LESLIE ANN NOEL
MISS VERSATILE OF
DESIGN
BELMONT WOMAN'S
WORK FOR
INTERNATIONAL
DISPLAY IN FRANCE
By Sheeren Ali
Sunday Guardian
August 13, 2000
Page 20
|
100 COUNTRIES
FOR DESIGN EXHIBITION |
|
Noel
will show five pieces of furniture she designed at the upcoming design show
in France - an envelope stool; an Arara rocking chair; a Jenipapo chair; a
Survi chair; and a Wai Wai tambor. The
Biennale Internationale Design exhibition runs from October 7 to 15. Exhibits
will include design products from bicycles and lighting systems to furniture,
from fashion to cultural objects. On
26,000 square metres of exhibition space at the Exhibition Park and the
Museum of Modern Art in St Etienne, 100 countries will be represented. In
1998, 125,000 attended the festival, a biennial event to promote exchange on
diversity of design in objects, fashion and urban innovation. Designers
from Barbados, Cuba, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico,
Dominican Republic, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago will show their work in
the "Design Caraibes" section. For
further information, e-mail: biennale@institutdesign.fr |
In
a Belmont apartment, 28-year-old Leslie Ann Noel sits on a
rocking chair she designed herself.
Geometric lines converge with tough but flexible kufa cane to form a
clean, earthy frame that can support any size.
This
young industrial designer is one of several Caribbean artists invited to
participate in the Biennale Internationale Design exhibition to be held in
France this October.
Noel
is happy to have been invited to take part and says that from Trinidad, artists
Turunesh Raymond, John Stollmeyer and Susie Deyal have also been invited.
Noel
loves the challenge of conceiving a design and fashioning appropriate materials
to give it shape. However, she earns
her living from doing several other activities - teaching Portuguese at the
Department of Liberal Arts, UWI, and teaching design at the Creative Arts
Centre.
She
also consults in new product development for other manufacturers, and led a
course in design and creativity for 16 final year engineering students at the
Metal Industries Company in Macoya.
At
the end of this month she will embark on a research project with Tidco to
develop sectors in the local craft industry.
Asked
how she juggles all these activities, she laughs. "It isn't easy. In
between the UWI classes, and sessions at MIC twice a week, I have to keep up to
date on design and fabrication trends and keep contacts with companies and
individuals interested in my designs."
Her
long neat dreadlocks frame an energetic face, which mirrors a personality able
to look clearly at projects and figure out how to accomplish them.
She
confesses a love for Bahia in Brazil, where she spent much time and made
friends during her art studies.
She
earned a degree in industrial design from the Universidade Federal do Parana in
Curitiba, Brazil in 1997, followed by a diploma in furniture design in 1998.
Her
awareness of materials choice was sharpened during a trip to the Amazon rain
forest. She went there as part of her
participation in an eco-design competition in Brazil.
In
order to diminish the pressure on mahogany, designers were made aware of the
use of alternative Amazon resources.
Many
other useful and beautiful woods are burnt or discarded in favour of mahogany,
when their value could be harnessed through being made into furniture, art or
used for a variety of other construction purposes.
Noel's
use of several different kinds of wood was evident at her exhibition with Susan
Wiltshire in April at the Kiskadee Gallery in St Clair, Port of Spain.
She
showed armchairs made of samaan, bowls of purple heart, chairs made of Guyanese
cane, and objects made from jatoba (locust), pau amarelo (yellow wood) and
ivory wood.
She
has designed furniture for a 46-room hotel in Tobago and is interested in developing
new products for the Trinidad and Tobago Blind Welfare Association, among other
groups.
She's
made functional living room poufs from discarded washing machine tubs, and is
open to new as well as old ideas.
In her
travels in South America, she found similarities in food, ideas and motifs
dating from the Amerindian influence.
She
also noted the wide diversity even within the region. A visit to a tiny Bolivian town produced culture shock in the
natives who had never seen a black woman before! They hailed her as "Michael Jackson."