KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Sur­prised at be­ing cho­sen by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to de­sign Trinidad and To­ba­go’s new Coat of Arms, de­sign­er/draughtswoman Gillian Bish­op yes­ter­day said she was hum­bled to be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

And she is al­so pre­pared for the po­ten­tial back­lash that could come her way as the is­sue of the new Coat of Arms con­tin­ues to be a po­lar­is­ing top­ic, es­pe­cial­ly on so­cial me­dia.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Bish­op at her Wood­brook stu­dio yes­ter­day, she dis­closed that it had on­ly been two days since she re­ceived a let­ter from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­quest­ing that she sub­mit her draw­ings.

She said at the time, she thought let­ters were sent to sev­er­al lo­cal de­sign­ers but was sur­prised when Row­ley an­nounced her name dur­ing Wednes­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain.

Bish­op said, “I did not know that I was the one be­ing asked to do it. I thought oth­er peo­ple would be in­vit­ed to sub­mit as well, since every­body has got an opin­ion about this thing and so I fig­ured they’d pick a cou­ple of artists to ask. I didn’t know it was go­ing to be me un­til yes­ter­day (Wednes­day).”

Dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing, Dr Row­ley said Bish­op was tasked with com­ing up with de­signs that could po­ten­tial­ly be used for the new em­blem, which will see the steel­pan re­plac­ing ex­plor­er Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships on the Coat of Arms.

Pri­or to the an­nounce­ment, her sis­ter and beloved de­ceased mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Pat Bish­op was the one who lived in the lime­light.

Dur­ing that time, Bish­op, now 80, had al­ready en­joyed a decades-long pri­vate life work­ing dili­gent­ly be­hind the scenes to de­sign many na­tion­al awards, in­clud­ing T&T’s high­est ho­n­our, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic, African Eman­ci­pa­tion mon­u­ments like Arise, which sits out­side the Trea­sury in the Cap­i­tal, and lo­cal jew­ellery.

Now, how­ev­er, her name is on the lips of every­one who wants to know who she is and why Dr Row­ley chose her to re-de­sign the Coat of Arms.

Nev­er­the­less, she re­vealed she was up to the task.

“All I can do is the best I can do. I can’t do any bet­ter. If my coun­try asks me to do some­thing, I do it to the best of my abil­i­ty,” Bish­op said.

“It hap­pens all the time. I am asked to do things and I do them... I do a lot of work for the state for of­fi­cial gifts and so on.”

And de­spite all the con­tro­ver­sy around Coat of Arms, Bish­op said she is not both­ered by what peo­ple may say about her de­signs.

In­stead, she wish­es peo­ple would re­spect the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and the hard­work­ing pan­men and women.

Asked if she was pre­pared for the ridicule that could fol­low, she teased, “No, why should it? Where are they go­ing to do this ridicule? In my work­place or in my home? Be­cause that’s my route. Home to work and work to home.”

She added, “The chal­lenge is not my prob­lem. It is the peo­ple who ask me to do it. I can’t do bet­ter than what I can do. That is not my prob­lem. There is a lot of talk, and I don’t know why there is so much talk about it.

“A lot of peo­ple have a lot of views about whether the pan should be do­ing this or do­ing that, and I just wish peo­ple would be a lot more sup­port­ive of the pan and the peo­ple who play it.”

Bish­op al­so re­mained tight-lipped about how the new de­sign would look, how long it would take to cre­ate and how much it would cost.

How­ev­er, she did ad­mit to stay­ing awake un­til 4 am yes­ter­day de­sign­ing the pro­to­type af­ter the PM an­nounced she was his choice.

She al­so re­vealed that the OPM’s let­ter had a dead­line date to sub­mit the new em­blem but re­fused to dis­close the de­tails.