Joshua Sur­tees

As Car­ni­val ap­proach­es, a mon­u­ment to the man who in­vent­ed one of its el­e­men­tal com­po­nents is col­laps­ing. Pat Chu Foon's sculp­ture, ded­i­cat­ed to Win­ston "Spree" Si­mon, a pi­o­neer of pan, has par­tial­ly col­lapsed on its plinth be­hind Colum­bus Square, Port-of-Spain.

Built in 1972, Trib­ute To The Steel­band Move­ment fea­tures three fig­ures con­tort­ing their bod­ies play­ing steel­pan and danc­ing, arms aloft.

The fig­ure in the mid­dle of the trio, play­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and rais­ing his hands to the sky has, in the last few months, crum­bled and fall­en back­wards to the ground. It is now bent dou­ble and the "ce­ment fon­due" ma­te­r­i­al from which it is made has chipped away, ex­pos­ing the rust­ed wire mesh be­neath.

Pub­lic works of art in the cap­i­tal are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the city cor­po­ra­tion, but when con­tact­ed on Thurs­day by the T&T Guardian, May­or Ray­mond Tim Kee said "I'm hear­ing about this for the first time, but what I pro­pose to do this af­ter­noon is find out who is re­spon­si­ble."

He lat­er added, "If we are re­spon­si­ble for it, we will fix it."

Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Lin­coln Dou­glas, re­spond­ing to a text mes­sage, replied, "I was un­aware that the stat­ue is col­laps­ing, I will im­me­di­ate­ly have it looked in­to and re­spond with the nec­es­sary re­pairs."

A spokesman for the Na­tion­al Trust told the T&T Guardian they were aware of the sit­u­a­tion and had al­ready act­ed on it.

"We did send a no­tice to the city cor­po­ra­tion be­fore it col­lapsed ear­li­er this year. The sculp­ture was no­ticed by mem­bers of the trust and we had calls from the gen­er­al pub­lic. We sent a let­ter to the PoS Cor­po­ra­tion."

Babu Ketema, a Na­tion­al Trust mem­ber and ad­min­is­tra­tor of Stu­dio 66 art gallery, no­ticed that the sculp­ture was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in late No­vem­ber. "We took pho­tos and pre­pared a pro­pos­al which we sent to the May­or and the min­istry to find out who had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The Na­tion­al Trust wrote to the May­or in De­cem­ber."

But since then noth­ing has been done. The trust con­firmed it will be mak­ing ef­forts to list pub­lic works of art "in the near fu­ture," as its re­mit in­cludes "built, nat­ur­al and oth­er items that could be de­scribed as her­itage sites."

It sent a re­lease to the me­dia on Fri­day which em­pha­sised the ur­gency of the re­pairs need­ed to the sculp­ture.

"It is im­per­a­tive now that restora­tion works be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly. This restora­tion should be pro­fes­sion­al­ly done by an artist, not a ma­son," the re­lease said.

"Hope­ful­ly, this ef­fort may si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­store some mea­sure of cred­i­bil­i­ty to our ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our her­itage."

"No longer must it ap­pear that there is a lack of re­spect for our her­itage, and by ex­ten­sion, our el­ders and an­ces­tors, nor an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for peo­ple who have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the so­cial and cul­tur­al land­scape of T&T."

Re­pair­ing the sculp­ture

Re­pair­ing the stat­ue will be dif­fi­cult, arts and her­itage ex­perts said.

Ge­of­frey MacLean, own­er of Medul­la art gallery, feels the sculp­ture should be cast in bronze.

"One of the dif­fi­cul­ties with the Pat Chu Foon sculp­tures is they are made from some sort of ce­ment-based ma­te­r­i­al and they should have been cast in bronze, then they would have last­ed for­ev­er. This ones is not the first of his works to have col­lapsed," he said.

Chu Foon's 1969 Gand­hi sculp­ture in Kew Place was de­stroyed in the mid 1980s.

As for the bronze-cast­ing sug­ges­tion, MacLean said "we're not talk­ing about a lot of mon­ey. We got a quote for the Lord Har­ris restora­tions and it was be­tween $150,000-200,000. I'd es­ti­mate this one could be $600,000, be­cause it's three fig­ures. It would be done in Venezuela, where they have the fa­cil­i­ties to do it; we don't."

Lord Har­ris's stat­ue, which stood in the square named af­ter him, was made out of lead.

Thieves stole the met­al for scrap and smashed it. All that was left were his hands and face which are cur­rent­ly kept in a bag in City Hall while the in­volved par­ties de­cide what to do with them.

The city cor­po­ra­tion has raised half the funds for it to be re­stored and is still wait­ing for the Har­ris Trust to come up with the oth­er half as promised. The stat­ue was stolen over 20 years ago.

Har­ris was gov­er­nor of Trinidad from 1846-53, and among oth­er things, es­tab­lished the first pub­lic schools, where the chil­dren of the re­cent­ly eman­ci­pat­ed slaves could be ed­u­cat­ed.

Mark Pereira, own­er of 101 Art Gallery, agreed the Steel­pan sculp­ture must be re­built, but said cast­ing it in bronze "might bring up is­sues with the Chu Foon es­tate. It's a copy­right­ed item so the fam­i­ly might need to give per­mis­sion for it to be re­built."

Pereira said with­in the last month City Hall had ap­proached the Art So­ci­ety to dis­cuss rec­om­men­da­tions for as­sess­ing all pub­lic art­works.

Chu Foon's lega­cy

Pat Chu Foon, who died in 1998, left a lega­cy of ur­ban pub­lic stat­ues that is wide­ly recog­nised for its im­por­tance. Art and her­itage sup­port­ers have ag­o­nised over way they have been ne­glect­ed.

"He was one of the few sculp­tors who did pub­lic work," said MacLean.

"One on the cor­ner of New Street and St Vin­cent Street is over­grown and not main­tained. The Lord Kitch­en­er sculp­ture at the Roxy round­about...All pub­lic stat­ues should be ex­am­ined, but no­body is in­ter­est­ed. Peo­ple see them and then move on."

Pereira de­scribed Chu Foon as "one of the mas­ter artists and a pi­o­neer."

Work­ing as a young artist in the 1960s, he stud­ied in Mex­i­co, ob­tain­ing a fine arts de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Amer­i­c­as in 1967 which, Pereira said, "had a huge in­flu­ence on his de­sign and struc­tur­al work. He led the field in Trinidad's op-art move­ment."

The fall­en-down sculp­ture is lo­cat­ed close to Laven­tille, which is a very ap­pro­pri­ate place, ac­cord­ing to MacLean, who feels that is where a trib­ute to the orig­i­nal pan­man should be.

With its back­drop of the Laven­tille hills and bor­dered by ur­ban build­ings and traf­fic it is sym­bol­ic to many, even in its de­crepit state.

As the T&T Guardian pho­tographed it, lo­cals came up to tell their mem­o­ries of it and their sad­ness at its col­lapse.

An en­grav­ing on the plinth has lines from Kitch­en­er's 1975 Road March, Trib­ute to (Win­ston) Spree Si­mon.

It reads, "Every­body won­der­ing how the Steel­band start. When you get to know, it's go­ing to break your heart. Ah tell you now, it's found­ed by one Win­ston 'Spree' and this is how he start­ed his first melody."

Oth­er Pat Chu Foon sculp­tures in Port-of-Spain in­clude:

�2 Lord Kitch­en­er stat­ue,Roxy round­about, 1994

�2 Spir­it of Hope, cor­ner Dun­don­ald Street and Ari­api­ta Av­enue, 1971

�2 Moth­er and Child, Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal, 1980