SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Har­ris Prom­e­nade re­ceived a long-await­ed facelift on No­vem­ber 18. The space was trans­formed in­to a strik­ing open-air cul­tur­al show­case dur­ing San Fer­nan­do City Month (No­vem­ber 1–30) cel­e­bra­tions.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with San Fer­nan­do–based paint and sur­face so­lu­tions com­pa­ny Caribbean Coat­ings, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris un­veiled a new com­mu­ni­ty art in­stal­la­tion cel­e­brat­ing the city’s cul­tur­al icons and his­toric iden­ti­ty.

The project fea­tures eight large-for­mat works cre­at­ed us­ing a high-res­o­lu­tion, spe­cialised ver­ti­cal print­ing sys­tem that de­liv­ers mu­se­um-qual­i­ty im­agery.

Caribbean Coat­ings CEO Michael Ding­well said the ini­tia­tive re­flects the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to mean­ing­ful cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship and pride in the south­ern city.

“This was nev­er about putting up pret­ty pic­tures,” he stat­ed.

“This is about iden­ti­ty, trib­ute, and restor­ing pride in a city that has giv­en so much to our cul­ture. San Fer­nan­do de­serves to see its he­roes and its his­to­ry re­flect­ed in a way that feels per­ma­nent and pur­pose­ful. The project al­so sig­nals the grow­ing cre­ative and tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty of busi­ness­es with­in the city.”

Ding­well fur­ther ex­plained that the com­pa­ny has in­vest­ed in high-res­o­lu­tion wall-print­ing tech­nol­o­gy ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing art­work in a wide range of sizes with ex­cep­tion­al ac­cu­ra­cy and de­tail. Rather than lim­it­ing its use to com­mer­cial projects, he said they chose to make it ac­ces­si­ble in the pub­lic do­main.

“This project is our way of lift­ing the city and re­mind­ing peo­ple of the cul­tur­al shoul­ders they stand on,” Ding­well said.

Four of the in­stal­la­tions ho­n­our tow­er­ing south­ern cul­tur­al fig­ures through bold black-and-white por­trai­ture. These in­clude 4x4 ft prints of the late so­ca in­ven­tor Ras Shorty I (Garfield Black­man), the late ca­lyp­so icon Black Stal­in (Leroy Cal­liste), chut­ney so­ca leg­end Rik­ki Jai (Sam­raj Jaimun­gal), and Guin­ness World Record–hold­ing pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo.

The re­main­ing four works show­case his­toric San Fer­nan­do through the art of ac­claimed topo­graph­i­cal artist Rus­sell Ban­field, whose oil paint­ings cap­ture the city as it ex­ist­ed decades ago.

Ban­field said the project holds deep emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance for him as a self-taught artist with over 45 years ded­i­cat­ed to doc­u­ment­ing T&T’s land­scapes.

“This in­stal­la­tion is an ex­ten­sion of my com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing his­to­ry,” he stat­ed.

“When the may­or ap­proached me about his vi­sion for Har­ris Prom­e­nade, I felt ho­n­oured and priv­i­leged to con­tribute to my home­town, which I of­ten re­fer to as my sec­ond navel string. I was ex­cit­ed to share my work on our his­to­ry, cul­ture, and her­itage with a wider au­di­ence. I im­me­di­ate­ly agreed.”

Born and raised in San Fer­nan­do, Ban­field has built a dis­tin­guished ca­reer cen­tred on pre­serv­ing rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing land­scapes and his­toric struc­tures, guid­ed by a phi­los­o­phy that art should bridge gen­er­a­tions.

His ob­jec­tive: Link the past to the present; pre­serve his­to­ry rather than de­vel­op new fash­ions.

Ban­field praised Caribbean Coat­ings for re­spect­ing the in­tegri­ty of his work.

“Their ded­i­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in re­pro­duc­ing my art­works pro­vid­ed me with com­fort, know­ing they un­der­stood the im­por­tance of cap­tur­ing the de­tails in my paint­ings,” he said.