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Monday, March 17, 2025

From young radical to celebrated artist

by

20161016

Born, raised and died at 17 East­ern Main Road, Pe­tit Bourg, San Juan, Va­lerie Bel­grave was one of T&T's cel­e­brat­ed artists spe­cial­is­ing in the batik craft. Bel­grave is al­so hailed as an ad­vo­cate in the tu­mul­tuous Black Pow­er era of the 70s al­though she in­sist­ed that she was not for Black Pow­er, but for pow­er to the peo­ple.

She died on Tues­day, Au­gust 23, and was laid to rest on Au­gust 27, in St Joseph. Bel­grave bore one child, Trinidad Guardian de­sign­er Che­nier Bel­grave, and is still fond­ly re­mem­bered by fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues in the arts fra­ter­ni­ty. The fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts of some of the many trib­utes paid to Bel­grave.

Her son,

Che­nier Bel­grave:

"I was not brought up like oth­er chil­dren. I was brought up to ap­ply log­ic and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to ac­tions with­in rea­son. From an ear­ly age I sat in rooms with peo­ple who de­bat­ed life and the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of ac­tions. I re­mem­ber be­ing, for ex­am­ple, at Aun­ty Pat's (Pat Bish­op) house lis­ten­ing and con­tribut­ing to de­bates be­tween her and (Pe­ter) Min­shall.

"When I was five I start­ed Pri­ma­ry School at Curepe An­gli­can and on the first day, my moth­er was more dis­traught than I was. You see, my mind was trained from the time I was three years old to un­der­stand, jus­ti­fy and ac­cept. Pri­ma­ry school was the nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from kinder­garten and that is all I need­ed to know.

How­ev­er, in her anx­i­ety, my moth­er for­got to give me my lunch kit and drove off head­ing to­wards the Stu­dents' Guild. I, as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion log­i­cal­ly, knew I had to call my moth­er so I went to prin­ci­pal's of­fice to ask him to call my moth­er and tell her I had no lunch.

"The prin­ci­pal, think­ing that I was an­oth­er or­di­nary home­sick cry­ing child, brushed me off and told me 'go back to the class­room' and bouffed me for hav­ing left my class in the first place. He be­gan to pull me and con­se­quent­ly I bit him. A bite he would not soon for­get. He prompt­ly called my moth­er. When she heard the sto­ry she asked him why he just didn't call her. When he ex­plained that was not how things were done, she said this is not the school for my child.

"That was the sto­ry of our re­la­tion­ship. Any­thing I want­ed to do or any­thing she was con­sid­er­ing to em­bark on, we sat and dis­cussed.

"You see, my moth­er was her cre­ativ­i­ty. It was ef­fort­less be­cause it was nat­ur­al to her. As a re­sult her mind was al­most math­e­mat­i­cal­ly log­i­cal be­cause her cre­ativ­i­ty just flowed out of her paws. So she could cre­ate the beau­ti­ful scener­ies of Ti Marie along­side its his­tor­i­cal ac­cu­ra­cy of the pe­ri­od.

"One of her last con­scious sen­tences was 'I am not an ego­ist and I have no de­sire for eter­nal life.'"

My moth­er nev­er stopped be­ing proud of what­ev­er I tried. As al­ways, we dis­cussed what I want­ed to do and why. And I nev­er crossed her be­cause I didn't want to test the the­o­ry of con­se­quence for ac­tions. Well, maybe I did once or twice and al­though she didn't beat, con­se­quence was enough to stop me dead in my tracks.

"I think her great­est joy and proud­est mo­ment was the birth of my son, Che. She had made it to see her grand­son. She loved him be­fore he was born. He was the on­ly thing that caused her to wake up from her se­mi-co­matose state in the week be­fore she died, just to see him blow her a kiss.

"Moms, we have come to the end of this jour­ney. The last few months were hard and un­jus­ti­fi­able but iron­ic. She ap­proached them as she ap­proached all ad­ver­si­ty...head-on. Al­though the ill­ness was al­ways one step ahead of us, we bat­tled to the end."

Her friend

Kath­leen Stroud:

"I had nev­er heard of Va­lerie Bel­grave, I knew noth­ing of her al­ready mon­u­men­tal achieve­ments as a batik artist, let alone her in­volve­ment in the Sir George Williams af­fair, and the re­views I got were not very en­cour­ag­ing.

"But when I met her at the guild of­fice I was in­stant­ly mes­merised. I had nev­er met any­one quite like Va­lerie, she was dif­fer­ent. She was near­ly 40 and I was half that. How she in­trigued me with her tur­ban and the el­e­gant fil­ter in which she stuck her cig­a­rettes and moved it up to her mouth in one flu­id move­ment. She was dif­fer­ent, she was an orig­i­nal. It was love at first sight.

"Val be­came a con­stant in my life and I in hers. If you knew her at all back in those days, you would know that she al­ways had a project go­ing on. She in­volved me in most ofthem, I had no choice.

"If she staged a batik ex­hi­bi­tion at her home, I be­came a ramp mod­el; when she wrote her books I mor­phed in­to keen crit­ic; when she pro­duced a play, of course, I was al­so an ac­tress; if she was paint­ing I posed like an aris­to­crat for many a por­trait; and when she com­posed mu­sic, I was a back-up singer.

"Each of these ad­ven­tures added depth to my un­der­stand­ing of life, broad­ened my sen­si­tiv­i­ties, and trans­formed my ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing a per­son.

