Well-known as a tour guide and bus driver for his friendly and helpful manner, Mr. Joseph Betty was recently asked to help CTF in a completely different, and special way. In April this year he was commissioned by CTF to make a spectacular centerpiece sculpture — of three turtles swimming through coral. The sculpture provides a visual focal-point at the front of CTF, and has already been proving to be very popular with visitors, especially children, who can be seen having their photos taken by the sculpture.  He is the first person to be specially commissioned by CTF to make a sculpture, and it is his biggest project so far. It was built in a shed, on CTF land, which he has been using as an artist’s studio.

“The whole sculpture weighs more than five thousand pounds,” Mr Betty said. “It is made out of concrete with a framework of steel bars and galvanized mesh. The idea was to make it as strong and sturdy as possible. We transported into its place by a truck and the ‘turtle handler’ (A special piece of equipment for lifting large turtles). The Turtle Farm ‘family’ helped me to set it in place. I couldn’t have finished it in such a short time without Mr. Carley Jackson, who helped to lacquer the turtles, and Mr. Keeble Knight who contributed to the technical aspects of the structure’s form, to make sure it wouldn’t collapse.”

Called ‘The Homecoming,’ it depicts a “family” of turtles who all come from Cayman Turtle Farm, but met up again in the ocean and have decided to come back to the Cayman Islands again to make it their home. After Mr. Betty was approached by the CTF earlier this year, his initial idea was well received, with some suggestions following: “Mr. Adam (CTF’s Managing Director) suggested the turtles should be swimming through Elkhorn Coral, because this kind of coral, and the turtles, have been going since the age of the dinosaurs,” Joseph Betty explained.

Mr. Betty is an established artist in the Cayman Islands, whose thoughtful poetry, paintings and sculptures have gained him a reputation for an artist who does fresh, thought-provoking work.

IMAGE: Artist and tour bus driver, Joseph Betty, with his new sculpture, ‘The Homecoming.’