Reuters
By Pascal Fletcher
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Shifting debris and twisted metal by hand, Haitian workers backed by Japanese U.N. military engineers on Monday rescued remaining valuable paintings and sculptures from the collapsed rubble of one of Haiti's most notable art museums. The workers and U.N. troops were trying to salvage what they could of Haiti's rich artistic heritage, ravaged by the Jan. 12 earthquake that may have killed up to 300,000 people, according to the country's president.
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Port-au-Prince's Nader Art Museum, which with 12,000 paintings housed probably the world's most important private collection of Haitian art, was reduced to rubble by the quake, which also badly damaged the presidential palace, the city cathedral and many other historic buildings. Since the quake struck six weeks ago, gallery staff have been carefully extracting the most important works from the wreckage. Brightly-colored canvases, many torn and smeared with dust, are piled to one side, while empty wooden frames are stacked in another pile.
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Workers carry away wooden and metal sculptures, some missing arms and legs in a grotesque reflection of the horrific human injuries inflicted by the quake. Georges Nader Jr., 40, son of museum owner Georges S. Nader, said the 'search and rescue' phase of the museum salvage operation was almost over."We've been digging for a month ... the hand removal stage is almost over, then heavy machinery will move in," he said. "But if you put a mechanical digger in there right away, you will lose everything."
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He was philosophical about the loss to the collection. "I think about 50 percent, with some kind of restoration, will be salvageable," Nader said. A separate Nader gallery in Petionville district survived the quake. About 95 percent of the Haitian masters part of the museum collection, including works by Hector Hyppolite (1894-1948) and Philome Obin (1892-1986), survived because they were housed in a front part of the collapsed building, Nader said.
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"Some are not even scratched. We have someone working on restoration, where necessary, right now," he added. Asked if the collection was insured," Nader laughed wryly: "If it was, I wouldn't be here". Of the museum's sculptures, reflecting the rich African heritage of Haiti, which won independence through an 1804 slave revolt, Nader put losses at 60-70 percent.
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"When we pulled the sculptures out, some of them had broken arms and legs," he said. Japanese U.N. officers wearing blue caps and helmets and the shoulder patches of Japan's Central Readiness Regiment, supervised laborers and a mechanical digger. Around 200 Japanese troops are participating in the international relief operation in Haiti, and this number would rise to over 300 in March, said Captain Shingo Hayakawa.
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Nader's father George, 78, who started the collection in 1966, and his mother, both survived the quake. Nader said he believed much of the Caribbean's country's artistic patrimony, including the famed 1950s mural paintings of the Sainte Trinite Cathedral, had been lost.
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But amazingly, many of the city's oldest houses, which are built of wood in the elaborate "gingerbread" Caribbean style, withstood the magnitude 7 quake, while hundreds of more modern concrete, steel and mortar structures crumbled. "This would a good time to restore the old houses," Nader said.
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France, Haiti's former colonial master, will draw up a preparatory study for reconstruction of the wrecked presidential palace, and has offered to restore a damaged 1822 painting depicting Haitian independence heroes which was salvaged by a French team from inside the ornate white palace. (Editing by Alan Elsner)

