Wheeler
Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer
HOPE THOMAS-WHEELER is a magician. We are not saying this because of her role as Mama Liza, the obeah woman in the popular local soap, Royal Palm Estate, but because of her ability to mesmerise when telling stories. For years, children across Jamaica were spellbound by her on afternoon television (JBC) where she told stories with music and showed them how to appreciate and create art. "The children called me Sweetie," she remembers with glee.
Today, Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler, resplendent in her African garb, is seated in her office at the Edna Manley School of the Visual and Performing Arts. She is telling us the story of her life, getting into the rhythm of the tale with some drama.
Hope, a hopeless storyteller and actress (she can't help herself) is also the Director of Studies at Edna Manley, where she has worked in both administration and as a lecturer in art for the last 25 years. "When you teach art, you tell stories until you fool," she confided to Outlook during one storytelling session at the recent 'Olde time grand market', staged by Brinkman in Kingston.
The storyteller came to Edna Manley the very same year she got married Robert 'Bob' Wheeler.
Half of a twin
She is the female half of a twin born to Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Thomas, a nurse and engineer of Kingston. She has only one child herself. Baby Catherine, now aged 20 years old, was an art school baby, taking her first steps in Wheeler's office, her mother recalls. Catherine is now a student at the college.
Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler, the artist, is passionately obsessed with all children, writing stories for them, and running a one-woman campaign for educators to realise that Jamaican children are more creative than most and must be taught differently.
Her obsession is born of her own painful experiences as a child. Hope was, at age six, described as a strange and unusual child.
"Nowadays I would have been called gifted," she comments.
Then, however, her teachers at the upscale Morris Knibb Prep School on Hector Street, Kingston, thought that she was 'difficult'. The only child she says, who may have got more beatings than herself, was Trevor Munroe, who was also a student there.
The child who she described as sad and always pouting is today fulfilled and happy. But back then, the little girl who would eat sweets for comfort was not applauded for playing the piano, which she did well, and for drawing on almost every page of her notebook. Later she would also discover that she was made for drama.
"I learnt differently. I wrote compositions and almost every word was wrong. Math taught with the old fashioned methods was also a struggle," Hope Thomas-Wheeler admits.
Hope, nevertheless, won a scholarship to Wolmer's and it was only then that she became happy, she recalls. "I discovered that they had an art room and that there was time set aside on the timetable for art." She was in heaven.
It was not long before the word was out that Hope Thomas was special. Even the history teacher, she said, would allow her to draw for some of her assignments.
"Through the arts, for the first time I felt truly human," she told Outlook. Until graduation, she would take the prize in art every year. Valerie Bloomfield, one of the teachers from whom she got much encouragement, also took her to plays. The art student also remembers helping Bloomfield to do the set for the first production of the pantomime, Queenie's Daughter.
After completing her A' levels at Wolmer's, Hope received a scholarship to attend Alberta College of Art in Canada, another wonderful experience as she describes it.
"It was the first time I made real friends. I cooked them Jamaican food, and as soon as they saw my lights on, they would be in my room."
After four years of hard work and fun, Hope returned home in 1971 and she was immediately employed at Wolmer's Boys'. Principal Bogle, who she describes as "a delightful man", had that year decided to introduce art throughout the grades and Hope was given the responsibility of developing the art programme for the institution.
Wolmer's was to provide the art teacher with both the happiest and saddest years of her teaching experience. In her very first year, the school carried away the Denham Art shield. The boys then proceeded to distinguish themselves in the subject at both O' and A' level examinations. Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler got involved also in drama, music and dance, working along with other teachers to produce items for the Festival of the Arts in which Wolmer's Boys' excelled in 1976. "Art solved a lot of emotional problems in the school," she comments.
The Wolmer's experience came to an end when Mr. Bogle left the island for Canada and a new principal came in. Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler, who clearly will fight any cause on behalf of children, engaged in running battles with the new principal until she was asked to resign. She was reinstated soon after by the board, but when she was asked to come to Edna Manley by Jerry Craig who had seen the school's art exhibitions and also the festival entries, she left for the College.
In 1979, Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler started at Edna Manley as a full-time tutor in charge of the foundation programme. A short break from teaching came in 1983 when her daughter Catherine was born, but soon she was back, this time as director of studies.
Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler, with remembered defiance, said that she was never too excited about the administrative role, and insisted that she be allowed to continue teaching, which she does to this day.
Developing new programmes
She has enjoyed, she says, developing new programmes in the school and looks forward to the smooth running of the new degree programme now offered at the Caribbean's premier school of the arts.
In her role as an actress, she has understudied in the pantomime Rock Stone Anancy. She has enjoyed her role in TV, remembering how cautious she had to be as Mama Liza. She describes herself as somewhat psychic, and recalls that on many occasions she got the feeling that she was dealing with something real, as the obeah woman.
Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler is also the author of Enjoying Art, a manual for art teachers. In 1988, the artist also wrote Right, Left and Centre for TV. This was supposed to be a Jamaican Sesame Street, but so far has not been produced for want of funding.
The series is another of Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler's mesmerising tales, but created with the objective of getting our children to enjoy mathematics, and indeed to enjoy learning in a new way. "I feeling that Caribbean children belong to an oral society, that they learn from the right side of the brain." For years she has been an advocate of the use of the arts in mainstream instruction. One of her dreams for the School of Art is the creation of adjunct institutions at the primary and high school levels.
This would be the first high school and prep school of the arts in Jamaica. There, she says, every student would do an instrument, play chess, do art, dance and music. They would do the languages and mathematics, she said, would be taught just in the way it was done in the land of the purple people ( a reference to her TV script).
Mrs. Thomas-Wheeler, who just completed her Master's in fine arts at Maryland Institute in the United States, would not mind pouring her energies into something which has been her life-long dream.
She is also, she said, desperately trying to find the time to do enough work for another exhibition of her paintings. Her last was called 'Speaking Out Loud' which, she admits, poked fun at the college's school board. One particular series, called 'On Jokes' was a stab at the frustrations experienced on the job. 'Murmers and Grumblings' another piece, was in the same vein.
Hope Thomas-Wheeler has fully accepted the responsibilities of adulthood, but the child and artist in her cannot help poking fun and pointing fingers at the world. If not through her paintings, then through her stories, the desires of her heart are dramatised and told.
