Many visitors to Grenada ask about art: they are interested is seeing what is painted, or sculpted, or carved, or drawn, or photographed ....here, and where they may view it. Or they wonder where they can get artistic gifts and momentoes to take home ... The reply to this could well become a mini-series.
Mainstream art is here in abundance, but needs to be tracked down. One place well worth tracking down is the Yellow Poui Art Gallery.
In town (town means St. George's) on Lucas Street, next to Art Fabrik. You will find the Yellow Poui by walking round the back of a shop, and then up some steps. It is signed: just keep your eyes open. Having rung the bell to gain admission, you are usually let in by the proprietor, Jim Rudin. He, with his wife, opened Yellow Poui in 1968.
You step inside to find an Aladdin's quirky room, bit of corridor and balcony, all dripping with exhibits. Yellow Poui is a showcase for 50 or so artists from Trinidad, Barbados, France, America, Britain, ...and of course from Grenada. The criteria is that work must have a Caribbean feel to it.
Come to browse, learn, chat to Jim about local art, and / or come to buy. Either way, you will enjoy the welcome, the variety, and the cultured informality.
You will find paintings, naive, abstract, and sophisticated. Browse among oils on cardboard paintings by self-taught Elinus Cato; watercolours by Jackie Miller; local scenes by Joseph Browne; prints of Canute Calliste's work; stylised, fantasy Caribbean scenes by Catherine Gallian St. Clair and many others. There are antique maps, sculptures (some in local woods: breadfruit, blue mahoe, mahogany, pitch pine...) Engravings, photographs, postcards. And always a few surprises: I liked the rasta faces crafted from hairy coconut shells, but you may find sculptures of feathers, buttons, and even crab shells.
Writing and photography by Ian Blaikie - Sunsation Tours