shit about drawing lines.”

For more information on David’s Marchand’s work (and directions to the rabbit hole) contact Maxine Walters at maxinew@cwjamaica.com .

Click on MORE to see the rest of the photographs.

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