Festival and Memory: Spirit and Art on Company Street, St. Croix

Remembering Christmas Second Day; Visiting Cane Roots Art Gallery

by Monique Clendinen Watson

December 26, 2021

Happy Christmas Second Day Company Street Family!  In Virgin Islands tradition, Christmas Second Day is the day for visiting or expecting company.  In my childhood it was the day when we would visit great aunts, grandmothers, godmothers, relatives and comadoes that we didn’t see regularly.  It was a day for a second round of gift giving and sharing sweetbread and guavaberry.  In my memory, it was a family day of sitting in living rooms eating out of treasured plates from the china cabinet that only came out once a year and sipping from tiny crystal glasses while exchanging memories and if you were lucky some old-time family melee.  In our childhood, we children were to be seen and not heard, but that didn’t mean we didn’t see and hear.

Christmas celebrations in the Virgin Islands combine religious and spiritual observances with cultural festival preparations. Many people attend Christmas Eve midnight Mass before opening the gifts under the Christmas tree.  Some celebrate Kwanzaa or other end of year celebrations. Christmas Second Day is traditionally the first day of Festival Village and the greeting and sharing with the wider community.  The cutting and sewing of festival costumes and practicing of parade dance routines become more intense in preparation for the January 1^st Children’s Parade and the Adult Three King’s Day Parade. It is truly a time to express and engage Spirit through religion and culture with family and community.

With the pandemic putting a damper on gatherings for the second year in a row, with no village or parades to go to, the Cane Roots Art Gallery is giving the people of St. Croix a chance to connect to culture and community with the photo/art exhibit “We Ready for Deh Road” which will re-open on January 3^rd and run through the 21^st.  Sonia Nahar Deane’s art gallery at 24 Company Street, Christiansted features three of the island’s young and insightful photo artists who capture both the humanity and spirituality of Festival, bridging the Old Year with the New. Deane points to Malik Bascombe’s portrayal of moko jumbies and j’ouvert, David Berg’s parade angel and Chalana Brown’s powdered masquerader as some of the must-see images on display. “They are all very different, but they capture the spiritual connection of the people to the festival,” she explains. Costumes from Shamari Haynes and Willard John add to the exhibit that features archival photos of festivals past. “These are challenging times, and we are not able to gather to play mas’. This exhibit is a way to honor the spirit of the Crucian Christmas Festival.”

Deane opened the gallery in 2020, amidst the uncertainties of the time with a leap of faith. “Leap and the net will appear,” she advises, adding that “you can’t worry about what you don’t know.”  She bought the building in 2016, living upstairs as she worked to transform the first floor into the art gallery which in the past year has featured the work of Niarus Walker, Elwyn Joseph, Leo Carty and Elisa Mackay.  “My vision was to feature the arts of the Caribbean and the Americas, and it is exciting to begin with artists from St. Croix.”  Community response has been good with over 100 attendees at the opening of “We Ready for deh Road” in early December. This February, the gallery will feature St. Croix’s Lucien Downes and St. Thomas’s Augustin Kelvin Holder in “Virgin Islands Contemporary.”

Deane retired to St. Croix five years ago, after years as an educator in New York. “I had been visiting St. Croix since the 80s, I came on vacation first and then after a friend moved here, I came regularly.”  Life on St. Croix resurrected memories of her childhood in Guyana. “Whenever I see goats running through the grass or get a whiff of molasses when I drive by the factory, it reminds me of Guyana,” she said. “St. Croix is the romanticism of my childhood.” She recalls being a uniformed schoolgirl walking to the Public Catholic School on Brickdon and Cam Street in Georgetown. She remembers meeting her friends on the way to school and having neighbors look out and tell her mom if she veered off her usual route. “What were you doing on Cam Street,” her mom would sternly ask as soon as she got back home. “It was the old way of the village protecting the children,” she reminisces, as I remember similar scenes in my growing up days in St. Croix and St. Thomas.  Deane’s family migrated to New York when she was 11.  She was first exposed to art with visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By 21, she began her own vast personal collection of Caribbean and African American art.  Later, she learned how to run a gallery when she worked at the Essie Greene Galleries in Harlem.  Her lifelong dream of living in the Caribbean and owning and operating her own gallery came together when she purchased the two-story building  on the economically challenged end of Company Street.

“I like projects. This building has been my canvas,” she said of the restoration of 25 Company with the gallery on the first floor and Airbnb units on the top. “Owning the building is the key to my success. This would be harder with overhead.” Deane says that her neighbors on Company Street, fellow shop owners and Holy Cross Church and St. Mary’s School have been encouraging, urging her not to give up after the devastating hurricanes of 2017. She persevered and is optimistic about the future of her gallery and of Company Street. “I believe that there is going to be a renaissance on this street.” That just may be true with nearby St. Croix Foundation’s plan to open a theater in Sunday Market and adjacent buildings being put on sale.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell on St. Croix with dips and turns in the economy blowing in and out with the tradewinds.

Visitors to Cane Roots Gallery drop by to see and to purchase. “My clients are local from St. Thomas and St. Croix and many are visitors to the island,” she says. “It is first important to get to know your clients, share many artists with them and have them spend time in the gallery. Since the gallery is an extension of my home, I always want clients to feel the joy that the gallery brings to me.”

Even if you are not an art gallery goer, I urge you to stop in and visit Cane Roots Art Gallery when next you are on Company Street, St. Croix. It is open from Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 5 pm. Go for a taste of festival next week if you and your family are looking for a safe, socially distant activity to enjoy. Go to experience the spirit and artistry of three of St. Croix’s best young photo artists. Go because you are looking for a new and exciting piece to add to your collection. Go to meet Sonia Nahar Deane and exchange stories about the blessing of living and being on St. Croix. You can visit the gallery online at www.canerootsartgallery.com or on Facebook @canerootsartgallerystx.  The gallery will re-open on January 3^rd and the current exhibit “We Ready For deh Road” will run through January 21^st. You can call Deane at 340-718-4829 or email her at sdeane@canerootsgallery.com.

As the world we live in is global and interactive, I would like to hear from you who know and love St. Croix who may have stories, pictures of memories to share about Company Street or any other aspect of Virgin Islands history and culture.  You can find this and other blogposts at www.companystreetchronicles.com or visit our Facebook page @companystreetchronicles or Twitter @companystreet59.  You can email me at mcw@bluegaulinmedia.com.

Monique Clendinen Watson is a writer and public relations specialist who is from the U.S. Virgin Islands and who lives in Virginia.  She owns BlueGaulin Media Strategies, LLC, a public relations firm and can be found at www.bluegaulinmedia.com.  Photos courtesy of BlueGaulin Media and Sonia Nahar Deane. Company Street Chronicles © and BlueGaulin Media © are copyright protected. December 2021.  All rights reserved.