Washington Post
By Edward Cody
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Since it was devastated by an earthquake Jan. 12, Haiti has been synonymous with death, destruction and misery. But a month later, out from under the rubble has come a sign of the irrepressible human spirit that makes this tragic country someplace special. Earthquake art has arrived.
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Haiti has long expressed itself through its world-renowned painting. Now, in their ramshackle studios or in borrowed back rooms, using scavenged oils and makeshift easels, Haitian artists have begun painting the first canvases that seek to depict the horror of the quake and proclaim a tenacious hope that things will get better, if only because they can't get worse.
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Dorvelus Gerald put the finishing touches on his first earthquake art here Saturday, daubing acrylic paint on a clock marking 4:57 -- the hour the magnitude 7 tremor struck -- that was set in pale yellow high on a towering church steeple. Under the steeple, a titanic struggle was underway, matching a dragon-like monster emerging from the bowels of the earth to devour Haiti against a deep blue angel trying to protect the country from evil.
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Gerald, 50, said he began the work about four days after the earthquake. The quake destroyed his mother's house in Port-au-Prince, the capital, where he normally lives and works, and he was forced to take refuge in this little town atop terraced hills about 15 miles to the southeast. He lost most of his oil paint in the rubble, he said, and could resume painting only after a friend gave him some salvaged tubes of acrylics.
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"He wanted to give me some money," Gerald recalled. "But I said I didn't want anything but paint. Just give me paint." Gerald, who sells his work in galleries in Port-au-Prince and Miami, said he hopes the first earthquake canvas will bring in $2,000, money badly needed to repair or rebuild his family home. He recently started a second earthquake painting, showing a cemetery where endless rows of grave markers seem to reach up to flowers floating by in what appears to be turbulent air.
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After signing the completed painting, Gerald took a late-morning swig of Haiti's celebrated Barbancourt rum and stepped back to admire his works. A row of a half-dozen empty rum bottles sat atop the refrigerator in his little farmhouse. Just behind him, facing the easel, hung a dime store portrait of the Virgin Mary, who seemed to be looking down with motherly indulgence.
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With one painting completed and another underway, Gerald said he has no plans for any more works dealing with the tragedy, at least for the time being. "The earth turns, and so does our spirit," he said. "With these paintings, I have expelled the evil of the earthquake from my brain."
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Haiti's musicians have also composed their first earthquake songs, loping Caribbean tunes promising that, although times are tough, the country's tears will dry one day. "There are many artists in Haiti," said Markaens Midy as an earthquake song, with its promise of a brighter future, played on his car radio. But the status of painting has long been particularly high here. For decades, painting has been a splash of color, humor and success in a history otherwise benighted by dictatorship, corruption and poverty so grinding that people go to sea in little boats to get away.
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One of the few things people here remember fondly about the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, for instance, was that he contributed to the founding of the National Art School in the early 1980s. Gerald was in the first graduating class in 1984.
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After a violent uprising in 1986, Duvalier, son of the infamous "Papa Doc," was put aboard a U.S. Air Force transport plane and flown to exile in France, where his wife, Michelle, left him and he lives in a modest Paris apartment. Duvalier's departure, however, did not end Haiti's problems. It only changed the cast of characters, evolving into one more disappointment for the country's 9 million people. Through it all, Haiti's painters stayed true to their tradition, using their art and whimsy to comment on the country's political and social upheavals, invoke the mysteries of life and Voodoo, and give people relief from the misery of their daily lives.
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The mystical personality of Haitian painting was popularized on the international market in the 1970s by Andre Malraux, the French literary figure and culture minister. During a visit here, historians have written, Malraux was approached by artists from the populist Saint Soleil movement carrying their works toward him in a sort of procession as he sat amazed on a little knoll, his interest aroused for the rest of his life.
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More recently, Haitian painters, some of them world famous, have been selling works at competitive prices at galleries in Port-au-Prince and in art capitals such as New York, Paris and London.
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Toni Monnin, a transplanted Texan who with her husband runs the Galerie Monnin in the capital's upscale Petionville suburb, said she expects that over time Haitian artists will represent the earthquake as a challenge to be overcome by spiritual resilience rather than as a hopeless tragedy. "Haitian artists don't like to show that side of life," she added. "So they embellish things. It's unusual to see them emphasize the negative side of things."
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To provide stipends to keep most stricken artists going, Monnin said, she and her husband have diverted funds from their reforestation foundation, Fondam (http://www.fondam-haiti.org).
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Some of Haiti's best-known painters have brought in earthquake art for sale in Monnin's gallery, including Reynald Joseph and Frantz Zephirin, the Voodoo master. Prefete Duffault, whose fantasy scenes of crowds marching ant-like across bridges and arches are appreciated around the world, told Monnin that he is reflecting on how to portray the earthquake in his own, much-imitated style.
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"Zephirin just started painting like crazy the minute it happened," Monnin said. "He's the champion. Of course, he was before the earthquake anyway. He's so prolific." One of four paintings he brought in for sale showed a mouth devouring Haiti. Another showed skeletons standing amid the ruins holding up signs in English vowing, "Haiti will reborn," and proclaiming, "We survived the ocean's blood earthquake." "We need shelters, clothes, condoms and more," reads the sign held by another skeleton in the rubble. "Please help."

