Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Vi­su­al artist and founder of J’Ou­vert band Friends For The Road, Che Lovelace, will now have 21 of his colour­ful and riv­et­ing paint­ings show­cased on the rum bot­tles and pack­ag­ing of the Ital­ian/French vin­tage spir­its com­pa­ny, La Mai­son & Ve­li­er (LM&V), re­cent­ly launched in Eu­rope.

So far, on­ly five casks of the rare rum have been re­leased, each able to pro­duce on­ly 200 to 250 bot­tles.

• CA­RONI Par­adise #1 (1996)

• CA­RONI Par­adise #2 (1998)

• CA­RONI Par­adise #3 (1994)

• CA­RONI Par­adise #4 (1996)

• CA­RONI Par­adise #5 (2000)

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Lovelace shared that the project with Ve­li­er’s CEO, Lu­ca Gargano, be­gan three years ago af­ter the rum and wine con­nois­seur had seen his paint­ings at an art ex­hi­bi­tion out­side of T&T.

“Some­how, maybe three years ago, when my work was be­gin­ning to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty out­side of Trinidad with these ex­hi­bi­tions that I was hav­ing, and fi­nal­ly af­ter many long decades of toil, the world was see­ing a bit of my work. As a re­sult, Gargano got wind of my paint­ings and re­al­ly liked them. My port­fo­lio of work is what spoke for me,” Lovelace said.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Lovelace and Ve­li­er did not hap­pen im­me­di­ate­ly, as Gargano had on­ly been in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing some of the artist’s works for his col­lec­tion.

How­ev­er, as time went along, ac­cord­ing to Lovelace, the con­nois­seur “start­ed to think that there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty of maybe do­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ve­li­er,” go­ing be­yond the pur­chase of the works.

“I think he saw in the paint­ings a range of themes and an ap­proach that was ro­bust enough. It could cov­er the type of project he was think­ing of. I mean, 21 im­ages are a lot of im­ages to find from one artist that you’re com­fort­able with that are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what you’re putting out,” Lovelace said.

Two years af­ter the Ca­roni Trinidad Ltd Rum dis­tillery was shut down by the T&T Gov­ern­ment in 2002, hun­dreds of bar­rels were dis­cov­ered in a bond­ed ware­house. This piqued the in­ter­est of the founder of Ve­li­er to vis­it T&T ap­prox­i­mate­ly two decades ago, in 2004, lead­ing to the joint pur­chase of all the re­main­ing casks of aged brown rum by Ve­li­er and La Mai­son du Whisky. There­after, the bot­tling of var­i­ous years be­gan, re­sult­ing in them be­ing sold, and gain­ing cult sta­tus. Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site, LM&V, which was es­tab­lished in 2017, “... un­veils lim­it­ed edi­tions and spe­cial ranges, cel­e­brat­ing the di­ver­si­ty of the spir­it world” (https://www.lamaiso­nand­ve­li­er.com/about-us/). Lovelace, who is the son of nov­el­ist, jour­nal­ist, and play­wright Earl Lovelace, said that he has not tast­ed the rare rum yet but teased that “Car­ni­val sea­son is com­ing soon.”

“I do drink a bit of rum, es­pe­cial­ly if it is a fine-aged rum. I find now that as I’m get­ting a lit­tle old­er, I would take time to en­joy those,” Lovelace laughed. “So, this is go­ing to be quite a plea­sure to open one ... Let’s see when that mo­ment comes.”

Lovelace iden­ti­fies as a red rum drinker, with co­conut wa­ter be­ing his go-to favourite when drink­ing rum, whether at home or on the road. In hind­sight of his long years of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to de­vel­op­ing his craft, Lovelace ad­vised lo­cal as­pir­ing artists to re­main fo­cused on hon­ing their artistry rather than try­ing to at­tain fame and for­tune through short­cuts.

“I think that the ad­vice I al­ways give is: be se­ri­ous about your work. I think that a lot of times peo­ple want the ac­co­lades of their work, and they start to take the fo­cus off the work. I am of the firm be­lief that your work leads; there is no mar­ket­ing or strat­e­gy that is bet­ter than your work it­self. Your work speaks for you,” Lovelace said.

He al­so ad­vised artists to both utilise and max­imise their on­line pres­ence to get their art­works known to wider au­di­ences.

“I take my In­sta­gram se­ri­ous­ly. For cre­atives and vi­su­al artists, take any so­cial me­dia space—if you’re us­ing it for your art—se­ri­ous­ly be­cause that’s lit­er­al­ly your first call card peo­ple go to get a sense of whether this is of any in­ter­est to them,” Lovelace said.

On his In­sta­gram post high­light­ing his ac­com­plish­ments, the bilin­gual surfer re­ceived praise from nu­mer­ous peo­ple who were ac­quaint­ed with his work, in­clud­ing fel­low lo­cal artists Es­te­van Dubris­ingh Gar­cia and Marin­na Sha­reef, schol­ar and cu­ra­tor Mar­sha Pearce, and vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and on-air broad­cast­er Do­minic Kaliper­sad.

Lovelace re­vealed that over the next five years, the re­main­ing casks will be re­leased to the world, and like­wise, his paint­ings will ac­com­pa­ny them.

“Every year some will be re­leased, so maybe this year a hand­ful? And then I think we have a five-year cap on the re­lease of the casks. These rums are quite sought af­ter, es­pe­cial­ly from LM&V, as rare col­lec­tables. With the paint­ings on them, they’re bank­ing that they’re go­ing to be even more col­lec­table,” Lovelace said.

Last year, Lovelace was com­mis­sioned to cre­ate art­work to com­mem­o­rate the 250th an­niver­sary of the bap­tism of African abo­li­tion­ist Ot­to­bah Cu­goano at St James’s Church, Pic­cadil­ly. It is the first per­ma­nent art­work in the world com­mem­o­rat­ing Cu­goano.

Lat­er this year, he will be part of a group ex­hi­bi­tion in Ac­cra, Ghana, which he is very ex­cit­ed about. Cur­rent­ly, he is work­ing on pieces for a line-up of so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions for next year that will be­gin in New York and fol­low in Lon­don. He al­so has a cof­fee-ta­ble book in the works.

Lovelace is based in Ch­aguara­mas and lec­tures at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Cre­ative Arts De­part­ment.