Just when one thinks Jamaica has gone straight to hell for good-- something comes along that somehow manages to inspire despite the reality of living in a country where people have become accustomed to news of little children being slaughtered and the idea that you can't even go to church anymore without the possibility of someone trying to slit your throat.
This time that someone is an obviously inspired ( or crazy ) woman named Melinda Brown--an Austrailian national and an accomplished sculptor who recently moved her studio from the meat- packing district in New York to a post-earthquake building in downtown Kingston...about 1000 yards from Parade on Church Street ( can you say 'Baltic Avenue'? )
Now, although its easy to become very suspicious of foreigners who visit Kingston these days ( especially ones that choose to live and work in a place where even the bloody ants look both ways before stepping out their front door), this foreigner, as it turns out, actually isn't here because she read about Jah Cure in Riddim magazine and wanted to touch his innocent holy locks.
That doesn't mean I wasn't sort of rude to her the first time I met her. After all, it was at some lame book launch (endorsed by the equally lame UWI) and Carolyn Cooper was walking around in her afrocentrentic designer sheets acting like shes black again.
Anyway, after realising Melinda wasn't German or interested in working on a 'fusion of techno with dancehall' ; and didn't twine up her hair with goat shit in an attempt to lox (like the Japanese kids sometimes do) ...I found out that she was in fact the person who designed and then BUILT the original set for MAD MAX. Remember? That movie about New Orleans?
Impressive enough but then I actually decided to visit her place on Church Street. At the very least, the studio is a sprawling, dazzling work of art...situatuated above an old tonic and herbalist shop that was once booming--back in the days before the violence and the politics turned this once vibrant city into an abandoned decaying shithole.
I was pretty amazed, not least of all because this white woman actually had the guts to do what what many JAMAICANS have been talking about doing for years in this cuntry--re-invigorating the downtown core by using ones own brain.
A little research into Brown turns up a facinating history of her work, most interestingly a place which became known as Bombora House-- a mid-19th-century Meat Market building ( New York : Ninth Ave. and 13th St) , one of the oldest in the area, which she moved into and transformed during the blizzard of 1993.
Check out the article on that building here: http://www.thevillager.com/villager_81/hiddenmeatmarket.html
And photographs of the Church Street address here:
http://www.afflictedyard.com/melindabrowns.htm
Of course it remains to be seen if Melinda's efforts will go unnoticed despite its energy and originality. This is Jamaica... not exactly a place where people are rewarded for original thinking despite the hunger of the nation for EXACTLY that .
We miss BomBom here in NYC, but t'is heartening to hear she's pursuing some of her many fabulous and wild dreams yonder. May she have much success.
Posted by: Elissa | June 23, 2006 at 12:38 AM