The Guaridan
By Tom Phillips
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/15/haiti-earthquake-art-destroy...
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Number 18 Rue Bouvreuil was once a mecca for lovers of Haitian art. Outside the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader, perched on a hillside overlooking Port-au-Prince, a sign greeted visitors.
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"On top of the town, top in the arts," it boasted. Inside, the walls were plastered with thousands of paintings recording nearly a century of Haitian history. Now the three-storey art gallery is gone, reduced to a dusty heap of rubble and torn canvases. Broken picture frames from irreplaceable local masterpieces poke from the gallery's ruins. "My dad has about 12,000 paintings here and we are trying to save what is left,"said Georges Nader, the son of Haiti's best-known art collector and the owner of the gallery, as he scanned the debris. "We have only been able to save about 2,000 of them."
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The human cost of Haiti's worst earthquake in more than 200 years – at least 150,000 lives lost – has been well documented. But the disaster also struck a knockout blow to the heart of Haiti's vibrant arts community. Several galleries were destroyed and thousands of paintings lost under the rubble of flattened government buildings and art museums.
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The Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité, built in the early 1920s, was almost completely destroyed, taking with it a series of celebrated 1950s murals depicting scenes from the life of Christ. A painting by Guillaume Guillon Lethière, the 18th century French neoclassical painter, is thought to have been destroyed when the presidential palace collapsed.
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"There are paintings from 1905 that have been lost," said Cedoir Sainterne, an artist from the city's Pétionville district. "It's terrible. We are going to have to start all over again." Nowhere was the destruction greater than at the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader, Haiti's largest private collection of Haitian and Caribbean art. "When it [the earthquake] started I said, 'What the hell is that?' And I ran out," said Nader, whose father, also called Georges, was one of the biggest patrons of the local art scene. "I was in an 11-storey building and I saw the building dhaking and shaking and moving in all directions.
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"The next day when I came here and I went downtown I saw everything. I don't think there is any word to explain that [what happened] to the world … You have to be here to see what is going on." Nader's parents, both 79, survived. When the quake struck they were sleeping in the only room of the museum that emerged unscathed. Stunned, they fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where Nader says his mother suffered a heart attack. They then headed to Miami. "The first day my reaction was that anything material was not that important for me. When you see your dad is safe and your mum is safe I
was OK," said Nader.
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"But when I came it was very sad. My dad loves Haitian art. He lives for Haitian art. His life is Haitian art. This is a guy that won't buy a house [because] he would prefer to buy Haitian art." Nader quickly called in some Haitian friends from New York in an attempt to save some of the collection. Several paintings by Hector Hyppolite, Haiti's most revered painter, have already been plucked from the wreckage. At the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader dozens of men were wading through the rubble. Occasionally they emerged clasping canvases depicting scenes of rural life or voodoo ­ceremonies. Some of the paintings were by Alexandre Gregoire, one of Haiti's first generation of naive artists, whose work has been sold at Sotheby's in New York.
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Also among the rubble was an information card from an exhibit by the Haitian artist Adam Leontus. "Leontus has taken part in many national
and international exhibitions," it read in black typewriting. Leontus's paintings were nowhere to be seen. Nader said the museum's losses, estimated at up to $30m (£19m), could not be replaced with any amount of money. "We have lost the biggest collection of Haitian art, not only in Haiti but in the world," he said, clambering down from the roof of what was once his family gallery. "There are pieces that you won't be able to find any more. This is finished."
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Amid the destruction and despair, some Haitian artists are seeking inspiration in the disaster. One graffiti artist has taken to daubing a map of Haiti on walls around the city: a weeping eye looks out from Port-au-Prince's location, above the words "We need help". Artist Frantz Zephirin has painted more than a dozen canvases inspired by the quake, showing distraught faces trapped in ruined buildings and hands reaching up through a sea of blood.
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Elise Francisco, an artist who has sold paintings to Nader's father, said it was important artists registered the earthquake. "I'll paint the houses that have fallen, the buildings that are destroyed, the cracked land," he said.
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"We are going to show our children what happened here. This is our history." Haiti may be the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but fans of its art say it is the Caribbean's most culturally wealthy nation.
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From the intricately crafted tap-tap buses that clatter through Port-au-Prince to the explosively colourful paintings that once adorned the walls of its many art galleries, it is impossible to miss the creative spirit of the world's first independent black republic. While there are records of art schools dating back to the early 19th century, Haitian artists only began to gain international recognition in the 1940s, following the creation of Port-au-Prince's Centre d'Art. Dozens of "naive artists", among them voodoo priests and small-time farmers, gathered there to depict Haiti's turbulent history in unmistakably colourful and often surreal paintings and patchworks of "voodoo flags". The centre's role in promoting Haitian art is disputed. Some say it discovered and nurtured a generation of talented but untrained artists; others say it merely helped already skilled artists make contact with overseas buyers, bringing much-needed funds to the local art scene. Through the centre, Hector Hyppolite, a one-time shoemaker and voodoo priest, became Haiti's most internationally revered artist, leading a generation of local painters whose instantly recognisable canvases featured religious imagery and scenes of the country's life.
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More than 60 years after his death, Hyppolite's works fetch six-figure sums while several other Haitian folk artists, including Philome Obin and Wilson Bigaud, have become well-known. The Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a one-time collaborator of Andy Warhol, often alluded to his Haitian roots in his paintings, which have been sold for millions at auctions.