"If you were to ask me what is the sin­gle most use­ful in­sight that Va­lerie gave to me in our three decades of friend­ship it would be this: She would say Kathy, be­yond in­tel­li­gence, tal­ents, gifts and skills; the most im­por­tant ca­pac­i­ty to have in life is the abil­i­ty to fin­ish what you start, to stay the course and fin­ish."

David Ab­du­lah:

"There were two young artists–both women–for whom work­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies was mere­ly a so­journ in their life, for their life was tru­ly about cre­at­ing im­ages, sounds and words that would for­ev­er chal­lenge and pro­voke our imag­i­na­tion of who we can and could be as a peo­ple. As one of those ac­ci­dents of his­to­ry–as Lloyd Best oft re­mind­ed us–they be­came friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors while at UWI.

By an­oth­er ac­ci­dent of his­to­ry, one passed to the an­ces­tors ex­act­ly five years and three days be­fore the oth­er. I speak of course of Pat Bish­op and Va­lerie Bel­grave, and it was al­so at UWI that I came to know them both and be­came their life­long friends.

"Va­lerie was em­ployed as, what we would now call, the ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant at the Stu­dents' Guild Of­fice at UWI, St Au­gus­tine. I first met her when I start­ed UWI in Oc­to­ber 1972. She start­ed in the guild not long be­fore that, hav­ing re­turned to Trinidad af­ter leav­ing Mon­tre­al and Sir George Williams Uni­ver­si­ty.

"It was an al­most nat­ur­al place for Va­lerie to find a job–the young rad­i­cal who was part of the stu­dents' re­volt against racism at Sir George.

Of course, that re­volt helped to spark the Black Pow­er re­volt here in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1970, as UWI stu­dents demon­strat­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fel­low West In­di­an stu­dents at Sir George by first protest­ing against the Cana­di­an Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al on Feb­ru­ary 26, 1969, and pre­vent­ing him from open­ing Cana­da Hall at St Au­gus­tine; and who ex­act­ly one year lat­er, on Feb­ru­ary 26, 1970, went in­to the Cana­di­an-owned banks–Roy­al Bank of Cana­da, Bank of Lon­don and Mon­tre­al, Cana­di­an Im­pe­r­i­al Bank of Com­merce, Bank of No­va Sco­tia in down­town Port-of-Spain.

"That protest we know end­ed up in the Ro­man Catholic Cathe­dral which led to the ar­rest of the pro­tes­tors and the start of the 'Feb­ru­ary Rev­o­lu­tion'. So, Va­lerie was nat­u­ral­ly des­tined to work at UWI and at the Stu­dents' Guild, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the hos­til­i­ty of of­fi­cial so­ci­ety to mem­bers of the move­ment which hos­til­i­ty would have pre­vent­ed her from work­ing else­where.

"But in our day there was on­ly one cafe­te­ria on cam­pus un­less you were a hall stu­dent, so all work­ers, stu­dents and some lec­tur­ers who want­ed to eat or drink had to pass the guild of­fice on the way to or from class, the li­brary or of­fice. The guild of­fice was not air con­di­tioned so all could see in and those in could see out. This was Va­lerie's com­mand post.

"And com­mand it she did! Of course, we who were guild coun­cil­lors were of­fi­cial­ly in charge and gave 'in­struc­tions' to Va­lerie who man­aged a staff of Cyril­la Brun­ton, Pat Kallicher­an and lat­er Pamela Mar­cano-De­Sil­va, Ernest our mes­sen­ger, and Car­ol and her team in the cafe­te­ria and bar.

But Va­lerie al­ways had an ad­van­tage on us–not on­ly of con­ti­nu­ity of of­fice but of hav­ing her­self been a rad­i­cal stu­dent leader, much more fa­mous than us. And, of course she was very knowl­edge­able of the po­lit­i­cal texts and the­o­ries of rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, so we could not pull rank on her at all.

"For be­ing at the cen­tre of the ac­tiv­i­ty on cam­pus en­abled Val to meet so many peo­ple, stu­dents then who lat­er moved in­to po­si­tions of in­flu­ence in so many spheres of our na­tion­al life; no­ta­bles in acad­e­mia, the arts and the cre­ative world who ei­ther stud­ied or worked or vis­it­ed UWI, whose names I dare not call lest I omit some­one.

"These per­sons, from var­ied back­grounds and of di­verse tal­ents and pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits, whom Val met through be­ing at the guild of­fice in­ter­sect­ed with her on her cre­ative jour­ney for the next 40 plus years, which jour­ney pro­duced a tru­ly hu­mon­gous vol­ume of work in so many dif­fer­ent medi­ums–batik as art, as fab­ric for clothes, cos­tum­ing and set de­sign for the the­atre; nov­els, plays; and al­ways, draw­ing and paint­ing. The guild of­fice was thus a hub which en­abled so much of her work to evolve.

"As Va­lerie her­self de­scribes in her book–Art for the Peo­ple–'I may nev­er have heard of this class (tie dye and batik or­ga­nized by the Ex­tra Mur­al De­part­ment) if Ian Ali (who led the class) hadn't chanced to walk past the guild of­fice, stop to say hel­lo to me, and hap­pen to men­tion it. Hear­ing of my in­ter­est, he gen­er­ous­ly in­vit­ed me to come by and check out the class. This I did, and as they say, 'the rest is his­to­ry'.

"Thank you Va­lerie Bel­grave–you are one of our coun­try's best and finest pro­gres­sive, cre­ative spir­its."

(com­piled by Pe­ter Ray Blood)


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