In Their Own Words: 8 Lessons on Art, Work, and Life from Black Caribbean Makers

A-Side: June is Caribbean American Heritage Month

The month of June has been recognized as Caribbean American Heritage Month since 2006, commemorating the significance of Caribbean people and their descendants in the history and culture of the United States. This effort began in 1999 with a campaign spearheaded by Dr. Claire Nelson, Founder and President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies.

Welcome to the B-side.

To celebrate Caribbean American Heritage Month, I’m spotlighting standout statements on art, work, and creative life from some of the makers featured in Malene Barnett’s book, Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practice of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers (2024). Not only do these selections speak to their distinct art-making processes, but they also showcase the keen ability of Black Caribbean Makers to challenge, connect, and carve out space for identity and expression through craft. 

1. Let life reframe your practice:

Andrea Chung (Jamaica + Trinidad and Tobago, working in San Diego, CA)

Becoming a mother was actually what made me a better artist. You value time in a much different way. You figure out what you’re willing to put up with and what’s worth sacrificing your time for. I love what I do for a living, but life cannot revolve around work.

2. Resist capitalist urgency and reclaim your inner compass:

Ania Freer (Jamaica, working in New York City)

Moving to Jamaica allowed me to slow down in a way that I have never had the space or courage to do before. By pursuing my curiosity and giving myself time and freedom to respond to the shifts and changes in my life in a creative way, I am connecting to the part of myself that I feel capitalist and production-fueled societies prevent us from accessing. I believe a better world is possible if more people connect to a deeper sense of self and purpose, which many of us have become detached from in everyday life. 

3. Art is a path, not a product:

Basil Watson (Jamaica, working in Lawrenceville, GA)

View the making of art not in terms of the object but in terms of the process, the process that brings you toward enlightenment. If you go through the process honestly and that process includes effective technique as well as the search for understanding, that understanding will be passed on to others. 

4. Acknowledge fear, then move past it:

BOA (St. John, Tortola + St. Martin, working in St. Thomas)

Freedom is having fear. Recognizing and acknowledging it, and then moving through it in a way that’s self-actualized. It’s realizing that what you want or dream or desire is completely valid, even if it doesn’t align with the way other people think. Freedom is not having to explain my choices to anyone. I feel like I’m not constricted.

5. Overflow, don’t deplete:

Firelei Báez (Dominican Republic + Haiti, working in New York City) 

Creativity is exhausting, but we are limitless in our capacity for it. So just lean into that and consider yourself a creative fountain. Live in a constant sense of abundance, of creative abundance, and know that you’re inherently connected to a larger whole than you could ever have imagined. 

6. Challenge the glorification of overwork:

Giana De Dier (St. Lucia + Barbados, working in Panama)

Currently, I’m thinking about Black women and labor. I’m subverting this view of the strong Black woman, this woman who can do everything and anything in the workforce while also taking care of children – her own and other people’s. I’m trying to soften that idea and place her in spaces where she can be herself, explore leisure or rest, rather than act as a tool of capitalism. I don’t really rest, so I’m living vicariously through my work right now. I want viewers to connect with that woman. To understand that she is deserving of leisure and the space to explore and be herself. 

7. Reject imposed boundaries:

Leyden Ynobe Lewis (Trinidad and Tobago, working in New York City)

This business of categorizing is a real problem. It is a vestige of colonialism. I don’t know anyone who is solely one thing. And it’s ludicrous to think that art and design fit neatly in separate categories. Historically, art and design have always worked symbiotically to elevate spaces and the spirit. My practice does not separate the crayon from the canvas. 

The roles are being separated because of capitalism – so that we can evaluate a piece of art and it can grow in value and then turn into an object that can be transferred like a commodity. There are products, like a chair or a teapot, that do turn into that same value commodity, but nothing equal to the way art increases in value and is tradeable.

8. Home is where your truth is:

Lisandro Suriel (Soualiga, the Indigenous name for St. Martin)

These major institutions of higher learning don’t know you, they can’t tell your story, they can’t teach you about yourself. That’s something you can learn only through engagement with the community, including elders who remember what happened and hold the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, that academia has forgotten. The Caribbean community is the institution for memory and cultural research.