The Miami Herald
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
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From Homestead to Pompano Beach, art communities in South Florida are responding to the tragedy in Haiti by fundraising for relief organizations through art sales and exhibitions and offering programs to help survivors. The Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance, headed by Haitian-born Miami artist Edouard Duval-Carrié, has launched a multifaceted effort to help Haiti's artists by fundraising to commission works and find venues for exhibits. The organization is also searching for artists in the United States who can temporarily house and mentor Haitian artists.
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``It's not just to give them money but to do something of quality so that they can put their best foot forward,'' Duval-Carrié says. ``Haiti is very isolated. We want to get them out of the traumatic situation they are in and give them an aperture.''
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The alliance is fundraising through an Internet art sale at haitianartrelief.com. In North Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) has announced a program designed to help local Haitians coping with the tragedy. Children and their parents or guardians who have been affected by the earthquake are invited to participate in an afternoon of therapeutic art-making at MOCA.
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Museum instructors, including Creole speakers, will guide children and adults through exercises designed to encourage expression, exploration and healing from 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 13. Admission is free.
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``Art can serve as a great tool in helping people who are affected by catastrophic events,'' says Bonnie Clearwater, executive director and curator of MOCA. ``We want to extend the resources of MOCA's HeART to HeART program to children and families in our community who have been so deeply impacted.''
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MOCA's year-round HeART to HeART works with people with physical, mental and emotional challenges through partnerships with Jewish Family Services of North Miami and Miami-Dade County Public Schools' Exceptional Student (ESE) program.
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The Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 770 NE 125th St.in North Miami. For reservations and information, call 305-893-6211 or visit mocanomi.org.
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Other events:
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* A panel discussion ``How to Inject Funds into Artistic Community of Haiti'' takes place at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. It features Duval-Carrié and Arthur Dunkelman, director and curator of the Jay Kislak Foundation and will be moderated by ArtTable member Elisa Turner.
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Duval-Carrié will discuss plans to stage exhibitions by Haitian artists at Miami International Airport galleries and at a fundraising booth at the upcoming fair arteaméricas, which has donated the space for the effort.
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``I'm issuing a call to all Miami-based artists to give a piece of work not worth more than $500 to the start-up fund,'' Duval-Carrié says.
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* The artists' collective Fine Arts R Us is presenting the exhibition Rhythm and Color with donated artworks from artists to be raffled with the proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders working in Haiti. Opening receptions start at 6 p.m. Feb. 19 and 2 p.m. Feb. 20 at Fine Arts R Us, Art Gallery/Studios, 3685 N. Federal Hwy., Pompano Beach; more information at 954-224-5090.
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* Little Havana's Leal Gallery exhibits ArtxFood / FoodxHaiti featuring the works of a group of artists who will exchange their work for food and money to be sent to Haiti.
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``In this equation, the real value of food can replace the symbolic value of money, erasing the differences between art and life,'' says artist Rafael López-Ramos. ``An artwork can make the difference between life and death for a citizen of Haiti.''
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Each piece on display will have a retail value. Artworks can be purchased with checks payable to the American Red Cross. Organizers also encourage donations of non-perishable food. The sale is Feb. 12 at Leal's Gallery, 1555 SW Eighth St., Miami; more information at 305-642-3133, 786-337-1628 or lealartframe.com.
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* In Homestead, artwork in the exhibit Island Colors Haitianda is being sold between Feb. 13 and March 6 to raise relief funds. An opening reception is at 3 p.m. Feb. 13 at ArtSouth Cultural Arts Center, 240 N. Krome Ave. Works include Joey Kernisky's photography and watercolors depicting the Virgin Islands along the Sir Francis Drake Passage and a Valentine's fashion-design event with Haitian designer Marie Joeberthe. More at artsouthomestead.org.

The Miami Herald
BY LESLEY CLARK
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The vibrant murals that once adorned the walls of the Cathedrale of Sainte Trinite -- created in the 1950s by some of the giants of Haitian art -- are now largely dust, part of the gray rubble that covers most everything in Port-au-Prince.
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The earthquake two weeks ago buried hundreds of thousands and struck deep into Haiti's vibrant arts community, erasing in seconds cultural touchstones like the murals that depicted Christ's birth, crucifixion and ascension. Even as talk turns to rebuilding, artists struggle to account for the loss of thousands of expressions of artwork that shows themselves -- and the world -- a creativity that persists through years of political strife, turmoil and poverty.
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``We'll be knocking on every door possible to save whatever is left,'' said Gerald Alexis, a Haitian-born curator and expert on Caribbean art who from his home in Quebec is trying to mobilize arts groups to find a way to preserve the portions of the mural that survive. ``It is essential for future generations, for our identity.''
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The losses on the cultural front are staggering. At the Centre d'Art -- the successor home of the original movement that launched Haitian art -- the front of the building has been torn off and reduced to rubble. Neighbors were able to salvage some pieces, Alexis said, though many are visible but out of reach on the second floor.
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Private collections across the city, and at least one artist and several arts patrons, perished in the quake. The Haitian government has asked former Culture Minister Daniel Elie to conduct an inventory to determine what is lost.
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Among the biggest losses: one of the most significant private collections of early Haitian art -- 15,000 pieces collected over the past 40 years by Georges Nader and housed at his home and museum, Musee D'Art Nader.
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The pieces included works by Philome Obin and Hector Hyppolite, masters of Haitian art who painted at the Centre d'Art in the 1940s and have influenced generations of artists.
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``They were the founders of Haitian art,'' said Georges Nader's son, also named Georges, who made four trips and spent hours combing through the rubble of the house to salvage what he could of the collection that his father so loved.
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Among the 100 or so pieces he was able to rescue: several primitive landscapes and a playful self-portrait by Obin, who painted himself in the 1950s standing next to his ``dedicated friend,'' Georges Nader.
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Several pieces by Hyppolite, considered Haiti's leading artist, were pulled from the debris. Haitian art is alive with rich color, yet every piece that was rescued is coated with dust and grime. Several on cardboard were ripped in half or suffered gouges. The younger Nader hopes to find restoration experts in the United States or Canada, but he fears art restoration will not be a priority as the country struggles to feed and house the hundreds of thousands made homeless by the earthquake.
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``My parents survived, that's the important thing,'' he said, noting that his parents -- both 79 -- had decided to retire to their bedroom for a nap when the quake struck. The bedroom was the only part of the house that survived. The Nader Gallery in nearby Pétionville, which carries some traditional work, but mostly contemporary Haitian art, survived the earthquake with hardly a single frame askew. A month ago, the multistory gallery was the site of an exhibit of the works of the old masters.
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``They were all here and they might have made it,'' Nader smiled ruefully, gesturing to the artwork that hangs brightly on the gallery walls. ``We returned them to my dad's just three weeks ago.''

