Thursday, March 18, 2010
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A Different view By Thea Rutherford ~ Guardian National Correspondent ~ thea@nasguard.com:
The boat just come in," Ms. Nettie called as she ushered a small group of people down a flight of steps into the basement.
"The boat?," asked her daughter Shirley from behind.
"The boat done here. Two boats."
At first it's hard to see the shoreline from the view on the basement porch hemmed in by walls of Bahamian artifacts and wooden railings. But as Nettie continues on about the mailboat, opening the door to the Living Museum below her hotel on West Bay Street and with it, a portal to the past, the 21st century melts away. Playacting in her one-woman skit, Symonette makes the view clearer.
An award-winning hotelier, Netica Symonette is a Family Islander proud of the old ways, taking care to have guests brush the dirt from their shoes on the mat, shushing them before entering "grandma's room." All around her, both downstairs and upstairs, are signs of Symonette's artistry. The 75-year-old Eleuthera native has spent the past 55 years ascending her own ladder of success in the hotel industry. She has woven all aspects of her artistic interests into the fabric of Different of Nassau, her hotel and heritage center. She uses performance art in her museum tours, and the culinary arts in the cooking studio the hotel features. Naturally, when she began painting some five years ago, she incorporated the visual arts into her surroundings. "All this stuff is art," said Symonette. "It's just a whole combination of things, and the art, the paintings is only an enhancement of what is happening here." Today's Different of Nassau, an eco-tourism cultural experience, is the reincarnation of Casaurinas of Cable Beach, a property Symonette developed in the mid 70s from what was commonly believed to be a haunted house. "Instead a ghost we found gold because that was the most successful thing we've ever done in our lives," said Symonette who operates the hotel with three of her seven children. In the early 1990s, Symonette relocated to Abaco where she built the first of her properties incorporating the "different" concept. "I called the place 'different' because I began to create things that were different. I utilized what was there - the nature, the heritage, the culture that sort of thing." Different of Abaco, the Nassau antecedent, existed for 14 years. Symonette combined nature, art and cultural heritage to create a resort that did much more than offer lodging. During its existence, the property caught the attention of entities like Conde Nast Traveler and CNN. Symonette returned to Nassau in 2007 to replicate the eco-tourism success she had found in Abaco. Symonette's signature runs throughout the resort, which occupies the northern and southern sides of its boundaries on West Bay Street. A multi-purpose facility, Different of Nassau is home to the Bahamian Heritage Center, Café Nettie Restaurant, the Bahamian Craft Gift Shop and an Art Gallery of Symonette's paintings. For the artist who thrives on inspiration, the pieces are purely intuitive. Symonette began painting one day after having the desire to do so for years. Her original plan was to teach herself to paint using an art book she had purchased but the book got destroyed before she could use it. "Looking back I thank God that I was not able to open that book because everything that I learned, I learned from feeling," she said. "I create my own colors my own everything." Symonette held her first exhibition at the Central Bank Art Gallery last July. The show featured over 100 of her nature-inspired, abstract paintings. Now the artist continues to combine the creative influences that inspired her painting with her cultural heritage to enhance the differences of Different of Nassau. "I came from an island and I was accustomed to my history," she said. "I never left that far behind."
Monday February 8 2010 |
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