NMS 2017-2018 / SEASON PROGRAM
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VISUAL ARTISTS
Visual Artist, 2019-2020 Concert Season
LILLIAN BLADES
Lillian Blades was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1973 and currently resides in Atlanta, GA. She holds a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design, and and MFA from Georgia State University. In addition, Lillian has studied at the s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and Caversham in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
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Lillian’s works are predominately mixed media assemblages and are made with an assortment of materials, both found and constructed. Her childhood home of The Bahamas, ancestral background of West Africa, and her late mother, who was a seamstress, influences her art. These influences appear through the use of her color palette and objects that evoke memory and history.
Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout various galleries in the United States, as well as The Bahamas, Trinidad, Germany and South Africa. Her public commissions include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Jean Childs Young Middle School. Her artwork is also in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas.
Lillian was recently a recipient of the “Excellence in Arts” award from The Bahamas Consulate in Atlanta, GA, as well as the “Visual Artist of the Year” award by the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF), both 2016. Lillian is also featured in The Mint Museum’s first large-scale exhibition to explore the dynamic medium of collage entitled "Under Construction: Collage from The Mint Museum" which opened in December of 2018. Most recently she was ‘Artist in Residence” at The Current: Baha Mar Gallery & Art Center and her commissioned work “Where the Ocean Meets the Sand” is on display as part of the Fairwinds Exhibition in the Baha Mar Convention Center.
NATASCHA VAZQUEZ
Visual Artist, 2018-2019 Concert Season
Natascha Vazquez (b. 1990, Spain) is an abstract painter whose work focuses on energetic interactions between biomorphic forms. She highlights these relationships in a sculptural way, creating a sense of 3-dimensionality through layered surfaces using mixed media. There is a high-energy interplay of forms that allude to a kind of movement, contradictory to painting which is completely flat. The viewer is left contemplating the construction of the work, questioning where it might have started and ended, and its relationship with our surroundings. Vazquez draws inspiration from biology - forms in her work often imitate our own bodies and the organic world in which we live.
Vazquez has an MFA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design and a BFA in Painting from Rollins College, Florida. She has exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions and fairs in The Bahamas, France and The United States. Her work is a part of various collections, including The Savannah College of Art and Design Permanent Collection, The Dawn Davies Collection and The D’Aguilar Art Foundation. Vazquez is presently the Curator at The Current Studio and Gallery in Nassau, The Bahamas.
Visual Artist, 2017-2018 Concert Season
JOHN COX
John Cox, born in 1973, is a Bahamian artist whose mixed-media paintings and assemblages use familiar and ordinary objects to reference distant places and ideas. In addition to his art practice, Cox is also a major part of the Bahamian art scene whose works as an educator, curator, cultural activist and founder of Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts has helped grow and redefine art in The Bahamas.
Through the years, he has helped to redefine “Bahamian art”, making him an important figure in the lives of many up-and-coming Bahamian artists.
In 1999 Cox found Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts, a dynamic, evolving hub for the Bahamian community with artist studio spaces, a gallery, international, local and student residencies, and education and programming. He remains as Director of Popopstudios, helping to support the growth of contemporary Bahamian art.
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He taught for a year at St. Andrew’s School in Nassau. Cox currently works as the creative art director at Baha Mar were he along with his all Bahamian team of creatives runs The Current; an arts platform that focuses on the promotion Bahamian art and culture to the world.
