21395: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Fanals open doors to Haitian culture (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Apr. 18, 2004


COMMENTARY


Fanals open doors to Haitian culture

BY BETH DUNLOP

bdunlop@herald.com


Miniature houses reveal much about the purpose and meaning of architecture,
letting imagination and expression take equal footing with the essential
elements of building -- material and color, scale and form, proportion and
dimension. An exhibition, Lights of the Haitian Fanal: Contemporary
Interpretations of Tradition and Technique, pays homage to the art of
architecture and the craft customs of the Caribbean with a wonderful array
of little houses.

The houses on view on the second floor of the Miami-Dade Main Library
downtown are known in Haitian culture as fanals. They are simple,
rudimentary works that explore a lesser-known Christmastime tradition of
constructing little houses out of such simple materials as wood, paper and
wire, and lighting them from within. The houses, like Christo's Surrounded
Islands and other works, are intentionally temporary, a momentary
celebration of craft and tradition.

Haitian art is celebrated in exile, less so Haitian architecture.
Charles-Harrison Pawley's exquisite Caribbean Marketplace -- a celebration
of the exuberant gingerbread style of the island -- sits empty in the heart
of Little Haiti, a neighborhood beset by the festering problems of poverty
and neglect. Up and down the side streets there are moments of brilliant
color, but they flash by fast; mostly Little Haiti is a neighborhood of
misplaced dreams.

That it is so gives these little fanals ever more power. The Design and
Architecture High School students who made them are not, with one exception,
of Haitian origin, but they are clearly fine inheritors of a folk tradition.
Their work is creative, empathetic and expressive.

Lights of the Haitian Fanal was the brainchild of the library's arts
services supervisor, Barbara Young, as a way to commemorate 200 years of
independence in Haiti. Young had seen a few such fanals that had belonged to
the late Sheila-Natasha Friedman, who was both an artist and a collector.
Friedman's fanals were destroyed in Hurricane Andrew, and, in searching,
Young could find few others -- primarily one (which is on view) done by the
Haitian-born musician-poet-painter Jan Sebon! that is in the collection of
the Historical Museum of Southern Florida.

STUDENTS INVOLVED

Young then contacted Stacy Mancuso, the principal at DASH, who provided the
students from Efraín Montesino's class; and the Haitian-born artist Edouard
Duval-Carrié, who worked with them, imparting the idea of the tradition.
There was little printed material to be found, so the ideas were handed down
orally in the long-standing fashion of folk art. The students then went to
work, with simple materials and extravagant imaginations.

The indelible image of Haitian architecture is that of color, and indeed
there are some bright-hued offerings in the exhibition -- a green-on-green
fanal from Manuela Petit and a tissue-paper-clad house of many colors from
Enzo Mascarella. Valentina Crespo's house -- turquoise with a red roof,
yellow windows and orange shutters -- best captured the saturated palette we
associate with the Caribbean style. Jodi Starkey did two houses in more
muted hues, using seeds and raffia to impart the idea of applied decoration.

Three of the fanals -- two from Alexander Ray and one from Amaris Pagan --
are perfect model houses, with every detail and proportion in place. Two
others approach and then purposefully shun perfection, with houses that show
the toll of poverty, in a rather specific social comment. Gabriela González
let the thatched roof show deterioration and the picket fence be in partial
collapse. Angela Díaz placed her house on a dirt ''lawn'' ornamented with
broken pottery. Thomas Baker's offering was a burned house with charred
walls after a cave-in with fire still glowing inside. Angela Díaz designed a
broken ship, a metaphor perhaps for the Haitian quest for equal immigration
status.

BLACK AND WHITE

Seraphin Bernard spoke with his Haitian-born father about the tradition and
thus produced a series of very small houses in solid black and white. Other
students -- among them Chanel Drummond and Sean Rice -- studied the Haitian
architectural vernacular enough to produce little houses of unique
proportions.

Some students sought simplicity, designing little huts; others went for
structural and artistic complexity, among them Isabel Streichen, whose
abstract building resembles a chapel, and Ulugbek Teshabaev, whose fanal is
an intricate balsa wood and tissue creation. Much more literal in approach
is Marcel Allende's shiny silver house trailer complete with rows of
''rivets'' and actual rubber wheels.

Lights of the Haitian Fanal is wonderful to look at, ingenious and inventive
little works of three-dimensional art. But more, they are an ode to the
unfettered mind and the indomitable spirit, and they are charming enough to
make the spirit soar.

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