8 St John Tradewinds, March 8-14, 2010 After 10 Years, St. John Arts Festival Becomes Mature Local Show By Frank Langley Special to St. John Tradewinds To acknowledge the sincere efforts of the exhibitors in this year’s Caribbean Food and Crafts Show, first, second and third place prizes were awarded on Friday, February 26, the official last day of the Festival. The festival was, however, granted a gratis extension by the Housing, Parks and Recreation for Saturday, given the success of previous days and the delay of visitors to return to the mainland due to extremely bad weather and flight cancellations. Criteria for the awards was fourfold. First place was for a seven day exhibitor of all Caribbean made items, tradition- al Caribbean dress and good quality of the exhibits. Sonia Sprauve walked away with the prize. Second place prizes were awarded to exhibitors who of- fered all Caribbean made items of good quality for seven days. Sheri Bunge, Shirley Gallagher and Carolyn Roust won the awards. Third place prizes were awarded for exhibitors with all Caribbean made or cultural items of good quality and tra- ditionally Caribbean for the week. Laura Rabsatt and Ital Anthony won the awards. It should be noted that Ital Anthony’s unique folk craft exhibits echoed times gone by on St. John even if for only three days of the exhibition. The “bottom line” concerning the exhibits is that visitors walking off the ferry see things Caribbean and not foreign (e.g. Asian/Indonesian as in earlier shows). To do or show other than that is to deny due recognition of the special gifts, talent and traditional culture of the people of St. John and the Caribbean. The Echo People concert on Friday triggered a number of the exhibitors to leave their booths and dance to the rhythm VN LA) LE RO St. John Tradewinds News Photo Courtesy of Frank Langley The Franklin Powell Park was the site of the festivites, above. in front of the bandstand. Looking back over the years it is interesting to note the evolution of the St. John Arts Festival. In 2001 on the first Saturday we had three concerts in the Franklin Powell Park — the Love City Pan Dragons, Music Makers Scratch Band and the Ah We Band. Later in the fol- lowing week a modern dance event was hosted on a stage erected on the unfinished third floor of The Marketplace by Jim Swan and helpers. Bands in the evening were poorly attended so we settled back to one band every day from noon to 4 p.m. with what was called a food and craft “fair” in those days. Only to dis- cover that it was viewed as “open season” for the vendors who would be selling knock-off Gucci bags from China and anything else they could lay their hands on without concern for the fundamental “made in the Caribbean” theme. Elevating the show to an “exhibition of Caribbean food for the students of Gifft Hill Scho at the 24th Annual Gala Dinner Auct Saturday, March 13th, 2010 Westin St. John Resort Ballroom Cocktails and Silent Auction 5:30 pm Dinner and Live Auction 7:00 pm \ \ Island Elegant Attire Tickets $125 per person or $1000 for a table of ten. Tickets are available at Gifft Hill School. For.more.information or to make an auction donation, call Beth Jones or Molly Murrill at 776-1730. To preview and bid on auction items, go to www-biddingforgood. com/giffthillschool and crafts” has greatly helped to eliminate the “vendor’s plaza” perception of the show and refine it to have exclu- sively Caribbean exhibits. Moreover, exhibitor name tags and booth number tags bring a higher degree of professionalism and authenticity to the show. Thereafter, we brought in music from Puerto Rico, Ar- gentina and crafts from Ghana, as well as sponsoring “Ka- kuta from Kenya,” essentially to enrich the island with the music, crafts and culture from other lands. We even tried to bring a dance group from Cuba but not only did they need an entry visa from the U.S. — no prob- lem — but an exit visa from Cuba. Checking up on this, we discovered they received their exit visa from Cuba only two to three days before a previous engagement at the Guggen- heim Museum in New York! It leaves nothing to the imagination to realize that after booking flights and hotels, the whole thing could be scut- tled after cliff-hanging until the last days before the perfor- manice. We had a similar experience with the artist who came from Ghana. There was a strike at the airport in Accra which delayed her arrival and her exhibits (paintings and crafts) did not arrive until a week later. In these times with heightened security one could say Puerto Rico is as far abroad as we can rely on for alternative cultural enrichment. Oddly enough, the Caribbean Ritual Dancers from St. Thomas included “Salsa” in their program which was a siz- zling change in rhythm and costumes. These past 10 years of sticking to it have borne fruit in the caliber now of the St. John Arts Festival as far as exhib- its, music, dance and the arts are concerned. In one word it’s now a mature show. St. John’s Seafood Authority 52" Big Screen TV for Sports in our AC Bar Early Bird Specials 4:30-6:30 Happy Hour & Local Discounts GC, of choices for non-seatood lovers toe) Seafood Market |2:00-6:00 » Restaurant 4:30-9:30 ey 693-9994