In primary school, it looked like helping her classmates draw cartoon characters in their notebooks. Fast forward a few decades, and Donna-Gay Uter is helping hundreds of Jamaican artisans achieve the perfect finish with their craft pieces.
Creativity has always come naturally to Uter. She remembers being the child her classmates turned to when they needed help drawing their projects. By high school, she had chosen art and craft as her major, eventually taking that interest to the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.
Interestingly, jewellery was not the plan.
Uter entered art school intending to pursue graphic design, but her curiosity kept pulling her towards a basement studio where the jewellery students worked behind a door that always seemed to be closed.
“It seemed like all the cool people are in that space and that’s where I wanted to go,” she recalled.
When it was time to select a major, even with lecturers suggesting that ceramics might be a better fit, Uter chose jewellery. It was a decision that would help shape her approach to craft and, eventually, the entrepreneurs she serves today.
The Perfect Finish
Uter is a Product Development Officer at the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC), where she has spent approximately 15 years helping Jamaican creatives develop their skills and products.
Put a craft item in front of her and she is looking at much more than whether it is attractive.
“I look if it is functional and if it is market-ready,” she explained. “Not everything that glitters mean it is market-ready or it is finished.”
She looks at construction, durability and whether the product can perform the function for which it was designed. She also believes a strong Jamaican product should tell a story and carry value beyond its appearance.
Her attention to those details contributed to the development of JBDC’s The Perfect Finish workshop.
Uter had noticed that while artisans were creating interesting products, finishing was an area in which some struggled. For her, achieving the perfect finish does not mean simply reaching the final step of production.
“Everything that you start, from every stage, you have to make sure that each stage is complete to move on to the next,” she explained.
Skipping those steps can ultimately affect the quality and value of the final product.
“When you’re selling a piece, you can’t demand the actual value because you’ve short-cut,” she said.
Her approach, therefore, is not about teaching an entrepreneur to reproduce one particular item.
“We’re not teaching you finished product; we’re teaching you techniques.”
A Space to Create
That philosophy is carried into JBDC’s Craft Incubator, a space designed for artisans working across several disciplines.
The incubator accommodates the production of jewellery, leather goods, including footwear such as sandals, printed textiles and other craft products. Entrepreneurs have access to equipment including tumblers, drills, a polishing wheel, rolling mill, laser etching machine and a variety of hand tools.
The space can also be used by entrepreneurs who want to experiment with ideas, develop new product concepts or create prototypes.
For Uter, however, access to equipment is only one part of the process.
Clients entering the incubator are guided based on their level of experience and what they are trying to accomplish. For someone unfamiliar with a particular tool, that can mean a demonstration and an opportunity to become comfortable with it before working independently.
As a jewellery student, she was once afraid of the torch she now regularly uses as a goldsmith. Today, she finds satisfaction in watching that same transformation happen with the people she teaches.
“It’s a joy when I get in front of a client and realise that they do have fears,” she said.
Before a workshop even begins, Uter researches, develops the training programme, tests materials and creates samples herself. She considers what an experienced practitioner can accomplish and then builds in the time someone learning the technique may need.
“Every workshop that I put together, I use myself as a guinea pig,” she said.
That level of preparation is part of what entrepreneurs receive when they enter JBDC’s craft development space: not simply access to tools, but access to people who understand how to help them use those tools to move an idea forward.
Leaving a Piece Behind
The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) earlier this year recognised Uter as the Most Outstanding Adult Artist in the discipline of Jewellery in the competition of JCDC Visuals Arts Competition. For Uter however, the greatest satisfaction is watching the person behind it develop.
“Every time I get in front of somebody, I’m trying to leave a part of me,” she said.
Her hope for Jamaican craft is equally personal. She wants locally made products to be appreciated not simply as things to buy and sell, but as representations of skill, identity and culture.
“It is not just a product that you’re using to make money,” Uter said. “It is something that you’re telling a story, something that will be a legacy even long after you pass.”
For the entrepreneur with an idea still sitting in a sketchbook, a prototype that needs work or a product that has not quite achieved the perfect finish, the Craft Incubator offers somewhere to take the next step.
And Uter knows something about taking an idea from the page and figuring out what it can become.
The craft incubator is equipped to accommodate clients who produce a variety of products including jewellery, leather goods including footwear (sandals), printed textiles among others. The space is able to accommodate multiple users at a time and is equipped with tools such as tumblers, drills, polishing wheel, rolling mill, laser etching machine and a variety of hand tools.
Visit the Craft Incubator nestled inside the JBDC’s Incubator & Resource Centre at 76 Marcus Garvey Drive. Or visit https://www.jbdc.net/services/incubators/ to book.
