Journalist Carol Williams shared a review of our recent public event FRESH MILK XX on page 18 of the Thursday, May 11th 2017 edition of the Nation Newspaper. She focused on the artwork of Barbadian artist Kraig Yearwood, whose work was on display in the studio. FRESH MILK XX also featured a presentation by international curator Pamela Lee and a reading by US-based poet drea brown.
Click here to read the full article!
Barbadian artist Versia Harris has been accepted into an MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA, and is having a fundraising sale of limited edition artwork to contribute to some of her costs.
Versia is an incredible artist, and she has volunteered and been an enormous help to Fresh Milk for a number of years – please take a look at a statement by Versia below, and click here or on the following image to see her available work and how you can support her!
Incipience No. 1 (edition of 5), Digital Print, 30″ x 32″
Hi Guys! Welcome to my latest fundraising effort. I’ve been accepted into an MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA; I will start in September this year. Most of the funds for me to go have been accounted for, however, there are some extra costs that I still have to acquire. I am selling these limited edition prints to help. If you are able, please purchase one.. or two.. or all! No, seriously any support you can offer would be so appreciated. Even if you can’t, I hope you still enjoy these on-screen images – I must say, though, that the physical is much better 😉
You can email me at versia.abeda@gmail.com for further details about payment methods and shipping options. All questions are welcome.
Thank you!
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About Versia Harris:
Barbadian artist Versia Harris received her BFA in Studio Art in 2012 and was awarded with The Lesley’s Legacy Foundation Award, an annual prize given to the top graduate. She has participated in seven local and international residencies in Barbados, Vermont, Curacao, Trinidad and Brazil. In 2014, Versia’s work was featured in the IV Moscow International Biennial for Young Art themed ‘A Time for Dreams’ and was subsequently selected to be apart of the follow up exhibition MOMENTUM_InsideOut screening of ‘A Time For Dreams’ in Berlin. Her animation ‘They Say You Can Dream a Thing More Than Once’ was awarded ‘Best New Media Film’ at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, 2014 and in 2015 won Best Animation Short in the Barbados Film and Video Association awards. Her first solo show in Barbados was titled “This Quagmire”. She is currently a tutor at Barbados Community College. Versia tackles perceptions of fantasy in contrast to the reality of her invented characters
The Fresh Milk Art Platform is pleased to invite you to FRESH MILK XX, taking place on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 from 7-9 pm at Fresh Milk, Walkers Dairy, St. George.
This event will feature a showcase of recent work by Barbadian artist Kraig Yearwood, the 2017 Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Resident Artist, who was on the platform during the month of March.
Responding to Kraig’s work will be Pamela Lee, an international curator and gallery manager who has worked at the Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney, Australia, who will also make a presentation about the connections and potential for collaborations between the areas of art and science.
Finally drea brown, a US-based poet and Fresh Milk’s current resident artist in partnership with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, will speak about her residency, the context behind her work, and close the evening with a poetry reading.
This event is free and open to the public.
Directions to Fresh Milk can be found on the ‘About Page’ of our website here.
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About Kraig:
Kraig Yearwood is a Barbadian artist and designer. Yearwood studied graphic design at Barbados Community College. He has worked as a freelance graphic designer, and has also worked as lead designer for his self-owned clothing label where he has showcased at some of the region’s biggest fashion weeks. He mainly uses mixed media in his visual art practice and to date he has exhibited in numerous local and international group shows, as well as having 5 solo exhibitions.
Yearwood says his approach to his work is partially intuitive while often informed by minimalist sensibilities, and lists eclectic influences such as introspection, relationships, nature and local and global current affairs for much of his production. Many compositions certainly feature a sense of structure and order that we often associate with graphic design, yet these elements are often broken and interrupted by marks that suggest another layer of idiosyncratic reasoning.
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About Pamela:
Pamela Lee is a skilled arts industry and communications manager with over 5 years of experience working in high profile arts organisations, the not-for-profit sector and corporate companies in Europe and Australia. She has a Master’s of Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston University London in partnership with the Design Museum, London, where she also worked as a curatorial and digital media development assistant. Most recently, Pamela has worked as the gallery manager for the Dominik Mersch Gallery, one of Sydney’s leading international, commercial galleries.
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About drea:
Originally from St.Louis, drea brown recently completed her PhD in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals most recently Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander and Southern Indiana Review. drea is also the winner of the 2014 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook competition judged by Douglas Kearney. Her chapbook dear girl: a reckoning was released in 2015.
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drea’s residency is supported by the
John L. Warfield Center for African & African American Studies
US-based poet drea brown shares her first blog post about her Fresh Milk residency, which is part of a new partnership between Fresh Milk and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. drea’s first week has been a chance for her to exhale, coming directly from the rigours of academia, and allowing her to reconnect with her creative self while delving into Caribbean literature, ancestry and spirituality. Read more below:
When I was awarded this residency at Fresh Milk, there was a thrill that ran through me that there are not yet words to fully describe. But I can tell you about the rush of colours that came with it. There was gold in my chest, flecks of it covering my hands, a red in my palm that was too brilliant to look away from; for days I dreamt of blues I had never seen. And then, a whirlwind of days, an early morning flight, and somehow I walked right out of the halls of academia and back into my poet self, off the plane and into a welcomed rainstorm. Ready or not. It is still all settling in.
This is the end of my first week at Fresh Milk and already it is moving too fast. Each day I have been writing and working to devour a stack of carefully selected books: Caribbean short stories and poems, books about tracing ancestry, about leaning into the spirit, about shadows and ghosts, and making space to hold it all. At night when the sky is black and the cat has crept in and the fireflies are the only outside light, I listen to the deep sigh of horses and give thanks for this opportunity to breathe salt air and spread out in stanzas.
I am grateful. An immense thank you to the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, for the continued push, uplift and support in my scholarship and in my art. Thank you Fresh Milk Team, Katherine and Annalee who quietly add to my corner stack of books, who continue to help me open and relax and let go of worry. I am grateful for the Orisha and my Egun, who each day helps me survive and shine.
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This residency is supported by the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies
The quarterly Barbadian and Caribbean arts newsletter RA (Representing Artists) was produced in the early nineties, spearheaded by a group of Barbados-based artists who saw the need to create a forum for more critical writing around contemporary arts in the region.
As part of her Tilting Axis Fellowship that has seen her travel to arts spaces throughout the Caribbean, Jamaican writer and curator Nicole Smythe-Johnson has digitized all six editions of this newsletter to make them available for public access on the Fresh Milk website. This inaugural curatorial fellowship is supported by the British Council.
With so many ongoing conversations about the development and future of Caribbean art today, it is important to know the history of spaces and what has laid the foundations for these discussions. Over the last 24 years, how have things changed? What has remained the same? We hope that these texts can be a source of inspiration, evaluation and critique, both for the state of the creative environment then and for encouraging productive discourse moving forward.
Edited by: Annalee Davis
Designed by: Arthur Atkinson (Issues 1-4) and Kristine Dear (Issues 5 & 6)
Contributors: Annalee Davis, Allison Thompson, Ras Akyem, Ras Ishi, Christopher Cozier, Nick Whittle, Alison Greaves, Roger Lipsey, Ken Corsbie, Dominique Brebion, Stan Kuiperi, Marianne de Tolentino, Dennis Tourbin, Petrona Morrison, Gayle Hermick, Geoffrey MacLean, Elizabeth Barnum and Sharen Carmichael
Click here to access the full issues on our Projects Page.
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