Wow Blog! Brianna McCarthy’s Passion.Fruit

I had to go slowly with Bri­anna McCarthy and not for the rea­sons she may think.

I’ve had my eye on her. She’s been grac­ing my work desk­top on and off for the bet­ter part of 2010. In fact, she is a very preg­nant part of my vision board. If there wasn’t a mir­ror nearby, then I could look at Bri­anna McCarthy’s work, tiled as if she just knew the col­ors that would inspire me to life, love and laugh­ter and we just became fast friends.

She saw me first, and its one of those moments where you’re think­ing ok, I have this mag­a­zine and you want peo­ple to say what they think and some­times they do, but most times they don’t and then out of the blue you get a sim­ple “I dig your site.”

No pre­am­ble, no awk­ward­ness, no long good­bye. Just a dig—and a good one. And it’s not a friend, it’s some­one who doesn’t have to be sweet to you or on you haha.  So, of course you check out this person’s site, and then you see your desk­top back­ground that you first saw and saved from LeCoil and you have your OMG moment and then you wait a week to respond, because you’re already crush­ing the artist too much to breathe.

So yeah, for as long as Bri­anna McCarthy’s been dig­ging me, I’ve been dig­ging her and then some and I wanted more. I needed to finesse my approach. You just have to under­stand this is the one you want to invite inside your liv­ing space and co-habitate. And yes of course hang her art on your wall—mantle-worthy as it is.

I find it very hard to play favorites. So just a small sampling…

Some­times I Think I Know

Martha

Can­boulay

Map­ping Thoughts

The fol­low­ing is my open door. Allow me to intro­duce to some and present to oth­ers as we say in church Bri­anna McCarthy, artist extra­or­di­naire, passion.fruit lover and my not so pri­vate girl crush out of Trinidad and Tobago.

1. What’s your (favorite) medium?

I enjoy water­colour. I remem­ber when I didn’t. That wasn’t a long time ago, I’m 26, very few things were a long time ago for me, but I only worked in graphite then. I wouldn’t say I have a favourite medium — when I start I gen­er­ally enjoy the thing for what it is. I always had a lik­ing for paper and glue. In high school, I didn’t have the pop­u­lar Trap­per Keeper binders or the colour­ful Lisa Frank ones so I took my plain one and made a com­pli­cated col­lage of torn news­pa­per and mag­a­zine pages. I var­nished it with white glue. The glue would dry to a low sheen and was rel­a­tively water­proof, although it would turn white if it got wet. Need­less to say, I loved that binder and had it for years. I think I kept it even though it’s falling apart now and I made a cou­ple more. Cheap and def­i­nitely my own — the big eyed Frank kit­tens couldn’t com­pete in my esti­ma­tion!
I don’t work in newsprint or mag­a­zine pages any­more but the same idea is there — I tend to totally enjoy what­ever medium I end up using.

2. Why women? And why so up-close and personal?

I think women, espe­cially West Indian women, tend to be por­trayed in the same way quite often. I would like to add a new face to that — what I see when I look at women. I also thrive on details — hence the inti­mate nature of my work. There’s some­thing fan­tas­tic about eyes which is most of the rea­son I focus on faces — if it weren’t for faces I’d focus on hands I think. If I recall myself 10 years ago, I had the same fas­ci­na­tion with hands as I do now. It’s a big part of what makes some­one attrac­tive to me — hands say so much about a per­son. I love a nice pair of hands as much as I like a nice face.
That being said, I think there’s so much to see and cre­ate when the sub­ject is a woman or a girl. I love the extrav­a­gance that some­times comes with fem­i­nin­ity. It’s wonderful.

3. Do you ever do men?

I did for the sake of doing them. Prob­a­bly twice! It’s good but I get more excited about cre­at­ing women.

4. When and where did your love affair with your cre­ative self begin?

Mak­ing dolly clothes, learn­ing sim­ple sewing from my sis­ters, read­ing books and being exposed to fash­ion mag­a­zines. Pos­si­bly, I was 9. I still have pages of illus­tra­tions and pho­to­spreads I tore out since that time. It was like hav­ing access to a dif­fer­ent world through imag­i­na­tion. I spent a lot of time day­dream­ing to get away from things I didn’t nec­es­sar­ily want to be around — I still do at times. As such, I could really lose myself in books and visual material.

