The sec­ond to last day of the 2014 So­ca in B Square se­ries ti­tled Tun Over Thurs­day, brought a true on­slaught of en­ter­tain­ment to Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain.

Blink-bmo­bile took this op­por­tu­ni­ty amidst the Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ty to award the three win­ners of its re­cent Art Com­pe­ti­tion.

The Art Com­pe­ti­tion which was launched by the blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion last Oc­to­ber, tar­get­ed bud­ding lo­cal vi­su­al artists be­tween the ages of 16 and 21 and chal­lenged them to use art to in­ter­pret the theme Imag­ine Trinidad and To­ba­go to qual­i­fy for top prizes.

The top pieces were se­lect­ed from the pool of sub­mit­ted en­tries by a pan­el of T&T's artis­tic au­thor­i­ties and dis­played on the blink-bmo­bile Face­book page, said a re­lease from blink-bmo­bile.

The three win­ners, Jah­mel John, Nan­daa Ma­hara­jh and Ra­jesh Hari­nar­ine were present at B Square on Tun Over Thurs­day to col­lect their well-earned prizes as well as to en­joy the pul­sat­ing per­for­mances by so­ca en­ter­tain­ers Dil-E-Nadan, Ker­win Dubois, Farmer Nap­py, Iw­er George and the Baron.

Among the prizes award­ed that day were Sam­sung Galaxy 3 Tablets, vouch­ers for art sup­plies and most no­tably the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a five-week Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme with lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-renowned artist Leroy Clarke.

Win­ner Jah­mel John, a stu­dent of Costaatt, is cur­rent­ly ma­jor­ing in graph­ic de­sign and as­pires to do graph­ics and tat­too art pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

His piece, The fu­ture of T&T showed the chil­dren of the na­tion as seen by a child draw­ing the map of T&T in­side of a heart. "I'm very thank­ful to blink-bmo­bile for this chance to show­case my tal­ent and for this foun­da­tion for my fu­ture ca­reer goals," John said.

Nan­daa Ma­hara­jh al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed to her by the net­work. The 16-year-old Lak­sh­mi Girls' stu­dent de­pict­ed the com­pe­ti­tion's theme by in­clud­ing sev­er­al na­tion­al em­blems and as­pects which she ad­mired.

These in­clud­ed the na­tion­al an­them which ac­cord­ing to her, rep­re­sents our jour­ney as a peo­ple. She plans to have her own art ex­hi­bi­tions while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly study­ing med­i­cine in the near fu­ture.

Ra­jesh Hari­nar­ine who is present­ly pur­su­ing a de­gree in Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing at UWI has as­pi­ra­tions of be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur in his field so that he can have time to con­tin­ue with his pas­sion of art.

His piece en­ti­tled "Moth­er Trinidad" de­pict­ed a fe­male char­ac­ter built out of dif­fer­ent lo­cal cul­tur­al facets such as the steel­pan, Car­ni­val cos­tumes etc. He stat­ed that the com­pe­ti­tion was a good way to pro­mote lo­cal artists and that he was thank­ful to blink|bmo­bile for the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

The blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion un­der­stands the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing the fine arts sec­tor as it is no longer con­sid­ered a mere pas­time and that there are present­ly sev­er­al lo­cal and re­gion­al na­tion­als who have made prof­itable ca­reers as painters, sculp­tors, tex­tile and ce­ram­ic artists, etc.

Ac­cord­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from blink-bmo­bile, "It was the foun­da­tion's plea­sure to host this com­pe­ti­tion as it gave these bud­ding artists a plat­form to show­case their work and to al­so pro­pel their ca­reer progress. We are pleased to con­tribute to the progress of T&T's young bour­geon­ing vi­su­al artists and the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal arts in­dus­try as a whole."

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