JAMAICA AIDS Support (JAS), had to close the only hospice in Kingston for AIDS victims, for the lack of consistent funds. But the organisation continues to provide home-based care, through counselling and education.
And to support its work JAS has converted the main hall of its head office at 4 Upper Musgrave Avenue, Kingston into an art gallery, The Art of Life.
The first exhibition facilitated 'Fractal Art' by Dr. Fernanda Steele, which continues until December.
Fractal Art is new to Jamaica and the Caribbean on a whole. And Dr. Steele explained that it was based on fractals, or images that are arrived at by mathematical calculations on the computer.
The marriage of art and science has always posed a challenge to artists and one of the works on show 'Escher's Brooch' paid homage to pioneer of Fractal Art, Dutch artist Maurits Cornelius Escher, which was worked out in the fractal idiom. But with the advent of the computer, Fractal Art displays complexities, which would be impossible to achieve otherwise.
Praised the work
The exhibition was declared opened by university lecturer and journalist John Maxwell who praised the work of Dr. Steele in terms of its artistic value, her use of forms and colours, and the discipline she applied to produce her images. He said it was as if Dr. Steele "bent the fractals to do what she wanted them to do." He pointed out that the images revealed more and more of themselves at each viewing and referred this experience to that which he has whenever he looks at a painting of Parboosingh which he bought some 42 years ago.
