Local Residency Announcement: Sky LARC and Adrian Green

FRESH MILK Local Resdiency Announcement

FRESH MILK is pleased to announce the start of our final local residency for 2013 from our open call early this year. Taking the platform are filmmaker Sky LARC and spoken word artist Adrian Green.

LARC and Green will be collaborating  on a project which explores Caribbean Aesthetics in art processes and utilizes the disciplines of Creative Writing, Cinematography, Photography, Performance Art, Spoken Word and Music.

The work concretizes the creative relationship between the two artists essentially cut from the same cloth, Kente Cloth. They come together as the Collective PTAH, an entity that uses their chosen disciplines, Performance Art and Visual Art to heighten awareness, stimulate consciousness and affect change.

The proposed piece is essentially a short film, somewhat experimental, evolving from the work and performance of Poet Adrian Green and his original piece “Hartd Work”. The creation of this short film is also inspired by the exploration of the Fresh Milk space and other working artist spaces.

Thank you to the Arts and Sport Promotion Fund for supporting this residency.

About Sky LARC:

paget-farm-picts_larc

Born in Toronto Canada to Barbadian parents, LARC as he’s affectionately known to most is a filmmaker, arts educator and community activist. After the year of the gun in Toronto (2005) LARC decided that it was critical to play a small role in creating safe spaces where young people could acquire skills while discovering positive outlets of expression. He started by designing and facilitating filmmaking workshops in low-income, inner-city communities where he began to link many of the current issues faced by youth to a lack of leadership/mentorship in the community. He also noticed a real lack of ancestral/family values and connections with the many gang related black youth he worked with daily. His community work intensified, spreading out to various public housing communities across Toronto from Community Centers to Elementary, Middle School to High Schools.

LARC is developing a feature documentary entitled Hidden Bruises: HIV & Violence in the Caribbean, a documentary and awareness campaign contributing to the national and regional effort to reduce the prevalence of both HIV & violence against women in the Caribbean.

He continues his arts education and filmmaking work in the Caribbean at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados; coupled with his independent company Skylarc Pictures through the First Light Project Arts Education program.

About Adrian Green:

Adrian Green at Carifesta X

Adrian Green at Carifesta X

Adrian Green is a Gold Award winner in Barbados’ National Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), a three time Barbadian Slam Poetry Champion, and two time winner of the Emancipation Roots Experience Show. Green represented Barbados at CARIFESTA X in Guyana and has performed to audiences in several countries, including the USA, Ghana, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Nevis, St. Thomas and Tortola. He has released two albums of poetry, “Random Acts of Conscience,” and “Hard Ears.”

As the co-founder of Iron Sharpen Iron, Green has been instrumental in producing the longest running and most successful open-mic show in Barbados.  These open-mic shows were designed to help emerging performing artists develop and have been instrumental in the uncovering and propelling of a number of young artists to the national stage.

FRESH MILK XII

Adrian Green and Shea Rose's spoken word performance

FRESH MILK XII, our last major event before we close for the summer months of July and August, took place last week Thursday June 20th. Our twelfth event featured resident artists from Boston, USA, singer-songwriter & social activist Shea Rose and nonfiction creative writer & photographer Sasha Link.

Sasha Link gave an overview of the “Duality of Gift-Giving” creative writing workshop she presented at Workman’s Primary School in St. George, while Shea presented three musical compositions: “Time (I Move On)” filmed by Sky Larc and Neil Marshall and performed with Operation Triple Threat (including Vocalist and OTT Director Janelle Headley-Newton, OTT Choreographer Tara Jane Herbert, Percussionist Richard “Salief” Smith and OTT students Johari Taitt, Kwasi Perry and Charlene Morris); “Pretty Girl” performed with Nexcyx; and “Mirror” in collaboration with Adrian Green.

Thanks so much to Shea and Sasha; we hope you enjoyed your time with us in Barbados! And special thanks to the US Embassy for supporting the residency and making it possible.

Photographs by Mark King

Shea Rose’s Residency: Week 1 Report

It was just over a year ago that I started thinking about how I would begin to explore my ancestral roots in Barbados. My late great aunt Lillian left our family a jewel; a small black and orange paperback book bound with rope, filled with journal entries from my great-grandmother Edwina Yearwood and her father (my great, great-grandfather) Edward Yearwood.

It certainly would have been easy enough to center a trip to Barbados around documents and paper, but the more I started to investigate the yearning to return to my ancestral roots, I realized that I was looking for more than names, dates and birth certificates.  I was in search of finding my own voice in the echoes of my family lineage. I mapped out a plan and I wanted music to be the vehicle in which to tell the story of my self investigation and exploration.

Once I discovered, applied and was accepted to the Fresh Milk International Artist and Residency in Barbados, I knew I had a safe and trust-worthy platform to express my truth and collaborate with artists of various disciplines who are searching too.

Before I continue, I must add, that my best friend Sasha Link, a non-fiction creative writer accompanied me on this life changing journey.  During her residency here at Fresh Milk she is creating lesson plans to present to primary and secondary schools in Barbados. She is exploring the duality of gift-giving.

 

I decided to center my musical compositions on three themes:  identity, self-acceptance and home.

Below are reflections, thoughts, prose and visuals around the three themes, complied during the first week of my residency:

Identity:  How do you know you?

Home: “Keeping Things Whole” by Mark Strand

This is one of my favorite poems.  It gives me the courage to race into the light, accept change, embrace my destiny and feel that no matter how high I fly, there is always home, a place of comfort, where I can land with my feet firmly on the ground.

Keeping Things Whole

By Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move to keep things whole.

Self-Acceptance:  The weight of its conception spilling over into the noisy abyss yearning for a space to embrace the lore of its perfect design

Each theme is a collaboration of various creative disciplines.

Below are photos of our collaborative workdays.

Identity:  Adrian Green (Spoken-word Artist)

My initial sketch of the “Identity” performance set w/ Barbadian spoken-word artist Adrian Green.

He says his work has been described as controversial because he addresses themes such a race and politics that aren’t openly discussed in the conservative Barbadian society.

I decided to incorporate standing mirrors into our performance.

The mirrors represent: reflection, confrontation, acceptance, rejection and illusion

Adrian Green will be the first ever male spoken-word artist that I’ve collaborated with allowing this exploration of identity to not only cross culture, but gender as well – he from Barbados, I from Boston.

The delivery of the spoken-word pieces will be directed at the mirror and other times, Adrian and I will be facing each other.

Home: Sky Larc (Filmmaker) Janelle Headley, Vocalist and Operation Triple Threat (OTT) Director, Tara Jane Herbert (OTT Choreographer and Director of Ascending Stars) OTT students Johari Taitt, Kwasi Perry and Charlene Morris

Self-Acceptance:  Nexcyx Band

For this collaboration I brought in an original song entitled, “Pretty Girls” that I started writing back and Boston. Mahalia, the lead singer from Nexcyx wrote a second verse to compliment my first verse.

For more on Shea Rose: Boston to Barbados visit her blog: www.myangelwearsafro.org