Nostalgic artists dub Carifesta 72 the best...
From 3A
how he entered her home and proposed to her in front of her shocked father. Her father, she said, was an “old time person”. David had ‘written home’ for her twice. The first time, her father gave permission for David to visit Marilyn, but he later rescinded the decision. A determined David wrote again and was successful. Next year will mark 50 years since David and Marilyn tied the knot.
Marilyn Dewar (then Hunt) was also in a play written by Frank Pilgrim for the famous Jamaican poet Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett-Coverley, which chronicled her arrival in Guyana and what she was greeted with as she entered the various villages. This journey was to climax on stage, but Dewar said, “honestly between me and you the play never had an end because as fast as we were rehearsing Frank was writing and the play had no end”. She remembered that after the festival Robert Narain and Andre Sobryan put on a production at the Theatre Guild about the play that never had an end.
In 1972, Dewar’s mother was also a housekeeper in Festival City and she used to “tag along with her”, she said, so she was exposed to another aspect of the inaugural event. It was during one of those visits that they realised the visiting Cuban delegation had taken the bed linens and curtains, which were made by the Women’s Revolutionary Socialist Movement (the women’s arm of the PNC) and used them as wraps, as they had fallen in love with them.
In the night, as well, the delegations danced in the streets of Festival City to the beats of Jamaican drummer Count Ossie. “Everyday day you had something to go to,” Dewar gushed. “They used up Theatre Guild, Critchlow Labour College, everywhere. I don’t think any other Carifesta could come to that one, it was really, really great…”
Mounting exhibition
Charles was one of the artists chosen to create a gallery for all artists who were part of the festival. The building used was the Bishops’ High School, The other artists were Christie Goodheart, Zaman Ali and Cletus Henriques. According to Charles only he and Ali are still alive.
The 77-year-old said the group was given the mandate to mount the exhibition and all they were told was that countries were expected to send works of art.
They had to wait for school to be out to start preparation and the first thing they did was to remove the furniture and store them in a safe place. The interior of the school was then repainted. Crates of artwork started to arrive in the country about two weeks before the festival. It was arranged so that each country’s art was displayed in a different classroom and Charles recalled that the preparation was so arduous, they started early in the morning and worked late into the night, only to continue the cycle the next day.
“We had to make sure each piece of art sent to us was catered for,” he said.
Screens and panels were made to ensure no damage was done to the school’s interior and glass cases made to accommodate sculptures. Because Guyana had never before held such an exhibition, it was new to most of them except Henriques who had lived in Brazil and had witnessed large exhibitions.
The group of artists were thrilled to be part of history in the making and for Charles it was a success and the memory has lived on with him. He bemoaned, however, that 50 years later, Guyana still does not have a designated building for artists to mount exhibitions.
While he acknowledged that there is the Castellani House, he said there is still need for another building. Stating that visual arts has no boundary, Charles said a country should always focus on the arts.
“In Guyana there seems to be no champion to activate this part of the culture, there seems to be no appetite and
I don’t know the reason why. In spite of all that, we still produce the work because it is in our nature,” the artist said.
Charles worked with the National History and Arts and later the Department of Culture. He attended the second Carifesta in Jamaica and said it was nothing compared to Guyana’s.
“I met some artists from the year before and they all said ours was better, even an artist from Jamaica said it could never be like what happened in Guyana,” he boasted.
Charles left for the US many years ago and has only returned twice, in 2004 and 2011.