To her­ald the open­ing of the new year, the Art So­ci­ety of T&T is stag­ing a spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tled Sybil At­teck: icon­ic Artist, Trinidad and To­ba­go. This ex­hi­bi­tion takes place on Jan­u­ary 11 from 7 to 9 pm at the So­ci­ety's head­quar­ters lo­cat­ed on Ja­maica Boule­vard and St Vin­cent Av­enue, Fed­er­a­tion Park, and will be the first of many to be held at the ASTT in ho­n­our of our lo­cal art icons.

Sybil At­teck's works are con­sid­ered rare col­lec­tor's items and many of these have not been seen by the gen­er­al pub­lic for many years. Ac­cord­ing to ASTT pres­i­dent Clay­ton De Fre­itas in a re­lease, "This show is not on­ly to ad­mire her works, but al­so to ed­u­cate our emerg­ing artists, the pub­lic and school stu­dents about her. We are al­so hap­py and ex­cit­ed to ex­hib­it her work and col­lec­tors have come for­ward to share their pieces for the du­ra­tion of the show. She is in­deed a trea­sured icon of this coun­try."

Born in Rio Claro in 1911, At­teck is known for her beau­ti­ful wa­ter­colour paint­ings and sculp­tures, and she al­so taught art at a girl's school in Port-of-Spain. Dur­ing her for­ma­tive years she was ex­posed to mu­sic, cro­chet, em­broi­dery, flo­ral ar­rang­ing and the de­sign of Car­ni­val cos­tumes, and her for­mal art train­ing be­gan af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Bish­op Anstey High School in 1928.

She spent a few years at the Botan­i­cal De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, then left to at­tend the Re­gent Street Poly­tech­nic, Lon­don, Eng­land (1934), Es­cuela Bel­las Artes, Li­ma, Pe­ru (1942) and Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, School of Fine Arts, St Louis, Mis­souri, USA (1943). She would lat­er be­come one of the first founders of ASTT, and was ap­point­ed its first Sec­re­tary in 1943. Years lat­er she al­so served once as its pres­i­dent and gained an hon­orary life mem­ber­ship.

She passed away in 1975 af­ter com­pli­ca­tions due to can­cer.The show will run un­til Jan­u­ary 20. Ad­mis­sion is free.A spe­cial in­vi­ta­tion is ex­tend­ed to stu­dents at­tend­ing pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions.

IN­FO

Gallery hours are as fol­lows:

�2 Mon­day to Fri­day from 10 am to 5 pm

�2 Thurs­day late open­ing from 10 am to 8 pm

�2 Sat­ur­day 10 am to 1 pm

On Sun­day the So­ci­ety is closed to the pub­lic.

For more in­for­ma­tion, call 622-9827 or send an email to ex­hi­bi­tions@art­so­ci­etytt.org