c. 1996 Religion News Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (RNS)-As barefoot toddlers, skinny dogs and squawking chickens dodged honking cars a few feet away, Edgar Jean-Louis stood solemnly in the doorway of his house and business in this Caribbean capital’s impoverished Bel Air neighborhood. “There hasn’t been much work lately,”Jean-Louis, 75, said in Creole as he led a visitor inside, past a dark one-room funeral parlor where a crudely made wooden casket stood empty.”But I’ve got other things to keep me busy.” He then slowly climbed a staircase to the dilapidated building’s roof, where a half-dozen children sat hunched over pieces of fabric stretched across raised wood frames. As Haitian music played on a radio in the background, the children’s fingers nimbly guided thread through the fabric, affixing glass beads and plastic sequins that shimmered in the sunlight filtering through a torn canopy above.

Even in Haiti, where disease and violence make death commonplace, the funeral business can be slow. So Jean-Louis, funeral director and voodoo priest, now does professionally what voodoo practitioners have long done for personal reasons: He makes voodoo flags.

He’s part of a small but growing group of Haitians who have discovered that the brightly colored, intricately designed tapestries used for centuries in voodoo ceremonies can fetch hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of dollars from international art collectors. In recent years, some of the finest sequin art has wound up in museums and galleries in Los Angeles, London and Paris.

Voodoo flags from Haiti were exhibited at the recent Jazzfest in New Orleans, which has strong historical ties with the island. After the 1791 slave revolt in Haiti, then known as St. Domingue, thousands of refugees settled in southeastern Louisiana. Their influence is evident today in myriad ways, from architecture-the long narrow”shotgun houses”are Haitian imports-to food. Gumbo is a staple on menus in both places.

The link also can be seen in the flags, which resemble the elaborate, beaded Mardi Gras Indian costumes. “For those who are familiar with the Indian costumes, this will be a real eye-opener,”said Tina Girouard, a Louisiana artist who has collaborated with Haitian artists on sequin art projects. “When you see the technique, it’s the same, and when you look at the images, they, too, are the same,”said Girouard, 49, author of”Sequin Artists of Haiti,”a book published by the Contemporary Arts Center after a 1993 show of sequin art works by Girouard and Haitian Antoine Oleyant.”You don’t find that technique or content anywhere else.” Flags featuring images of voodoo spirits based on Catholic saints originally were made for ceremonial use only. But after art collectors began buying them from voodoo temples in the 1950s, a new industry was born. Today there are about 200 flag makers, some of whom don’t even believe in voodoo, a folk religion that mixes African and Catholic traditions.

The process of making a flag begins when the artist sketches a design on fabric. The design then is filled with sequins and beads by assistants, typically teen-agers with dexterous hands and plenty of patience. It takes about 10 days and 20,000 sequins and beads to complete a standard, 3-by-3-foot flag.

As with other art works, voodoo flags vary in quality and style. Jean-Louis, who began making flags to sell in 1978, has a reputation for doing exceptionally detailed work. He also is known for incorporating chromolithographs of religious icons into his flags.

George Valris, another leading sequin artist who arrived on the scene a decade later, is noted for his technical perfection.

After spending a couple of years working as a stevedore on a cruise ship, Valris, 45, returned to Haiti in 1988 and opened a workshop where he wove straw hats, bags and brooms. Wanting a more lucrative career, he tried flag making and soon was producing works that were considered technically superior to those of many of his competitors. While most artists use cotton or polyester thread, Valris uses fine fishing line for longevity.

Unlike Jean-Louis, Valris is a devout Catholic who said he doesn’t believe in voodoo. The flags he makes have no meaning for him, he said as he sewed a satin border on a flag emblazoned with an image of Erzulie, a voodoo spirit whose Catholic counterpart is the Virgin Mary. “It’s just a way to make a living,”he said, as a team of assistants worked feverishly on a patio behind his modest home.

LJB END FERGUSON