When you see very large sculp­tures of an­i­mals, peo­ple, foun­tains, and even ab­stract pieces, do you ever won­der how much time and ef­fort goes in­to cre­at­ing them? Or, for that mat­ter, where do they even get the space to de­vel­op such enor­mous sculp­tures? Well on Oc­to­ber 6 all your ques­tions and con­cerns about sculpt­ing can be an­swered when the Vi­su­al Arts unit in the De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts (DC­FA) at UWI in St Au­gus­tine will host a spe­cial one day sym­po­sium, en­ti­tled Art, De­sign and Ar­chi­tec­ture in our Space: New Per­spec­tives on Art and De­sign Prac­tice in the Caribbean.

Ac­cord­ing to artist, de­sign­er, sculp­tor and past stu­dent of the cam­pus, Dean Arlen, the idea for the sym­po­sium was long in the mak­ing. "A few years ago I draft­ed a pro­pos­al and took it to then prin­ci­pal, Dr Bhoe Tewarie to have sev­en artists present sculp­tures to be in­stalled on­to the cam­pus. "Part of the pro­pos­al was to have a two-day con­fer­ence to ad­dress sculpt­ing, artists' roles in de­vel­op­ing spaces, and artists' prac­tice in mod­ern civil­i­sa­tion," Arlen said. He said the pro­pos­al was ac­cept­ed, but, be­cause of un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, it was nev­er man­i­fest­ed.

New Op­por­tu­ni­ty

Keep­ing at it Arlen said, with per­sis­tence the first sculp­ture on cam­pus was done last year by Leslie-Ann Noel–lec­tur­er in the DC­FA. Un­der the di­rec­tive of for­mer head of the de­part­ment, Sa­tanand Shar­ma, the con­fer­ence was ini­tial­ly card­ed to be a two-day event. How­ev­er, it even­tu­al­ly be­came the one day sym­po­sium un­der the new di­rec­tor, Dr Danielle Lind­say.

What to ex­pect

Asked what the main out­come of the sym­po­sium was ex­pect­ed to be, Arlen said: "I think the in­for­ma­tion which would be di­vulged at the sym­po­sium would in­deed ben­e­fit all those as­pir­ing ar­chi­tects, sculp­tors, and de­sign artist, be­cause the in­for­ma­tion is com­ing from in­formed sources, who are pro­fes­sion­als and versed in their re­spec­tive dis­ci­plines. "We have al­so put to­geth­er 16 of the finest pan­elists which in­clude, Shas­tri Ma­haraj, Robert Young, Pe­ter Doig, Jef­frey Mclean, Ger­ard Hutchin­son, and oth­ers who would on that day share their knowl­edge with the at­ten­dees, al­so lend­ing ad­vice in their ar­eas of ex­per­tise."

Not a 'one-off' thing

"I think it is im­por­tant that the sym­po­sium is not a 'one -off' dis­cus­sion, but it would lead in­to fur­ther projects which would see artists work­ing in com­mu­ni­ties, and would al­low for a deep­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to re­al time aes­thet­ics," Arlen said. Noel added that af­ter the sym­po­sium, all the in­for­ma­tion would be doc­u­ment­ed and a book would be even­tu­al­ly done and made avail­able to stu­dents soon af­ter. She al­so in­di­cat­ed that the de­part­ment would be cre­at­ing a fo­rum, where­by stu­dents would have an on­go­ing re­la­tion­ship with these pro­fes­sion­als.