Dready

Dready is a character and a style of art created by West Indian (Jamaican born) artist Shane Aquart. Since its beginnings in 2004, Dready art has evolved from just images of that character, to a style of art embodying the colours, humor and style - "dready's bold graphic technique, a style that has become immediately recognizable to viewers of his art". Images of stingrays and turtles of houses and cars and boats in the Dready style are just as common as Dready himself. Yet, Dready remains the iconic center of the art. The people in Grand Cayman now recognize Dready as a staple of the community through various charitable endeavours. Projects include fund raising for the Central Caribbean Marine Institute and the Jamaica Environment Trust.[1]

"Dready … has become an instantly recognizable style of art rather than just a character. Colourful, modern, fun, irreverent and cool …"[2]

History

Dready started life as a doodle in the early 1980s but Shane didn’t begin planning the first Dready designs until the late 1990s.

Dready art first began appearing on the scene in late 2004, making its move from doodle to a rendered postcard design and the testing of images; then onto T shirts in barbados, grenada, cayman and jamaica in late 2005 and bags and baseball caps in 2006. dready, as a business though, wasn't launched until January 2008

"The simple designs lend themselves perfectly to T-shirts and baseball caps with their bright colours and quirky messages"[3]

Now dready art can be found in all sorts of places; on the website of the UK's JazzFM < https://web.archive.org/web/20111107163759/http://www.jazzfm.com/2011/04/coming-up-on-the-20th-april/ > on the walls of Bacardi headquarters in Miami or the permanent collection of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, in give-aways in the UK's Guardian newspaper < https://www.theguardian.com/cayman-islands/competition/win-a-limited-edition-dready-print > ... dready is now not just Tshirts and post cards but sought after original art, with some 300 original commissions to clients (as of March 2012), art print series, speciality invitations, original one off notecards for clients and even specialty book marks There are even dready TV commercials to be found on YouTube and vimeo for example: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGPiXQ2PP8M >

References
  1. Cayman Compass News article, accessed online 7 March 2008 Archived 21 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Skywritings Magazine Article, Air Jamaica's Inflight Magazine
  3. Cayman Net News article, accessed online March 19, 2004 Archived August 2, 2005, at the Wayback Machine


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