The art of the kite is perhaps the most multi-functional visual folk art to ever emerge in colonial and post-colonial Guyana. It has deep roots in the Asian cultures of India, China, Japan, and other cultures of that geographical area, but took on a whole new creative, social, and spiritual significance when it fused with the Christian world-view of Christ’s resurrection.

Though kite-flying can be enjoyed at any time, its popularity is linked to Easter because it symbolizes the resurrection of Christ.

Despite such a religious connotation, the entire exercise of making and flying kites involves meanings and pleasures which benefit human society without emphasizing a religious origin.

We can comprehend such a practical and social history of Kite-making by focusing on Guyana.

First of all we should be aware that the concept of a kite is anything that can be made to become buoyantly mobile in wind and sky, yet controlled by an extension of string in the hands of a flyer.

When we think of Chinese and Japanese kites in particular we mean all sorts of animals and animated shapes made of light colorful material.

In colonial and early post-colonial Guyana, however, a certain amount of social or folk wisdom and creativity began to manifest itself in both the structural design and creation of kites within the family structure, especially by fathers, and children, followed by the social picnics which come with the Easter season.

Since early 20th century British Guiana, three types of kites defined a dominant style of local kite-making.

The star-shaped kite with two frames crossed in an X,  one horizontal frame  across the middle, and a third and shortest frame extended from the middle to a curved piece of bamboo between the top ends of the two vertically crossed frames; the triangular kite which is cross-shaped, and the box kite which is usually oblong and partly pasted with glossy transparent cellophane papers.

Of all kites, the box kite is the most artistic in a kinetic constructivist style, like a Japanese paper house,  and stunning to behold in the sky.

Difficult to make, raise, and fly (it tugs more than any other), its beauty comes from the effect of sunlight illuminating its colorful cellophane paper walls.

The prevalent star-shaped kite with string around its frame covered with paper, is usually made with strips of light wood, but in Guyana the easy cheap abundance of palm spines from coconut trees inspired the creativity of the pointer-broom kite, one of the finest pieces of local visual folk art.

Cheap popular semi-transparent kite paper in a riot of colours and tones apply to the pointer-broom kite whose star-shaped design is held together by a pin.

Unlike the typical star-shaped frame, the female kite does not have a nose bridge and an exposed bull, so it does not sing.

A thin strip of appropriate paper on the exposed line behind the nose bridge provides the singing ‘bull’.

The wooden frame of the star-shaped kite is the one that offers the widest range of applied artistry derived from the use of various papers, such as the opaque glossy colored ‘Barbados’ kite papers, especially used for making star-point kites, as well as  various shapes pasted onto the kite surface, and the matte or glossy white cheese-paper kite, but the frills and flaps are made with light semi-transparent kite paper.

The flaps are half-circles in about three different colors pasted on top of each-other to the entire upper edges of the kite, the frills hang below the flaps on the elbows of the cross-frame; a wide cross frame helps a kite to move from side to side and ‘dance’ better than narrow sides.

What makes flaps important is that they become eaten away by the wind, indicating the veteran ability of a kite to achieve great heights, much friction, and still remain in use.

It is the brown store-paper kite that is the best singer; this is due to the nature of the paper and the ‘bull’.

Certain Guyanese youths and adults specialized in the ‘fighting’ brown store-paper kite because it was made to sing.

It never has a large wooden frame, carries no pasted décor, no  frills or flaps, and its tail is of just enough length to keep it rotating but not crashing to the ground, as the flyer runs with it, usually on a seawall.

Kite-making came to provide the highest level of visual folk-art in colonial and post-colonial Guyana.

Among local children, it encouraged concentration, mathematical and geometric precision, color sense, and abstract surprise in folding and cutting shapes into paper.

Also the use of a popular local soft green wild berry for pasting, integrated Guyanese creation with use of natural wild products.

Though there were always kite vendors who  made and sold kites in bulk (now we also have many disposable imported plastic kites),  the real creative and social lesson of kite making involved respect for a child’s creativity from within their family, and the social function of respect for the creative father from his children and wife.

I remember when I made my first star-point wooden kite at age seven, only my youngest sister understood how much it meant to me; she took me one afternoon to the rifle range tree-less  pasture (now Camp Ayangana) and sat on the grass with her flowing satin dress spread around her, and gaily watched me raise and fly the kite I had patiently struggled to make.

The event had a lasting impression on me. Traditionally the young Guyanese father or husband who maintains the local kite making tradition, makes his children’s kites while they observe, noting the choice of a right piece of wood that is miraculously evenly split, whittled to right thinness and weight, and constructed into a star shape before the application of string, paper, and décor.

The success of the completed object endears the child to the father, increases the appreciation of their mother and his wife, who in the social picnic of kite-flying sees the family’s own creation raised to the sky.

This signifies a practical logic with social cohesion old as primitive or tribal intelligence, adding positive  family values to such a personal creative effort.

In the flying of this art object among the father, mother, and children, the symbol of the resurrection, and Christ’s childhood as an apprentice carpenter to his mortal father Joseph, also acquires an adult sexual connotation, which further links such visual creative Guyanese folk art to the celebration of life, that is also the celebration of Easter.

Traditionally the young Guyanese father or husband who maintains the local kite making tradition, makes his children’s kites while they observe, noting the choice of a right piece of wood that is miraculously evenly split, whittled to right thinness and weight, and constructed into a star shape before the application of string, paper, and décor.