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An exhibit of large-scale Trinidad-style Carnival costumes opened in Hartford this week. The brightly colored pieces were made by local teens as part of a summer jobs program.
"We’re looking at the Queen costume, which is taking up the major portion of our gallery."
Lynne Williamson is standing beside a huge green and gold costume that reaches about 12 feet into the air. She’s director of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Institute for Community Research.
"People in Carnival in Trinidad make these amazing, colorful, vibrant, glittery costumes and display them, which is a way of saying they parade with a sort of dance routine."
Under a City of Hartford Jobs Grant, teens from the local West Indian community were paid $8.00 an hour to design and build the pieces under the guidance of a master artist.
"My name is Junior Miller and I’m the president of the CT International Cultural Carnival Association."
"You had teens working on building these amazing costumes. Where did you find the girls who did this?"
"We recruit them mostly from schools in the Hartford area. We started out with 16. We wound up with 20."
Miller calls the project “an imagination of the mind”.
"The master artist asked the kids what do you want to do? The kids came up with they wanted to make something exotic. That’s the word they use. They want to be exotic."
The girls wore their exotic costumes in this year’s West Indian Parade and won first prize.
Its estimated that the greater Hartford area is home to a West Indian population of about 70,000, making it the 3rd largest West Indian community in the .US.
For WNPR, I’m Diane Orson.
The exhibit “MAS: Costumes from Hartford’s West Indian Community” runs through October 1st at the Institute for Community Research.
