WELCOME TO JAMROCK
January 12th 2012 myself and Linda Zina landed in Jamaica Kingston...leaving behind over 100 cans of the finest spraypaint on English turf and soil...well at Gatwick airport...just as we were ready to board, they pulled us aside and investigated what we had in our second luggage...spraypaint of course...what else would someone on a flight to Jamaica be carrying...Virgin booking desk you bunch of dumb-asses...when a man ask if your flights allow for spray paint to be carried across...the answer is no...thanks for wasting our time...disheartened, we sat on the plane looking at each other thinking what do we do now...okay so we got over it by the time the first film had finished, and figured the island had to have some spraypaint somewhere. They got cars and therefore must have spray...i hope...that plus house paint and brushes...we came to paint so lets paint...we got to nice up some walls havent we? above is what we found and used...
In 2000 when i was 18 i first visited Jamaica...i quickly got chaperoned up to the hills in St Mary Gayle and adopted by Mrs Cameron and her daughter Mrs Campbell...the rest is history and i now have a Jamaican family spanning through many generations and all over island...comes in very handy when trying to oganise a workshop or two. Especially when Mrs Campbell, Eve is a teacher. Everytime i go to Jamaica i do a couple workshops but this year was the biggest and most exciting...over a course of 4 hours Linda and i had over 100 youth come and see us...PHEWWWWWWW...that was Lindas first workshop...anyway we did poster design with them all, below are some of my favourite results...
Initially it was intended that we would be painting in gayle also but since we had our paint knicked at gatwick, we had to change plans...so the first paint happened at Winnifred beach, which is in Port Antonio, one of the islands tourist hotspots...as a result the locals arent allowed to use there own beaches anymore...i find this some what disgusting and so does the lady whom we were staying with...so carla italian born local legend has started the fight to save the last of its kind...
find out more... here...
So we flexed our new paints, bought in a hardware store in Port Antonio...its always good to try new styles and i think that things just get better from this day onwards...have to say i was not happy with the feet, but the face and ears i was feeling went well...this image strated of a bit contraversial in some respects beacuse Jamaican people dont like dogs like westerners...its a bit different to your london jamaicans that pride themselves in the Staffie on the rope next to them...Jamaicans are a bit scared of hounds...but after learning that the dog was an african praire and descndent of the original african dog they looked at it more kindly...
so here is a link to lindas blog where she has lots of her images and so on....
nice up linda looking fresh as ever
port antonio town below... winni sand above...
not a bad place to spend winter working im sure you will agree...
Jamaica has a rich cultural history, one that i keep learning more about every time i visit...every child that attends school learns the culture and is very knowledgable...this year is Jamaicas 50th independence celebration...in recognition to that i have posted and left with the locals a total of 50 of my herd of gazelles...i tried when appropriate to photograph them with a local... this was one of the first to go up...
one love
STAY TUNED...ROUND TWO TO FOLLOW
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