by Weldon Ryan

Fetahs came out to fete Orlando Carnival Downtown 2023(OCD) weekend with some fire bringing the heat on the streets of Orlando Memorial Day Weekend! Carnival on the runway kicked it off with some steam coming out the doors at the Citrus Bowl percolating at a high temp. First off the media was introduced to this year’s Master Mas Playahs from the Road Ready Carnival Reality show. This bunch of young and personable feters displayed their exuberance and charm as they unboxed their Unruly Mas Band Costumes for this OCD Carnival weekend. My fellow media was all over them limiting my elbow room so I went on a more tangent approach to capture some shots hoping for a couple of good ones. My shot ratio is bout 3 to 1 on a good day.

Guenet Gittens-Roberts, Publisher of Caribbean Passport and CEO GGR Marketing along with Sam Roberts are the key organizers, planners and promoters of Orlando Carnival Downtown. Since they have had the Carnival their vision of Carnival in Orlando has been spectacular and has paid off with Carnival on the runway, Lime in Time( OCD’s version of Demarche. Two of The Art of Carnival’s biggest supporters, they have us display our works at the events helping us help the Caribbean diaspora deepen their appreciation for this aspect of Caribbean art. We love the music, performers, the food and the culture of carnival. But for whatever reason painters, and sculptures are not really in the mix. Aside from the costumes designers who offer fantastic creativity, Caribbean people love the vernacular. My works would be pale if it wasn’t for their concepts to creations every year. Carnival is a visual smorgasbord of delight which stimulates the mind especially when the costumes adorn the mas players whether thick, thin, small or chuck, dark or light.

The Art of Carnival involvement of ramped up this year with works being display at multifil events with the exception of J’ouvert. We can obviously imagine why. Noticing the musical line-up a couple of months before I thought of doing a painting of the two special performers of the headliners. It turns out that Fay Ann Lyons and Bungi Garlin are two of our favorite Soca stars. The energy these two and their music created in our car ride to NY in 2015 in particular was immeasurable that trip leading up to Labor day in NY. “Our time” created energy for the whole trip to and fro. That infused my family crew to cover the carnivals. We haven’t looked back since. I had pictures of Fay Ann and Bungi from the performance a year before that they rocked. I was planning doing a series of Soca performers. My line up for that is Calypso Rose and a few others. But I wanted to work with the shots of Bungi and Fay Ann first.