The idea behind Cocobel chocolate has always been a marriage of chocolate and art. In February, chocolatier and Cocobel founder Isabel Brash took that idea one step further by adding a new piece of art to the packaging of its chocolate bars.
Highlighted on the cover of the bars is artist and mas man, Peter Minshall’s Macaw Man – a chalk pastel drawing created in 1985 as part of the series Everyman – and on the inside cover, his poem I Am A Caribbean.
Asked about the choice of Macaw Man to represent the brand, Brash said, “It’s like you’re (Caribbean people) this rare creature with all these different things in you. With that piece, you know it’s a human but we, like it, are special and evolved and a kind of hybrid because we have the knowledge of all these places though we come from a much smaller, intimate space where we all come together. Our history gives us that advantage where we could see through everybody’s eyes.”
[caption id="attachment_1006378" align="alignnone" width="722"] Chocolatier and Cocobel founder Isabel Brash. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
She found many people did not realise the scope of Minshall’s work. And while he is celebrated more during the Carnival season, she believes he should be celebrated at all times.
Brash explained that her original idea was to change the packaging of the chocolate bars every year to highlight different local artists. Some would be permanent additions while others would be a limited edition but they would all be pieces that had a Caribbean feel and matched the brand.
For some artists, the chocolate bars would introduce them to new people but it would be a travelling exhibition space for contemporary artists.
The first permanent edition of artwork for the bars, a girl of African descent by Brianna McCarthy, was commissioned for the brand.
She said the delay in following up with the initial idea was the fact that she had her daughter in 2016, the same year she launched the bars. Also, people “fell in love” with McCarthy’s image and associated it with the brand so she could not change it.
“The brand has slowly grown and people became attached to Brianna’s Cocobel (which means “brown beauty” in patois), so we will always have that, but we will also have interchangeable pieces coming in, some of them will stay or go depending on the permissions we get from the artist or if it’s a more seasonal piece.”
Brash told Sunday Newsday with the pandemic, the two-year “lockdown” and with 2023 being the first full Carnival since then, she thought it would be a great time to do the second edition using Minshall.
[caption id="attachment_1006376" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Peter Minshall’s Macaw Man and his peom I Am A Caribbean is featured on the new Cocobel packaging. - Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“I figured there would be a lot of visitors who have not seen his work, or there may be people who don’t even know he did art as well. We’re always sharing information, so the bars are about gettin