5. What are you cur­rently work­ing on? Can you tell?

As always it’s about mak­ing a new thing some­how but also improv­ing what’s there.

6. The arts com­mu­nity in T&T seems to be thriv­ing, but I have a feel­ing it always has (I’m think­ing here of mem­o­ries of so many St. Kitts car­ni­val events that wore out the tal­ents of T&T cos­tume design­ers). How has the arts com­mu­nity changed? Stayed the same?

Trinidad and Tobago is most def­i­nitely an incred­i­bly cre­ative soci­ety. It seems very rare to meet some­one who isn’t artis­ti­cally inclined and every­body it seems is bril­liantly witty — across social, spa­tial and eco­nomic bound­aries. I believe alot of the really good stuff going on is under­ground. It isn’t main­stream whether in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion or con­tent. It’s just done and the lucky ones are the peo­ple who are around to see it happen.

7. Deal­ing with being Caribbean and being a cre­ative so to speak myself, I often won­dered how impor­tant that environment—being in that envi­ron­ment is to authen­tic­ity. Do you think you can pur­sue your craft any­where? Work any­where in the world? Have you lived and/or worked elsewhere?

I think about that some­times and the answer would have to be yes. I make women peo­ple can recog­nise as West Indian or Caribbean as a cel­e­bra­tion of créolité and négri­tude. My con­text gives some per­spec­tive and has cer­tainly been the impe­tus for what I make but I would like my work to not only be a trib­ute to West Indian-ness but by inclu­sion cel­e­brate Dias­poric beauty. It can’t only be about Trinidad and Tobago or the Caribbean.

8. Dasheen really wants to pro­mote this idea of cul­ture feed­ing imag­i­na­tion and the fruits of that. So how has your Caribbean/West Indian roots ‘fed your imagination’?

The Caribbean, espe­cially Trinidad and Tobago , is such a con­cen­tra­tion of what is Dias­poric. There is so much going on here cul­tur­ally and eth­ni­cally — it’s prob­a­bly the best place for me to have begun work­ing. It’s pos­si­bly THE rea­son I began what I did. It’s alarm­ingly inspiring.

9. Who are you read­ing and lis­ten­ing to currently?

I’m lis­ten­ing to the radio these days — which never hap­pens. Out­side of that I’m enjoy­ing a lit­tle Fly­ing Lotus and some M.I.A. I just fin­ished In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje and I’m in the mid­dle of The Tat­tooed Woman by Mar­ian Engel. Next week will be a dif­fer­ent story.

10. And finally, for me it some­times all really does come down to a mango. Does it come down to a pas­sion fruit for you?

HAHA! It might! I’d choose pas­sion fruit flavoured any­thing over mango any­day. Man­goes can be pret­tier but pas­sion fruit are a lot more unas­sum­ing. I like that.
I grew up sur­rounded by mango trees — they were and still are ubiq­ui­tous. A pas­sion fruit vine is some­thing I rarely see. And when I do see one, I get excited. I recently stole a cou­ple off a vine hang­ing over a wall. I went home and made juice. It was fan­tas­tic.
I’m not sure exactly why the sen­ti­ment is so strong, because I rarely stick with nam­ing a thing, but I rea­son it has much to do with a hot night, a lover and the sen­sa­tion of the most won­der­ful pas­sion fruit lolly ever. It has become a jum­ble of mem­o­ries but it’s basi­cally hav­ing had every sense stim­u­lated. So, yeah, a mango can’t do that for me!

~

You see how invit­ing. And would I switch sides to some pas­sion fruit for her? YES! Haha. Thank God for the wide world of new media and her medium. God cer­tainly has blessed the child and I hope she never EVER stops!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha Leon, founder and Editor-in-Chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where cul­ture feeds imag­i­na­tion! I am a cul­tural war­rior first and fore­most; and for me that sim­ply means that I am a light bearer for all things intrin­si­cally cul­tural and Caribbean. If you seek to inno­vate, pro­mote and/or con­tribute to posi­tioning a Caribbean peo­ple and gen­er­a­tion most pos­i­tively then link me! Bless!

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