Old Friends and New Friends, Part 2: Tortola

 For the final segment of this trip in the Leeward Islands, I left Antigua for the short hop to St. Maarten, and then on to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands to catch up with Aragorn Dick-Read, who runs a marvelous artists community in Trellis Bay, right next to the Beef Island airport.  The many small islands of the BVIs are a haven for boaters, and it's pretty surprising to find a well-established sculpture and pottery studio in this setting. I was here four years ago to attend the Caribbean Arts and Crafts Festival, and since I was in the neighborhood I decided to stop in for the tail end of this year's festival.

Trellis Bay, Tortola, BVI

The Bitter End Yacht Club, Virgin Gorda, BVI

 Aragorn is best known for his cut metal sculptures and 'fireballs', open work steel spheres that are filled with wood and burn spectacularly for special events and full moon parties at Trellis Bay. In 2011, he spent seven weeks in China making his largest fireball to date - the 14' sculpture titled 'The Dream of Human Harmony' was fired up at a full moon party on August 8, 2011 for the 12th Annual China Changchun International Sculpture Symposium. Google it - very cool. The compound at Trellis Bay has sculptures everywhere, plus an excellent retail shop with art from all over the Caribbean.

Sculptor/painter Zaka from St. Lucia and Aragorn Dick-Read take advantage of the excellent wifi outside the  shop

 Aragorn has worked very closely with craft producers in St. Lucia and Dominica, and has long been a champion of indigenous history and culture. He always has about a million things going on, but we were able to take a couple of hours to have a nice long chat about the book project, Caribbean pottery, craft history, and all sorts of fascinating things.

 Since I needed to stay in Antigua to visit with Hyacinth Hillhouse, I only made it to Tortola in time for the very last day of this year's festival. After three days selling at Trellis Bay and one day in Road Town, the capital of Tortola, the whole operation moved by boat to Virgin Gorda to set up at the very posh Bitter End Yacht Club.

 Amongst the paintings, prints, baskets, jewelry, tshirts, musical instruments, dolls, pillows, leatherwork, turned wood vessels, painted wooden masks, and lots more there were two truly spectacular sculptures made from giant red cedar roots by a Rastafarian wood carver from Dominica.

 Also from Dominica was the delightful Jeanette - Theresa Lucien - who brought a wide range of handmade products from the Kalinago (formerly Carib) Reserve. Always friendly and smiling, it was so much fun to hang out with her, and with the other artists and craftspeople from across the Caribbean.

 Thursday back at Trellis Bay there was time to walk the beach and snorkel, and to catch up with the Irish women who run the pottery shop for Aragorn's Studio.

 Liza and Deb, originally from Ireland, have settled beautifully into life in the BVIs, and they make an extraordinary range of high quality functional and decorative pots in the small, well-equipped studio. It was great to see them again after four years, and we talked at length about the book project and raku glaze recipes and making pots in the Caribbean.

Their ceramic version of Aragorn's fireballs, intricately cut and fired in the raku kiln -  raku firings are a popular feature of the monthly full moon parties

So now I'm back in Florida, unpacked, clothes washed, groceries bought, all notes transcribed, and ready to dig back into the more formal aspects of the book. I had previously intended to condense the Nevis and Antigua documentation into a chapter on ceramic history in the Caribbean, but not after this trip - I'll be working on Chapter 6 this week, titled something like "Nevis and Antigua: You Have To Love This Job", based on a comment Hyacinth made. Wish me luck with the writing, and the next stop on the Caribbean pottery tour will be the wood firing workshop in Jamaica at the end of April. Irena Alphonse is going to meet me there, and I'll actually have a week to just make pots. Sounds great.

New additions to the Caribbean pottery collection - check out the seriously mini 2" coal pot sets from Edith Lyne