Festival of Arts Visual Arts Exhibition
The performing arts section of the annual Festival of Arts traditionally gets much of the attention, with talent from schools throughout the country showcased in front of judges. But there’s another growing feature of the Festival – the visual arts exhibition. That exhibit, opened at the House of Culture this morning, displayed arts in many different forms, created by youths. Mike Rudon was there and has the story.
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Mike Rudon, Reporting
That performance by Orange Walk’s Jamie Castillo wowed audiences at this year’s Festival of Arts, and did the same this morning at the House of Culture where we got a glimpse of this year’s best in culture and talent.
Leroy Green
But as captivating as they were, today wasn’t about those performances. This was the launch of the visual arts section of the Festival, artistic pieces created by youths.
Leroy Green, Coordinator, Visual Arts Exhibit
“The district festivals started from April when the High School festival was held, and then you had the Primary School festival countrywide. I went countrywide to the various festivals along with Mr. Dion Williams who adjudicated the art pieces, and we selected some of the best items to come down and be showcased in this particular event being held here this morning. Apart from that we opened it up to other young artists who needed the exposure. We were looking for things like creativity, originality, use of unorthodox materials like Mr. Williams’ thing is he teaches how to turn waste materials into art, and that’s the kind of thing we were looking for. We were also looking for finesse.”
Kim Vasquez
We saw plenty of that today in a stunning array of arts in all its forms, a showcase of the best of the best.
Kim Vasquez, Youth Development Officer, ICA
“For us we’re really pleased because we have the participation of the entire country. We have artwork from across the length and breadth of the country and its all young artists. Some of it is done within the schools and some of it is still done by youths but they are outside the school system. This year we’re trying to garner more attention for the visual arts. Every year we have a visual arts exhibit and many of the districts do it at the district level as well, but indeed the focus is always going more towards the performance arts and so this year we wanted to do a special ceremony to try to garner more support for the visual arts as well.”
According to Vasquez, the Institute of Creative Arts continues to look for innovative ways to expand and enhance the Festival of Arts.
Kim Vasquez
“We continue to try to grow the Festival. The Festival since its revival some years ago has expanded from being just a few days, and now we have a two week festival. We moved towards having more a competition based activities. This afternoon, for example, we have the teachers Festival of Arts at the Bliss where the teachers will be participating and we have participation even from a remote village in Toledo, from teachers. And then we end the week on Friday with the High School competition which is a relatively new event within the Festival of Arts.”
The pieces shown today were selected by an adjudicator during a countrywide tour. Mike Rudon for News Five.
