Art is something you are born with. Artistry lives within everyone. It doesn’t matter the medium. Everyone has the ability to create. The Transforming Spaces Annual Art Bus Tour exemplified that. Transforming Spaces is an islandwide art tour that has showcased visual art in Nassau since 2004. This year, the tour operated under the theme “Chasing Light,” in memoriam of the late Bahamian artistic visionary Patricia Glinton-Meicholas. The tour, guided by Dwy Rolle on the Yellow bus, took participants to six art galleries in Nassau: National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, CAB Gallery and Studio, TERN Gallery, The Current: Baha Mar Gallery and Art Center, Pro Gallery: University of The Bahamas, and The V & M Gallery. Art ranged from student creations at the University of The Bahamas to seasoned artists such as Antonius Roberts.
At each stop, passionate art aficionados gave detailed descriptions about the spaces and the work featured in each gallery. Each gallery encapsulated the year’s theme entirely. NAGB’s “The Gaulin Woman” showed excerpts from Glinton-Meicholas’ pioneering work on Bahamian identity alongside numerous Bahamian artists. Dylan Rapillard’s “All Inclusive” show at CAB explored the commodification of the Bahamian experience. TERN’s show “We are our own discoverers,” featuring Amaani Hepburn, Cydne Jasmin Coleby, Matthew David Rahming and Heino Schmid, revealed the realities of mythology and how Bahamian roots can fit in, creating an exhibit filled with monsters and sand dollars, complete with quotes to take home from Glinton-Meicholas’ poetry book “Chasing Light.” The Current’s “The Things We Carry,” which included art from Kendra Frorup and Averia Wright, featured light fixtures with native fruit plexiglass castings, along with intricately beaded depictions of soursop and shepherd’s needle. The Pro Gallery at the University of The Bahamas showcased the art of the next generation of Bahamian artists, who continue to chase light whether they know it or not. The V & M Gallery, filled to the brim with iconic Bahamian art ranging from Junkanoo to self-portraits, black and white images and even a “sexy” room, completed a tour that could be considered synonymous with light itself.
Being exposed to that much spectacular art, especially created by fellow Bahamians, left tour participants astounded. The sheer talent and vision within this small, versatile nation is undeniable. The Bahamas is home to exceptional artists and curators ripe for picking like the mangos that are currently in season and supporting them is a shared Bahamian duty. The tour left participants feeling the need to create, to illuminate and transform spaces of their own, in a way that the honoree, Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, could only have intended when she set out years ago to uncover the innate multifaceted artistry of Bahamians. She chased light so that one day others might shape their own worlds with it.
