Words by Jesse Serwer—

It’s not often that we get to celebrate sparsely populated Montserrat on LargeUp, nor is it frequent that someone we know as a party-rocking MC turns out to be a talented visual artist. Well, Montserrat-born Jason “Gazoo” Allen, who can be found livening up NYC nightspots like Greenhouse as a house-music MC, specializes in art made from the black sand and soil abundant on his home island since the eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano (a 1995 catastrophe which has since cut the country’s population in half). And damn, if he isn’t doing some pretty cool things.