April 25, 2003 – The artwork for this year's Cardow Jewelers Carnival TV shirt is a collage of paintings by eight students at the School of Visual Arts and Careers.
The shirt itself — actually a limited edition of 100 prints — is being sold as a fund-raiser for the Jens-Peter Kemmler Foundation, a new philanthropic. Created by Cardow to honor the memory of Kemmler, an acclaimed St. Thomas artist and a longtime employee of the company who died last November, the foundation is to benefit the art school.
SVAC students will be selling the shirts at the V.I. Carnival Food Fair on Wednesday. They come in adult sizes M, L, XL and XXL and are $10.
The nine pieces of original artwork created for the T-shirt project have been purchased from the students by Cardow Jewelers and will be displayed in its corporate offices.
The young artists whose work is represented in the project are Tony Bongiovi, Cosima Buckhalton, Carolina de Lyrot, Fianna Fluess, Ashton Frett Jr., Shamal Phipps, Solomon Webson and Jared Woods. Buchalton has two pieces included.
A ceremony recognizing the students for their work was held on Tuesday in the courtyard of the Fort Christian Museum where the School of Visual Arts, an afterschool and summer enrichment program for gifted high school art students, has been located for two decades. Proceeds from the T-shirt sales will go toward the foundation's scholarship fund, which will support continuing studies for SVAC graduates "with intentions of pursuing art as a career," school instructor Edie Paljavscik Johnson says.
With Carnival getting into full swing, the shirts with their vibrant collage of Carnival images will be hard to miss.
"Cardow Jewelers is proud of the association it enjoys with the recently developed foundation at the School of Visual Arts and Careers," a Cardow release states.
Company director Bill Christie noted that Kemmler "once conducted painting workshops for the young artists of the St. Thomas school." He "would have been delighted to see Cardow offer young talented artists this kind of broad exposure and reward for their work," Christie said.
While the SVAC students have traditionally created a design for T-shirt that they sell at St. John's July 4th Celebration, this is the first such effort for V.I. Carnival and with corporate underwriting. The St. John shirts almost invariably sell out. Johnson says if any of the Cardow shirts are left from the Food Fair, they'll be available at the Fort Christian Museum gift shop.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
