Lisa Thompson-Griffith’s, ‘It’s all about Music and Light,’ celebrates the musical rhythms in life and the beauty of light found in nature as well as in the culture of Guyanese.
The 40 eye-catching pieces of mosaic wall hangings and table tops currently on exhibition at the Hadfield Gallery, reflect musical rhythms and dance sequences both in their form and content.
Speaking about her works with The Scene, Lisa said the exhibition had its origin in an old gramophone with which she was fascinated as a child. It is a centrepiece of the exhibition and was recreated in mosaic from glimpses of memory.
Work on ‘The Old Gramophone’ and another piece, ‘Hark!’ depicting a choir of what looks like cherubs began about a year ago. This developed into a music and light theme, with sub-themes drawn from nature and energy in all its forms such as water, dance, and the flora and fauna of the rainforest.
Asked how she manages to express her inner thoughts on table tops and plywood using tiles, mirrors, stained glass, stones, shells, sand and paint, Lisa, who once practised journalism, responded that as soon as the ideas came to mind she quickly sketched them before they went away. She always walks with pencils, crayons and paper for sketching.
Once she has decided on the theme – music and light in this case – she begins the process of moulding and crafting the artwork to reflect her ideas.
While she began the two central pieces mentioned above about a year ago, the majority of the other pieces were completed during the past four months.
‘Hark!’ which was in the making for the longest period after it was conceived, was sold almost as soon as it was placed on display; in fact it was the first item in the collection to be sold. ‘The Old Gramophone,’ which is still to be exhibited, was only finished recently, but together with ‘Hark!’ gave birth to the idea of the music and light theme which inspired the pieces which followed.
Other musical pieces including ‘Serenade,’ ‘Choir 1,’ ‘Choir 2,’ ‘Jazzman,’ ‘Blow,’ ‘Hallelujah’ and the ‘Soloist’ were all fashioned primarily out of ceramic tiles.
The pieces which this reporter found delightful and entertaining focused on ‘light,’ not only as an element but in terms of spiritual and personal enlightenment.
Rhythm, Lisa declared, is found in literally everything beneath the sun. Since she and her family lived in the Essequibo River, a favourite haunt was Lake Mainstay. The piece ‘Music at Mainstay Lake’ came from reminiscing about her childhood, when she would sit on the sand at the edge of the lake and listen to the quiet lapping of the water at dusk as the gentle breeze lent to a distinct murmur. Her mother had been cautioned by the Amerindian women living in the area not to allow her daughter to be too enraptured by the lake and its enticements because of folklore in relation to it.
The Amerindian motifs which decorate the centre table tops, she said, were copied from pottery and baskets which she collected on her travels in indigenous communities. Some were taken from the designs on clay pots she brought with her from Karasabai in the Rupununi. Some of the motifs portrayed the Sun God, Frog and Running Deer.
Then there are the pieces featuring light in ‘Moonbeams’ and in ‘Rain Dance,’ and life in ‘The March of the Turtles’ and ‘Symphony,’ featuring a pond of fish decorating surface of a centre table. Glimpses of the rainforest are seen in ‘The River Dance,’ which is an aerial view of a river winding its way to the sea, and in ‘Heliconias’ and ‘Leaves.’
Lisa never lacks ideas since her two young sons and husband, Andre, also help with suggestions. However, she works at her creations in the garage when her sons are asleep. “I don’t work under stress and strain. I never do work under pressure or I wouldn’t get it right. I got my real job and this helps to take away the stress from the job.” Lisa is a social worker attached to the Guyana HIV/AIDS Reduction Programme (GHARP).
And the materials? In her travels, she collects stones that have an appeal, such as little red rocks from Mahdia and Lethem, shells from beaches at the Georgetown Seawall, ceramic tiles, and broken bits of terracotta which were not thrown away while the family had to redo the floor of the house after the 2005 floods. “When plates break in my house, a rare occurrence, I don’t throw them away,” she said, adding that “some ideas will come in which I would use them.”
While there is an abundance of mirrors found locally at places like Royal Woodworking Establishment, Lisa imports stained glass from the USA and Canada. She buys glass pebbles at plant and flower shows or if she sees them in local stores or vendors selling them in the street.
In her current collection, Lisa, who describes herself as a self-taught, amateur artist, who has been living with art all her life, said that in the colour and hues of the current exhibits, she wanted to bring out the gaiety of the cultural way of life. The ‘Guyaneseness’ is evident in the ‘Brown Girl’ series, ‘The Dance of the Forest Nymphs,’ and the ‘Masqueraders,’ to name a few.
According to her she is a “happy person” and she wants others to feel that way. Those who know her would hear her laughter even before seeing her, and when they do, they would be greeted with a smile as big as Lake Mainstay.
The stained glass carries various shades of brown from a light dairy milk to a dark chocolate colour in the ‘Dancing Girls’ and the angels in the ‘Hark’. The dancers, also a reflection of the Guyanese people, are seen in both short and long flowing hair as they prance and twirl.
Asked why the use of so much glass in all its forms, Lisa said she felt it was a challenge designing and cutting it out. She was taught the basics by her sister-in-law in Canada, and she revelled in her new-found skill while in Guyana, developing it to even include rock-cutting.
On her return to Guyana from Canada in 2003, she said boredom while looking for a job took her to working first in mirrors. From her best pieces she subsequently held her first one-woman exhibition. However, she has since exhibited with the women’s artists association.
This is her second one-woman show, which started on November 15 and will run until December 15, 2007 at the Hadfield Gallery on Hadfield Street, Georgetown. miranda_larose@yahoo.com