The Waterloo Center for the Arts in Iowa, which has the largest public collection of Haitian art in the United States, is setting up a relief fund and serving as a clearinghouse for information about the lost art and affected artists, said Cammie Scully, the museum's executive director.
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The museum has contacted some artists but believes at least one compound was hard hit.
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``With unemployment at 85 percent, art has been one of the ways people have been able to make money,'' Scully said. ``A lot of people are taking care of extended families through the arts. It's an unbelievably creative culture.''
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Some artwork that hung in Haiti's now collapsed presidential palace has been pulled from the rubble, but not the most significant piece -- a painting by the French neoclassical painter Guillaume Guillon Lethiere. The painting had recently been rehung after being restored at the Louvre, Alexis said.
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Haitian artist Phillipe Dodard's Culture Creation Foundation, which promotes arts in the schools, lost its offices -- and 18 years of work, Dodard said. But Dodard, whose work has met with international acclaim, said he was grieving the loss of the murals at the Episcopal cathedral, dozens of colonial-era gingerbread houses and the Nader collection.
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``All those major artists, we don't have them anymore,'' he said of the old masters. ``Haitian culture isn't just buildings and art, it's people. But this is like losing part of our memory.''
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Haitian artists also lost a leading arts patron and collector with the death of Carmel Delatour, 85. Her private collection -- which included works by some of Haiti's most significant artists -- was lost in the earthquake, and son Lionel said he's uncertain if any of her sons will continue her work.
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Still, Delatour said, he believes artists, like the country, will rebound.
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``I have no doubt the creativity of the Haitian people will not have been extinguished by this event,'' he said. Indeed, as soon as the dust settled -- and international reporters and relief workers began landing in the country -- street vendors were back at work, selling paintings, steel sculptures and vivid flags beaded with various Vodou spirits.
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But Jeanguy Saintus, the founder and artistic director of a dance school, Artcho Danse, and a dance troupe, Cie Ayikodans, said he is running short on optimism. The gingerbread house on a quiet tree-lined street in Pétionville that houses his school and studio is still standing, but the back wall threatens to peel away. Parents are pulling students out of class to leave for the United States and Canada. Most of his troupe -- six drummers and 10 dancers -- lost their homes. His principal dancer, Linda Francois, is leaving shortly for the Dominican Republican to stay with a sister. She promises to return.
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``The arts in Haiti, particularly dance, have always been like a catastrophe, chaos,'' Saintus said, noting there is no government and little private support for dance. ``People think you are crazy to do professional dance in Haiti.'' But over 22 years, Saintus has built a respected troupe of Haitian-born, Haitian-trained dancers. One dancer, Vitolio Jeune, was a recent contestant on the hit American TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Cie Ayikodans has performed around the world, proving to audiences in Amsterdam and at Carnegie Hall that Haiti is more than political turmoil and poverty. It is movement and heart and joy.
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The scope of the damage to the school -- and the uncertainty -- threaten to sap Saintus' resolve.
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``I want to be positive, I want to be optimistic, but I can't say everything is going to be all right, because I just don't know,'' he said, sitting on the porch steps, outside the studio. ``No one knows.''
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Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report

