A Hybrid Art Gallery, Bookstore, Café, Rum & Wine Bar
Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight and David Knight Jr., Bajo el Sol Gallery & Art Bar owners since 2016, are proud of the gallery’s more than 30-year legacy of support and engagement with the arts community of St. John and the greater Virgin Islands. The gallery is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings and book signings by award-winning V.I. writers and poets, documentary screenings with regional and international filmmakers, as well as presentations by local and visiting academics and musicians.
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At the Art Bar, you'll find Puerto Rican espresso coffee, chocolates, wine, classic Caribbean cocktails, lite savory bites, soups, salads, and freshly baked pastries. The Art Bar is also home to the largest selection of aged rums in Cruz Bay, which can be sampled in curated tasting flights.​
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Located in Mongoose Junction, Bajo el Sol is just a five-minute walk from the Cruz Bay Ferry Dock.
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Events & Exhibitions
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Current Exhibitions
'J'OUVERT'
by Shansi Miller
Shansi Miller was born and raised on the island of St. Thomas and is celebrated for her ability to capture the vibrancy of the V.I. culture in which she was raised. She is best known as an oil painter whose photorealist narrative works are an ongoing exploration of the nuances of Creole identity and history on her home island.
Her pieces, which are highly sought after by local and mainland collectors, are immediately distinguishable by their careful execution, intricate details, compositional complexity, and rich narratives.
Shansi's pieces currently on display at Bajo el Sol Gallery are a series of studies done for a large narrative oil painting titled 'J'ouvert.' The series gives a rare glimpse into the artist's meticulous process - the many variations and stagings conceived of with local models before a final work is complete. The details in each study also speak to the artist's technical mastery and her uncommon ability to capture the intrinsic joy and communal revelry of the Virgin Islands' festival arts traditions. In 'Jouvert' and its studies, each individual figure is bursting with inner life while also contributing to the proud and deeply-felt sense of heritage embodied in the collection.
TANGENTLEMEN PROPHECIES
by Jon Euwema & William Stelzer
For the exhibition ‘Tangentleman Prophecies’, Jon Euwema joins William ‘Bill’ Stelzer - a fellow ‘tangentleman’ artist - for an interactive, multimedia melding of reimagined pasts and possible futures.
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In true tangentleman form, Euwema describes his recent anthropomorphic assemblages, titled ‘Creatures from the Past’ as “true & true island non-binary time-encapsulated pieces.” Their construction mines artifacts and family heirlooms – some more than 175 years old - connected to Virgin Islands cultural and architectural heritage. Objects used in the assemblages include historic building staples, West Indian shutter bars and holders, cowrie shells and even a pencil sharpener that belonged to St. Thomas Educator, Eudora Kean. Euwema’s ‘Creature from the Past’ are joined in the gallery by digitally-constructed glimpses into potential futures prophesized by Bill Stelzer. As an artist specializing in digital media, Stelzer has recently become fascinated with the possibilities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence. In his series of works on display, Stelzer has combined man-made digital art with renderings by artificial intelligence to imagine new deities and supernatural beings that will guide humanity’s new relationship with AI. Stelzer has also incorporated immersive technology into these works with which viewers can use their smart phones to be further drawn into dimensions beyond what is visible without technology.
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Rhyme & Lime Poetry Jam
Every last Saturday of each month starting at 7pm (except June, August & September), the Gri Gri Project along with Raven Phillips hosts Rhyme & Lime Poetry Jam at Bajo el Sol Gallery. This monthly event features the musical stylings of the event's house jazz band From Broheem With Love
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Rhyme and Lime features poets, musicians and spoken word artists of every experience level from around the world. Although the island that is home to the Rhyme and Lime claims a population of less than 5,000 people, the event’s reach has extended far beyond its shores, welcoming visiting performers from around the Virgin Islands, the rest of the Caribbean and the United States.​
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​You can read your own poetry or someone else's - or if you don't wanna rhyme, just listen and lime!
LA VAUGHN BELLE: BEING OF MYTH AND MEMORY
Book Of the Month
St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle's signed copies of her catalog ‘Being of Myth and Memory,’ are available at the gallery while supplies last!
The catalog was produced for the exhibition of the same name which ran from December 2, 2023-January 13, 2024 at The Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in Frederiksted, St. Croix. The catalog features brilliant essays by its curator Erica Moiah James, PhD and scholars Tami Navarro, PhD and Hadiya Sewer, PhD, as well as exquisite documentation of the exhibition and La Vaughn Belle’s work. As the first major publication of her work, the catalog captures the range of Belle’s artistic practice that spans photography, lyric film essays, painting, sculpture and installation.
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In the wake of catastrophic histories, La Vaughn Belle’s generative practice is activated by a belief that myth and memory are not only foundational to collective identity but are necessary for life. Her work explores how does one live, thrive, dream about futures when so much of one’s memories have been erased; when remembering requires our bodies to relive the violence and shame of the past, making forgetting a form of protection? How do we live fully when the landscape we encounter daily holds histories of our subjection? And how might we craft postcolonial futures in this landscape, the same arena as our abjection? Belle’s work invites audiences to imagine a world where the weight of history is lighter and one can step into a liberated future, unbound.
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Curator's Pick
VIRGIN ISLANDS MARKET BASKETS
by Crucian Bayside Creations
Crucian Bayside Creations is a ​folk art collaborative comprised of the
five Henry siblings from St. Croix: Letitia, Carla, Lloyd, La Verne and Carmen. They carry on a tradition of Virgin Islands basket-making that was passed down to them by their aunt, Eileen Henry-Huggins.
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The siblings each add their own modern flair to their baskets through the use of different wood types in the basket handles, and by including unique splashes of color in their basket designs.
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Gustos Premium Espresso Coffee From Our Neighboring Island of Puerto Rico
Sip our single origin, small batch coffee, in one of our handmade, locally crafted coffee cups.