Downtown murals inspire an artist

Erin Hansen, Gleaner Writer

On a cool day, when the hustle of downtown's markets have calmed for the leisurely passing of a Sunday afternoon, Roktowa artist Deon 'Sand' Palmer took to the street. His objective was to give an informal "tour of town", as he called it, a tactile experience of murals done in west Kingston.

For Palmer, everything he experiences is tentatively an art piece waiting to happen. His style captures the prolific disorder of a street artist who can't refrain from painting when encountered with a blank wall. Utilising what is at his fingertips, he paints and draws on used paper cups, discarded cardboard, recycled paper, wood scraps and even the doors of his studio.

In the gallery setting, he contains his pieces on canvas but, despite the canvas of choice, each piece is done with the same eager creative bursts that define Palmer's personality.

In person, Palmer consumes your senses as he often speaks in lyrical tone, cradling his words with the rocking two-step of his endlessly busy feet.

One performance art piece can be viewed on YouTube in which Palmer balances atop a large wooden ball painted appropriately with a yellow and red target. He rolls through the streets of town on it, socialising with vendors as he goes.

The video is called Good Ball A Roll and, in the opening scene of the video, he shows a montage of downtown murals from the window of his moving vehicle, a commentary on the cultural significance of his environment on his own concept of art. As he pans the camera on the murals, he says, "We are going on a beautiful tour of town" and then somewhere lost in the clacking of background noise, he says, "Artists without border".

While the artist exercises this motto, he is inextricably connected to his location.

"People fly everywhere, to New York, to Australia," he said in reference to his own desires to be a jet setter. But, he emphasised, "you have to come back to yard".

Before uniting with Roktowa, Palmer lived and worked in the area for many years.

Perfect scenario

The proximity of the studio's location may have been the perfect scenario to entice Palmer into a more formal setting.

Just blocks away, many of Jamaica's most famous street artists have been painting the community's stories on the blank walls of downtown's winding lanes for decades.

Scratching just the surface of art downtown, Palmer's informal tour of murals done nearby on Matthews Lane and Lukes Lane gave a glimpse into his own artistic makings.

In these murals, the neighbourhood's history is conveyed. A series of portraits done by the artist, Danny Coxson, shows four neighbourhood personalities imposed side by side on a sun-bleached white wall.

Two had been revisited recently by Coxson and were freshly marked with radiant greens and yellows. A man called Imroo stood at the threshold of a gate peering across at the portraits, suggesting two dated back to the 1980s.

"They are of people that were originally from this neighbourhood," Imroo told The Gleaner of the portraits, before adding they were people who had met with untimely deaths.

Passing down the lanes, neighbours came out to meet Palmer, calling him just 'the artist' or 'Sand'.

They shook hands and greeted him as he explained that he was giving a tour of local art on the streets. Many were happy to have the interest and others waved from their homes as he passed.

Walking down the lane, we came across a portrait of 'The Legendary Early Bird' on a storefront, a portrait of Usain Bolt aside President Barack Obama done by the artist, Bones, paintings of Haile Selassie, Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela and Marcus Garvey.

The streets had a wealth of imagery spanning from neighbourhood icons to national heroes to world leaders.

It's easy to overlook the importance of this type of street art. It becomes a part of the day-to-day, a usual occurrence to most, even a negative attraction to others.

But for an artist like Palmer, it becomes inspiration. It personifies an art without border and, as Palmer said, "artists without border", and beyond the criticism of its content or placement, succeeds in telling a story of what is, or what has been, from unassuming voices on a tangible canvas, a wall.

Back at the studio, Palmer stood over a drawing of a bird on yellowed paper. He pointed at the colourful wings in pinks, oranges and greens and rocked between toe and heel speaking in rhythm to his own internal beat. When asked what art has done for him, he looked up smiling and said, "Me nah beg, me just give thanks," before trailing off into song, "I'm searching, I'm searching, I'm searching for peace."