And while you've been ticking off your Christmas list, several children in the Belmopan area have spent the last three months making art to showcase in the No More Silence, End Gun Violence exhibit. This exhibit's purpose is to highlight the children lost by gun violence this year - those like Kassman Gill, Dwayne Gabourel, Jamir Mckoy, and Laddie Gillett. The children - who are all a part of the Raquel Art School - have been affected by the spree of violence that has taken the lives of so many young men and women and have taken to art to express those feelings. Today we spoke with the founder of Raquel Art who told us the children's love for Laddie was the driving force behind the exhibit.
Raquel Rodriguez, Founder, Raquel Art School
"These were all these kids collaborating to make an exhibition, it wasn't just my school, but we had other artist for example we had Tom Sharp, he painted for the exhibition, we had artist Jair Nah, he painted for the exhibition, we had Ronny Joel, he painted as well and we had Elder Herrera so these are names of artists who are already established and we also had the students of Raquel Art paint for the exhibition. The kids have been preparing for this exhibition for about three months and it's something that was inspired by our dear Laddie Gillett who passed in July of this year and he was a big impact to us in the school because a lot of the students who went to my school during that time or even now have either met Laddie, went to school with Laddie, or know somebody who is a cousin, a brother, a sister or something to do with Laddie. Belmopan is a very small, tight community so when he passed away he took a big chunk of our hearts, it affected everybody, all the kids in my school were crying, it was a big thing."
"When we realized there is a face of a family who is tied to that person who died, it's not just an article on the news media, or it's not just a guy that we once knew in a classroom or something, he also has a whole family left behind and that's something that we're not really understanding that all the survivors of these victims, all the parents and the brothers and the sisters and we got to see that because the day Laddie's parents came for the painting it was very emotional."
"Since that data eon August 1st that we did emancipation day, it's not just Laddie, that's what we kept saying in class, it's not just Laddie, lots of kids are out there dying or affected by the gun."
"We did nine portraits of kids under 18, with the 9 portraits of all the victims of 2021 and that's why it's so important that we do this exhibition one even though the school is really tired we've done so many things for the community and we're exhausted however we had to do once last thing because it's 2021 and we think that we should go out the year with this campaign saying no more guns, no more violence, put it down, put down your gun, everybody put down your gun."
"The kids did this exhibition, mainly it is a tribute to Laddie, there is a shrine behind me for Laddie, I don't know if I could turn the camera so you could see it, it's right there in blue, and it says in memory of Laddie Gillett, the exhibition was done in memory of Laddie Gillet."
The kids' ages range from 4 to 19.
The exhibit is displayed at the NICH museum in Belmopan, but since it is closed for the Christmas season, pictures can be found on the Raquel Art Facebook page.
