Fire and Steel
Photo by David Belle
In Croix des Bouquets, metal, fire and muscle come together to make lithe mermaid goddesses, mythic lovers and radiant sunbursts. Because these images often come from Haiti’s syncretic voudou tradition, which blends West African Yoruba religion and French Catholicism, Croix des Bouquet metalwork has earned an important place in Haiti’s cultural milieu. The town’s metalsmiths, who live and work not far from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, are not only artists, they are entrepreneurs, and cultural and community leaders, too.
Some of the best smiths, Serge Jolimeau among them, have customers in international markets – a combination of art galleries and décor shops. Hotels, tourists and expatriots from the diplomatic, business and aid communities, constitute a domestic market. Current conditions make brisk trade somewhat rare, and everyone is looking for more business.
Though now integral to Haitian visual culture, Croix des Bouquet metalwork came into focus only in the 1950s, when American watercolorist DeWitt Peters and local metalsmith Georges Liautaud struck up a relationship. Peters founded Port-au-Prince’s Centre d’Art in 1944, a turning point for inherently vibrant Haitian folk art. His advocacy on behalf first of painters and subsequently of other craftspeople helped carve out a central place for the arts in Haiti, as well as markets at home and abroad for their work.
Liautaud was a talented metal craftsman who made, among many things artistic and utilitarian, iron crosses to mark the graves of fellow townspeople. Their elegant and inventive embellishments caught Peters’ eye. With the slightest encouragement, Liautaud’s work expanded into beautifully worked figures from everyday life and from Haitian voudou. The amazing vocabulary he developed inspired, in turn, an explosion of creativity in other metal craftsmen in Croix des Bouquet, and the art of fer decoupé now employs dozens of craftspeople in 40 ateliers.
Jolimeau, who, like most of Croix des Bouquet’s metalsmiths, traces his artistic roots back to Liautaud, sells his work to a small number of importers bringing Haitian art to the US and Europe. And he travels occasionally to special venues like Santa Fe’s annual International Folk Art Market. But work of such cultural richness and skill – not to mention its economic importance to dozens of artists and their families – cries out for larger markets. Cine Institute's founder David Belle comments about Croix des Bouquets metalwork: "There's so little in our lives these days that feels hand made, and the art so clearly shows the fact that it was all done by hand, without power tools -- only a hammer, chisel and wire brush. Every single ridge or raised dimple is an individual chisel mark. A close look reveals hundreds and hundreds of hammer strokes. I think people respond to that, and respect it."