Ghetto Biennale:
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BY RICHARD FLEMING Special to The Miami Herald
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PORT-AU-PRINCE -- On the Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines stands an enormous sculpture of Papa Legba, the vodou spirit guardian of entryways and crossroads. Some 25 feet high, it has been welded together from an abandoned truck chassis, with its head a battered oil drum. The rusty giant is an incongruous sight among the bustling street vendors and small businesses crowding this busy street in Haiti's capital. Behind Papa Legba are more sculptures, an uncountable tangle assembled from chunks of carved wood, ironing boards, car parts, lengths of scrap fabric, even human skulls. This army of gargoyles, most representations of the pantheon of African lwa still so present in the spiritual life of this country, are the work of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, a loose collective of artists born and raised in the dense slums here.
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Their work is a spectacular combination of recycling and imagination. Although drawn from the same deep well of Afro-Caribbean culture as
traditionally exported examples of Haitian art, it looks nothing like them.
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``When we first started going around the neighborhood and collecting stuff in order to work, people said we were crazy,'' says Céleur Jean Herard. `They said, `Look at all these useless metal parts they are taking.'Really, it was a struggle not to be discouraged.''
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Herard and André Eugene, the Papa Legba sculptor, pioneered the Grand Rue phenomenon. Both once worked within the traditional economy of this neighborhood of artisans, carving wooden ashtrays, candy bowls and statuettes. Such tourist trinkets are still mass produced here for export to more popular Caribbean vacation destinations. The slum's narrow cinderblock alleys are filled with the sound of hammering and the scent of varnish.
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This shared past spent struggling on the handicraft production line may be one reason why the sculptors of the Grand Rue are adamant that their work be taken as fine art, not compartmentalized as ``ethnic'' or ``outsider.'' Behind his sculpture garden, André Eugene lives in what he calls the E. Pluri Bus Unum Museum, three small rooms crowded with neighborhood art. Eugene says that after traveling to galleries and museums around the world, he was struck that only the wealthy seemed to build arts institutions and determine what should hang in them. In Haiti the exhibition and selling of art has generally been dominated by the tiny upper-class *boujwazi*.
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``I had the idea of making a museum here in my own area, with my own hands, because the artists you see here never had their own thing. They always let the Big Man exploit them,'' Eugene says. With similar intentions, the Grand Rue sculptors spent three weeks in November and December hosting the first Ghetto Biennale. Assisted by two outside curators, they used the Internet to solicit project proposals from
international artists and selected 35 from more than 100 applications. But instead of bringing completed artworks, as at a traditional biennial, the chosen artists were asked to create work in the Grand Rue environment. For many, the harsh realities of life in a Caribbean slum meant completely reformulating their ideas. London-based Jesse Darling had wanted to build ``a trash church,'' a sacred space made of found materials.
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``When I got to Grand Rue, the first thought was, `Well, what is waste
here?' '' Darling says. ``Every little fan grate, every little nothing has
been reincorporated into the structure of someone's home, the structure of somebody's life, reused, made to work again.'' Forced to reconsider her materials, she ultimately used hundreds of the tiny, discarded plastic sachets in which small servings of fresh water are sold on the streets. Hugo Moro, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami, says that despite a familiar Caribbean feeling he recognized from trips to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Haiti was a shock.
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``It was a kind of terror,'' he says. ``The Grand Rue was definitely a
mind-blowing, unexpected level of poverty.'' Moro quickly realized that even the modest materials he had brought along were inappropriate for the environment. He describes his project, *7,000 Trees for Haiti*, as a version of the famous *7,000 Oaks* project by Joseph Beuys, the late pioneer of social-environmental artworks.
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``I see it like somebody going to the Louvre 100 years ago and copying the masters.'' Moro says. ``I'm taking Joseph Beuys and attempting to recreate his piece for the Antilles.'' Haiti, he says, ``is the most obvious place to do a reforestation-based piece of work.'' Moro sees the time he spent in Port-au-Prince as the beginning of a long-term relationship. To continue it he is collaborating with the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a grass-roots not-for-profit dedicated, among other things,
to environmental causes.
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Building long-term links with artists outside of Haiti was undoubtedly one
of the goals of this unique take on an art expo, even though Eugene, Herard and other Grand Rue artists have now traveled to show their work in Paris and London and, notably, at Florida International University's Frost Art Museum. Whether those connections will sustain is a question that may have to wait two years, until the next Ghetto Biennale. But especially after the recent influx of visiting artists from around the globe, nobody in the neighborhood calls the Grand Rue artists crazy anymore.

