amjamin

The creator and his creations - Wazari Johnson “I am like a child on Christmas morning when I open my kiln,” said Wazari Johnson, his shirt dotted with spots, and hands caked in clay, ready to shape the docile, earthy mass of mud into statement pieces. It's love, he said, that makes the wheel spin around, fire in the kiln burning and ideas to create the poetry and prose in glazed ceramic. “For me, everything about ceramics is just simply awesome,” Johnson said. “I love everything about the process, from getting the idea of what form I want to create, to preparing the clay, to taking it on the wheel. I love seeing the piece slowly dry and finally proving what it's made of in the fire, I love glazing and glaze firing.” These ideas, like any artists’ creation, form on a blank slate. In this case, from specks of mud, which Johnson said is therapeutic to work with and is also adaptable to changes. “I find that clay is a very versatile and "forgiving" material,...

View of AES from barrio Jobos in Guayama, Puerto Rico By Omar Alfonso | Center for Investigative Journalism They went looking for Víctor Rodríguez Aguirre to his home in the Santa Ana sector of barrio Jobos Guayama. He was a critical player. The young father was resident in one of the most densely populated zones near the AES carbon plant and knew what it was like to live in poverty. He became a local sports leader who strived to help his community move forward. He focused particularly on young students with no job prospects on the horizon. His desire for progress and his influence in the neighborhood were key to convince others to believe in the promise that AES would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the construction of a power generating plant that would bring wages and prosperity to the region. "They took us to Hartford, Connecticut, to see the AES facilities," Rodríguez Aguirre recalled sitting in a chair in the balcony of his home....

By Omar Alfonso Eight years have passed but Amparo Andújar Maldonado does not forget. She lost her first child while she was approaching the fifth month of her pregnancy. Nor does she erases from her mind giving birth to a disfigured fetus, with cranial malformation, something incomprehensible for a healthy 27 year old woman, counting with quality prenatal care. But Amparo was not alone. From 2005 to 2008, the rate of miscarriages and premature births rose suddenly in the Encantado neighborhood of Arroyo Barril, a working-class rural and coastal town, north of the Dominican Republic. An area rich in natural treasures such as the Bay of Samaná, global sanctuary for humpback whales. Amaparo’s friend, Rosa María Andújar, also fell into statistics. She gave birth to a child with exposed intestines and six fingers and toes. The newborn died not far from birth, in June 2008. Months later, another neighbor, Maribel Mercedes, gave birth to Siamese twins that also die...

Camille Dookie, creating stories in fabric It all starts with a thread, which when interwoven and intertwined creates magic, covering metaphorically and literally anything from life's journey to the physical being of a human - complex, yet simple. "Textile and fibre arts, to me, are intriguing because it's like taking an extended walk through time," said Camille Dookie, textile artist and decorator. "When I study a technique," she said, "I have the opportunity to see heritage and traditions passed down through history from generations and ethnicities, so I can appreciate the art form for what it is; the history of our lives." Textiles, Dookie said, is at the centre of the historical developments and confluence of nature's resources with mankind. "The history of textiles begins with the first fibre ever made from natural resources," she said. "It continues through time in some of the most controversial episodes in th...