"You can't park there! You can't park there!" the se­cu­ri­ty guard shouts at me as I re­verse in­to the road that runs be­tween the fer­ry tick­et venue and the new mall oblique­ly op­po­site Things Nat­ur­al in Crown Point.

"I'm not park­ing here! I'm re­vers­ing!" I shout back.

As the guard walks quick­ly to­ward me, laugh­ing, I recog­nise him–Bri­an, the son of an old­er neigh­bour from my liv­ing-in-Good­wood days.Hav­ing not seen each oth­er in ages, we be­gin chat­ting.

"I saw you on TV re­cent­ly talk­ing about art," he says.

He is re­fer­ring to the morn­ing a fel­low artist and I ap­peared on Chan­nel 5's 'Rise and Shine' show, dis­cussing the cur­rent Women In Art ex­hi­bi­tion (of which we are a part). The ex­hi­bi­tion, which is split in­to two parts, opened on Oc­to­ber 30, at the Mag­dale­na Grand Art Gallery and the day af­ter, fea­tur­ing oth­er paint­ings, at The Art Gallery, Low­lands.

Host­ed by the Art Gallery and cu­rat­ed by Mar­tin Su­perville, (renowned lo­cal artist and founder of The Art Gallery), the ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures 130 pieces of art­work by women from T&T.

With two art open­ings flank­ing an artist's sem­i­nar by Mar­tin Su­perville, that week­end was an in­ter­est­ing one–some­thing dif­fer­ent to do, new peo­ple to meet, in­spir­ing in­for­ma­tion to be shared, new works to see, de­li­cious hors d'oeu­vres and co­pi­ous drinks to en­joy.

"I think it would be great if there was an art gallery in this mall," Bri­an says to me, re­fer­ring to the new build­ing which, thus far, has food out­lets (e.g. Rit­u­als, Piz­za Boys) be­ing set up down­stairs.

"That's a great idea!" I say. With so many lo­cals and tourists pass­ing through and lim­ing along the stretch from Crown Point to Pi­geon Point, a gallery in that mall could be a wel­come fo­cal point for throngs of art lovers and buy­ers.

At the open­ing of the Women in Art ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mag­dale­na Grand Art Gallery, Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, Sec­re­tary of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, men­tioned in her speech that if even ten per cent of the tens of thou­sands of an­nu­al vis­i­tors to To­ba­go pur­chased lo­cal paint­ings as sou­venirs, it would be a won­der­ful boost for the is­land's econ­o­my.

On the evening of Oc­to­ber 30, the Mag­dale­na Art Gallery was buzzing with pa­trons–chat­ting, drink­ing wine, net­work­ing and, of course, view­ing and pur­chas­ing art.The fol­low­ing day at an artist's sem­i­nar host­ed by Su­perville at the To­ba­go Art Gallery, I gath­ered with sev­er­al of the oth­er fe­male artists.

Seat­ed on the up­per deck of the Art Gallery, we spent a few hours (sep­a­rat­ed by a de­li­cious lunch break) lis­ten­ing and join­ing in to dis­cus­sions on mar­ket­ing of one's work, tech­niques, port­fo­lios/pre­sen­ta­tion of work and op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­hibit­ing.

There, Su­perville raised a valid point–that T&T does not have (and is in need of) a Na­tion­al Art Gallery; one where cel­e­brat­ed na­tion­al works of art can be housed and reg­u­lar ex­hi­bi­tions and art work­shops held.

"I don't think art is re­spect­ed here," teacher, Sta­cy Phillip, one of the artists, told me af­ter the sem­i­nar. "Many par­ents dis­cour­age chil­dren who choose art as a sub­ject be­cause they feel there's no fu­ture in it. It's so im­por­tant to make art more promi­nent and for it to be re­spect­ed."

An­oth­er artist, Denise An­der­son, de­scribed the over­all ex­hi­bi­tion and sem­i­nar as "in­vig­o­rat­ing, en­light­en­ing, a game chang­er," and Su­perville as "the man who is dri­ving art and giv­ing it ex­po­sure."Ex­pose your­self to what is on show. The ex­hi­bi­tion runs to No­vem­ber 30, at the two art gal­leries men­tioned above. Con­tact 631-1424 for in­for­ma­tion.