BY Elizabeth Lazarowitz
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
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Most New Yorkers are moaning about the soggy summer weather, but for Catherine Charlot all those
clouds have a silver lining.
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The Haitian-born, Carroll Gardensbased
designer turns discarded umbrellas into boutique-ready bags and clothing,and blustery, wet days have meant a broken-umbrella bonanza.
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"I'm so happy. I wish it could rain every day," said Charlot, 44, who immigrated to Brooklyn in 1994
and has spent most of her time in Marine
Park"I'm thinking of moving to
Portland just for that."
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After big storms, Charlot scours her neighborhood for material. Last week, just two days of searching on her way to and from work yielded nearly 20
busted umbrellas from garbage cans and off the streets.
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"This year I've collected more than ever," said Charlot, who now has about 425 umbrellas in her basement-level studio ready to be transformed.
The damp weather couldn't have come at a better time, because demand for her products is picking up.
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"People like it because it's waterproof and of course recycled," said Jean Tanler of New York City made goods retailer Local Labels, which sold Charlot's totes at a kiosk in Grand Central Terminal
this summer and also took in old umbrellas for her to convert. "I do think a lot of people are more environmentally aware."
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Charlot's handbag line ranges from simple black tote bags that she decorates with paint or embroidery to evening bags fashioned from patterned umbrella fabrics. Prices range from $18 to $100. Jackets, dresses and suits cost $150 to $300.
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While selling anything in such bleak economic times is tough, green goods have a growing cachet and give shoppers a reason to stop and look, said Candace Corlett president of New York based retail research firm WSL Strategic Retail "Recycled everything has an audience," Corlett said. "A third of shoppers tell us that they'll go out of their way to buy earth-friendly products."
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Charlot had a busy clothing business in
Haiti but pushed that aside when she moved here and began doing medical billing and French translation work. In 2002, she returned to fashion full-time, launching Himane, a custom clothing, pattern and sample-making business, but she longed to find her own niche.
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Four years ago, she decided to try making water-resistant but fashionableclothing and accessories after getting drenched in a rainstorm. Water­proof
fabrics proved to be pricey, so when she stumbled across an old umbrella in her closet, a light bulb went off.
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"You see them on the street all the time," she said. "You can take an old umbrella and turn it into something nice and beautiful." Charlot admitted Dumpster diving has its hazards. Once while digging in a sidewalk garbage can for an appealingly patterned umbrella, she was mistaken
for a homeless person by a well-meaning woman who offered her lunch.
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Charlot said she's surprised at how excited people get when they realize something that seems unusable can find a new purpose. One woman brought her
50 umbrellas she'd collected over the years and was reluctant to toss. "It's amazing the way people react to this."

http://www.miamiherald.com/video/index.html?media_id=5935305

“Here… There and Beyond” The Work of 16 Haitian Artists of Florida
By: Christian Nicolas and Fred Thomas
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The book presents a collective effort to define this new breed of artists in the Haitian Diaspora and to provide them the means to access mainstream art world. Each chapter is divided in several themes. Each artist’s biography, styles and art work are presented to give the reader an interesting
insight about the man or woman behind the brush and the canvas.
.
2009, 328pp, Perfect Binding, Hard Cover
ISBN: 9781584325314
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The cover can be seen at
_http://www.educavision.com/catalog.php?c=28&b=B520_
(http://www.educavision.com/catalog.php?c=28&b=B520)

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti—Music and art are part of the fabric of life in Haiti, whose creations are found in galleries of world capitals and sold on street corners of Port-au-Prince. Oil paintings, wood carvings, metal sculptures, Compás music. They all grow out of the long history of African and Caribbean influences nurtured over the centuries.
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Haitian painting depicting the nation’s colorful tropical landscape. Haitian painting depicting the nation’s colorful tropical landscape. A riot of colors is everywhere.
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They adorn the Tap-Tap painted trucks that transport Haitians through crowded streets. A kaleidoscope of art and messages abound with whimsy as well as religious themes as murals on dilapidated walls left by anonymous artists.
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Music of Haiti and its Caribbean region has shaped the world’s tastes. It is always in the background in Haiti but emerges in its own right mostly at night, when the noises of the day diminish.
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To tap into the creative talent of Haiti and use it as a catalyst for economic growth, USAID has partnered with Aid to Artisans (ATA), spreading Haitian art and music beyond this island nation.
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Einstein Albert’s woodworking skill in crafting bowls has found outlets in such high-end retailers as Nieman Marcus. He is one of many who benefitted from an ATA/USAID grant.
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When asked how he got his name, Albert smiled in anticipation of the question. He came from a family of musically talented siblings.
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He was the last child and his parents thought his name would destine him for celebrity. This was perhaps not a matter of pure whimsy since high schools on the island have been named after John Paul Sartre, Sir Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant. Applying the names of geniuses may be seen as a way to encourage genius.
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Albert uses the wood from the obeechi tree for his bowls and has a plantation of 22,000 trees to sustain his enterprise. “Obeechi is a soft wood,” he explains, “so it can’t be used for charcoal.” It is also a fast growing tree that makes it ideal for soil reclamation and redeeming the deforested hillsides that afflict so many people with mud slides, flooding, and erosion.
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He would like to see the tree more widely planted and exploited for commercial purposes—furniture making, for example. The Haiti MarChe Project builds local skills and links producers with regional and international buyers. Those links were severely damaged when the United States imposed a comprehensive trade embargo on Haiti in the 1990s to force a return to constitutional government.
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Small scale exporters were devastated, Albert said. MarChe also targeted the tourism sector by getting local talent better known in hotels and resorts throughout the region.
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Over the past 10 years, ATA efforts have produced $230 million in retail sales, helping 125,000 artisans—70 percent of whom are women—sell products in 41 regions of the world.

