Boscoe Holder’s collection of paintings and period costumes were pushing him out of his home and small studio at No 82b Woodford Street, Newtown, so he thought "I should get a new studio." One year later, from demolition of the old property next to the George Brown house in which the Holders live, to the final coat of paint, Boscoe and Sheila Holder invited a large crowd of art lovers to celebrate the opening of "Boscoe Holder’s new studio" on Friday March 31, 2000.
A studio that will be opened to viewers "by appointment only, you telephone and I will show" explains Boscoe "I wish it could be otherwise but I am a bit too old for that ."
"The studio is more of a repository cum museum. My brother, Geoffrey will send paintings; son Chris his ballet books and ethnic costumes. I hope to eventually display our vintage European collection of Sheila’s wardrobe from the days when she sang."
Because Holder is not the gushing type, he would only smile widely when asked if this was a dream come true. A dream which took 61 long years as a professional painter, to materialise. "My first art exhibition was in 1937. After Cazabon is me" claims this outspoken man who holds being Trinidadian "very dear to me."
His studio and what it stands for is meant for posterity: "I hope somebody would be able to sustain it without messing it up. The Europeans go differently, here there is a lot of talk and everything goes down the drain."
But then the Holders have a son, Christian, who I am certain will see that his father’s dreams were carried on. He started out as a classical ballet dancer, but dance puts a strain on the body, and so he has become a choreographer and costume designer which takes him all over the world. "Occasionally" says his proud mother "he will make a cameo appearance in a show."
As only Boscoe can, he has used fragile, lacy-looking insets from India in his studio as he found it difficult to match the original fretwork which still also exists in his home, next door.
Boscoe credits his father for what he is to-day: "no other black man had my father’s vision. Any other parent would have killed me as a young, sensible man- piano, painting, dancing, costuming- those were the colonial days you had to be academic, there was no art education here."
He is concerned that in Trinidad artistic direction is rare. "The etiquette of the theatre is rare, our appreciation of art is still not good enough. Take for instance, Dimanche Gras on Carnival Sunday night, it is much too long; look at Queen’s Hall, it is not good enough, we must contend with bats and noise. Yet we have a huge stadium not being used, and we have no theatre, sports always comes before theatre and the youngsters need theatre too."
If Boscoe had his way our theatre would be built on the Princess Building grounds. " I would remove everything, all the tennis and netball courts, and erect a proper, air-conditioned theatre with restaurant, The infrastructure is there, we have all around the savannah for parking, and underneath the structure as well. It is central and everybody should come to the savannah to breathe the fresh air."
"We have a love hate relationship with the country. I am not being negative, it’s not the people being criticised, it is the island which has a strange history. And you find yourself vexed because it is not what it could and should be. The people in charge are just not educated that way."
Sheila, who has been married to Boscoe for more than fifty years, had her own story to tell. Born in England, daughter of the late Kathleen Davis (popular radio/television announcer Auntie Kay), who married Dr Mc Intosh Clarke in England, and educated at Brighton, England, Sheila was on her way back to Trinidad during World War II with her mother, aunt and cousin, Wallace Busby, on the "Simon Bolivar."
"It was winter and my mother took us out of school when she was able to get a passage on this Dutch boat going out to the Caribbean. England was at war, but not Holland. The day after we left, German planes dropped magnetic mines in the path of the ship. It was one of the first vessels to be sunk with magnetic mines. We thought it was a torpedo and my mother, her sister, son Wallace and I were heading for the lifeboats when the vessel stopped. but we went back downstairs for our life jackets. It was just as well we had, otherwise we would not have been alive to tell the tale."
We managed to scramble aboard an overcrowded life boat, which capsized and we went hurtling down into the wintry water but because we had on our jackets we floated to the top. I saw no one I knew, in any case it would have been difficult to recognise them because everybody was covered in black oil. I remained in the water for one and a half hours before a British frigate came on the scene. It was in the North Sea, near to Holland. I got into one of the lifeboats, only to hear somebody crying "I have lost my daughter", and recognised my mother’s voice. Eventually the frigate called back all its lifeboats after staying around for about 90 minutes making sure all survivors were on board . The sailors gave us their clothes to wear, and it was ony then I realised how cold it was. We were delivered to Harwich in England, and the injured were taken off first. By the time it was our turn, there was an air raid alarm, German planes were overhead, but it was just reconnaissance, the all clear was sounded and we went ashore. There in the line of stretchers on shore was my aunt, Wallace had been taken to hospital. We were lucky. They took us to a London hotel where we got cleaned up, it was weeks before the oil was out of my hair" chuckles Sheila to-day.
The family lost everything "because my mother was coming to Trinidad with everything. Another boat not coming through the English Channel, the "Britannia" from Liverpool took us to New York, in convoy, we felt safe. My mother made us wear lifejackets for the whole way until we were two days out of New York. Then we travelled by the Mc Cormack line from New York to Barbados, and Lady Boat to Trinidad."
Sheila finished school at Bishop Anstey High School, and went to work at the British High Commission in Whitehall. And it was then while living at No 62 Maraval Road that she met her husband, Boscoe, who is to-day convinced that " the invasion of the Americans was a big help to us, the generosity of America. I would play music at Government House and get no money, when the Americans came we got paid. The steelband took off otherwise it would have been nowhere. Kitchener too. For the first time one realised all the things you did, you could earn money from it. That is not British, that is American."