Repeating Islands

A recent article by the Canadian Broadcasting Association (with a video, see link below) looks at how artists in the village of Noailles in Haiti “are recycling old metal oil drums and transforming them into everything from landscapes to mythological sea creatures.” Noailles, a village about an hour from Port-au-Prince, is home to an outstanding number of metal artists—about 200. Their metal sculptures, a form of art developed in Haiti in the late 1950s, turn “what once was tossed into ditches to rust into art.”

The village owes its reputation to Haitian master sculptor Georges Liautaud, a blacksmith who moved from creating simple metal crosses for those villagers who could not afford headstones for their dead to creating “decorative metal sculptures that went on to shape the sensibilities of a whole generation of imitators.”

Metal sculptor Jean Eddy Rémy, the president of the association of artists and artisans of Croix-des-Bouquets, explains that each work created by his fellow artists “is unique . . . crafted by hand with a few simple tools and whatever is at hand.”

The article describes the method used to create the sculptures thus: “Dried banana or sugar cane is first placed inside the oil drum and set on fire to burn away any impurities. Once cooled, the artisan flattens the drum with a hammer, pounding it into a metal canvas. Then they often use chalk to sketch a design. Salvaging metal for some secondary use has been both a blessing and a curse in this poor, benighted country. But here in Noailles, on the west coast, the magic seems to come in a flurry of hammer and chisel strokes as these artists create everything from large suns to sea goddesses and luminous Haitian landscapes. Each work has a three-dimensional quality, courtesy of the bumps and hammer marks. Most are coated with varnish, a few are painted, but many are left to rust in places to heighten the effect.”

The work is sold throughout the world and has had a tremendous impact on the life of the artists and their community. Felix Caliste is a case in point. He grew up in the slums in Port-au-Prince and says that “before he became an artist he was in school only when his parents could afford it. He likely would have grown up poor and in a gang, he says. But he happened to see the metal artists at one point and began the long apprenticeship of learning how to seek out the best drums and mould the steel sheets. The metal called him, he says. And his life was changed.”

For the complete article go to  http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/19/f-haiti-art.html

Sculpture by Georges Liautaud from http://www.treadwaygallery.com/onlinecat/march0407/0801-09.html

CBC reporter Stephen Puddicombe’s video of the Haitian artists’ colony can be seen here. (Runs 2:26)