Haiti is known for its devastating hurricanes, violent political clashes and crippling poverty. But there is a village on this island country that is also becoming known around the world for its art, unusual art at that.
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Sculptor Jean Eddy Remy, president of the artists and artisans association of Croix-des-Bouquets. Sculptor Jean Eddy Remy, president of the artists and artisans association of Croix-des-Bouquets. (CBC)
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Artists here are recycling old metal oil drums and transforming them into everything from landscapes to mythological sea creatures.
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Their products are not only visually stunning. There is a rhythm to their creation that can stop the visitor cold.
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About an hour out of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, you can hear it, the soft, sometimes frantic pounding of metal. Turn down the small dusty dirt road leading to the village of Noailles and you see them squatting under umbrella-like shade trees, pounding and chiselling their metal canvases, turning what once was tossed into ditches to rust into art.
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CBC reporter Stephen Puddicombe's video of the Haitian artists' colony can be seen here. (Runs 2:26)
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There are almost two hundred metal artists in this small community, practising an art form that has been around since the 1950s. Metal sculptor Jean Eddy Rémy, the president of the association of artists and artisans of Croix-des-Bouquets, says this artist colony owes its existence to a simple blacksmith, Georges Liautaud.
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In his time, Liautaud constructed simple metal crosses for the graves in his village because so many Haitians couldn't afford headstones. With the help of an American teacher, the blacksmith would create decorative metal sculptures that went on to shape the sensibilities of a whole generation of imitators.
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Each work is unique, Rémy says, crafted by hand with a few simple tools and whatever is at hand. Dried banana or sugar cane is first placed inside the oil drum and set on fire to burn away any impurities.
With a minumum wage of only about $2 a day, recycling scrap metal has become a grinding way of life for many in Haiti. (Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press)With a minumum wage of only about $2 a day, recycling scrap metal has become a grinding way of life for many in Haiti. (Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press)
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Once cooled, the artisan flattens the drum with a hammer, pounding it into a metal canvas. Then they often use chalk to sketch a design. Salvaging metal for some secondary use has been both a blessing and a curse in this poor, benighted country.
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But here in Noailles, on the west coast, the magic seems to come in a flurry of hammer and chisel strokes as these artists create everything from large suns to sea goddesses and luminous Haitian landscapes.
Each work has a three-dimensional quality, courtesy of the bumps and hammer marks. Most are coated with varnish, a few are painted, but many are left to rust in places to heighten the effect.
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Metal art has helped this area in many ways, says artist Jean Bruneau. Apart from the almost 200 artists in the community, there are hundreds more selling the work in the larger centres and more still gathering the unwanted drums.
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Economically and socially, this work has changed the village and the region, Bruneau says. Its importance to Haiti's reputation abroad has even helped them get the ear of government. Measure twice, cut once. Haitian metal artists in Noailles examine a canvas. (CBC)Measure twice, cut once. Haitian metal artists in Noailles examine a canvas. (CBC)
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Buyers of Haiti's metal art include Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean as well as Hollywood celebrities Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The artists' association is currently preparing for exhibits in France and Los Angeles.
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But for many of those here, the real importance of their work is how it has changed their lives. His fingers taped with small bandages, Felix Calixte sits beside the yellow wall of the artists co-op, gently pounding a piece of metal that he holds steady with his feet.
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He grew up in the slums in Port-au-Prince and says that before he became an artist he was in school only when his parents could afford it. He likely would have grown up poor and in a gang, he says. But he happened to see the metal artists at one point and began the long apprenticeship of learning how to seek out the best drums and mould the steel sheets.
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The metal called him, he says. And his life was changed.

Been buying art from www.medalia.net for about 5 years...the best! Extremely honest and dependable.

Thank you for publishing this post, I am enjoying visiting the links. It is strange how the world and the media in particular, always focus on the negative and, mostly, impersonal aspects of everyone's lives. It is thanks to people like you that we are able to glimpse these hidden creative treasures. We do have a store here in Grenada that sells some Haitian art, your post enables us to enjoy the diversity.

This is a good post. its important to point out that Haiti is not simply a disaster zone as is often suggested by the newscasts on cable--

Haiti's irrepressible artists are like Jamaica's musicians...unrelentingly creative. adversity only seems to strengthen their product.

congrats!