Art.

Reblogged from 18° 15’ N, 77° 30’ W

Art

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

Beautiful.

Reblogged from Serenity in Perspective

I really like finding tiny bits of art around my city.

I saw this in a tree outside of an art gallery on Thursday afternoon: a little blue pipe-cleaner-man with a big red pipe-cleaner-heart is his hands. 

I'm not gonna lie: it made me want an instagram account, haha.

Art.

The artist's name is Richard Schmid.
Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

I want this. 

Who says graffiti does no good?

A lovely message I passed on 14th Street betwen S and T when I was walking to meet AF and his friend for dinner last night:

There is a Brazilian artist, Anjelica Dass,

who is trying to photodocument every skin color in the entire world. She's naming them according to something called the Pantone color scale, which gives every hue a numerical code, and posting the pictures to this tumblr. It's hard for me to figure out which number I am (especially because the numbering system doesn't really make obvious sense to me), but regardless, I think this project is cool. Evidently some critics are asking what the point is, but I think it's simply--the diversity of the human form, even in one little aspect like this, is so beautiful that it should be art. Documentation need not be about quantification and separation--documentation can simply be recognition.  

I would move into a building with a mural like this

Reblogged from afro.art.chick

Art!

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

Art I Need in My Life Vol. Next

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

Art I Want in My Life:

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

Hmm.

I decided I wanted this in my life before I realized that both of the figures in the painting are women. This doesn't influence my wanting it in my life in any way, but I do wonder what the fact that I didn't notice that right away says about me. 

It could be something terrible about me being a cis-gendered-ist heteronormative person who just goes around assuming that paintings of lovers include a male and a female.

OR, it could mean something awesome, like I've broken out of the dominant conceptualization of heterosexuality as "normal" and everything else as "deviant," and so I can accept this image of female lovers as readily as I can accept images of heterosexual (or any other) lovers without having to acknowledge their homosexuality. 

...But which is it? 

Philosophical Conversations with my friends on Twitter (Vol. 1)

I was reminiscing about our very brief session of middle school drinking games on Thursday night, in which a very good friend of mine asked me why my ex and I broke up. And I sighed and I told her exactly what happened, and then I let her comment on how ridiculous it was, and then I delved a little deeper into what I think we did wrong as individuals trying to be a couple. And contrary to when I clung onto T for dear life immediately after we broke up, or when cried into the phone during all of M's lunch break, or when it felt like K was the only glue holding me together, or every single thing I blogged for the next month...it didn't hurt to talk about this. I wasn't actively suppressing any emotions. There was no choking up. I didn't want to cry; in fact, if someone had suggested that this might be too difficult for me to talk about, I would have laughed at them. And I don't think it was just because I was a little drunk.

So, thinking out loud, I tweeted:

It's weird when you're totally over a situation. Last night, [Choosing Pancakes] asked me about something that had me torn to pieces over the summer, and

I could just lay out the facts like it was something that had happened to someone else. I'm not that person who was so hurt anymore. #growth

 And she responded:

@SuchAnAfroholic In one way, that's comforting, but in another way, it worries me that everything becomes ... less meaningful?

And I replied:

I don't think I could function if everything that ever happened to me retained its original meaning throughout time and space.

Could there be "moving on"? Could I "get over it"? I feel like distancing oneself is a necessary component of development and growth.

She said:

but then that makes me feel stupid for feeling things so intensely now, like i'm exaggerating.

And that is so totally, completely, and thoroughly the opposite of how I ever want to make anyone feel that I had to try to remedy it. 

I think that feeling things intensely in the moment is incredibly important. Those kinds of rushes and losing ourselves in things are

the moments we feel most alive and like what we're experiencing matters. It's like we're artists, and those moments are when we're

painting. We get lost in the colors and the strokes and in creating this glorious thing. But when we're done and it's hanging on a

wall somewhere, we have to be able to step back and say, I could have done this differently or next time I'll do this instead. We can

still be proud of our work, but if we stay in that fever of creation forever, will we ever grow as artists? I'm dubious.

 I took a short break to confirm that my extended metaphor was working, then continued:

Then I'll say that, to the best of my understanding, most brilliant art arises out of intensity. But art is expression

in the moment, and an opportunity for communication and reflection once the moment has passed. I don't think it loses significance

from the intense-creative-expressive period to the thinking-reflection period; on the contrary, without a period in which we can view

it somewhat objectively and understand the process and plan what to do next, why would the intensity matter at all? It would be

giving and giving and giving OF ourselves without ever giving back TO ourselves.

She liked my metaphor. I do too, a lot, so I figured I'd share. Also, I would like to formally retract a statement I made when I was still anti-Twitter about 160 characters not being enough to drop knowledge. 

A creative understanding of creativity

As a sociologist, and a somewhat radical/liberal one at that, I spend a lot of time defining the proverbial "box," the set of cultural norms, values, and opinions that dominate American social life, and then doing as much work as I possibly can to fuck that box up to the point where it's no longer even recognizable. I consider it my JOB to tear people's assumptions asunder and make them question things they've always taken for granted. Maybe I don't live my life coloring outside of the lines in every way imaginable, but I refuse to let myself feel confined by any of them, and more importantly, I refuse to sit back while people try to force those lines upon others' lives and conduct (with the notable exception of immoral conduct, though who has the authority to determine morality is something I'm still wrestling with...). 

I'm sure some of you are scratching your heads right now in an attempt to figure out how the title of this post and that first paragraph have anything to do with each other. Yesterday was my best friend's 22nd birthday and New Year's Eve, so I didn't quite find the time to write a post for Kuumba, the sixth day of Kwanzaa. Kuumba translates to creativity, but not in as restrictive a sense as most of us are used to thinking about creativity (as oxymoronic as that sounds). Officially, the sixth day of Kwanzaa calls for us "to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it." This is active creativity, putting creativity to WORK.

This can be done in the typically creative way, via some artistic form like visual art, music, poetry, theater, film, *cough*blogging*cough*, especially when the content of that art challenges expectations and assumptions, but to the best of my understanding, Kuumba demands that we explore broader ways to interpret creativity. We must never forget that artists are FAR from the only people capable of creating. Entrepreneurs create economic opportunity where there was none. Community leaders and organizers create political action and social camaraderie where none existed previously; they are creative. Teachers, professors, and scholars are creative, putting forth new ideas and queries that stimulate discussion and action around previously ignored topics/issues. Students are creative, taking the ideas teachers, professors, and scholars raise and running in incredibly interesting and varied directions with them. The man who gives a few dollars to a homeless person creates hope. The couple giving themselves to one another honestly and working on their relationship thoughtfully creates love. The protestor, the person who speaks up in the silence, creates a counter-narrative, creates the possibility of change.

I took a class last Spring for which we read and wrote a paper exploring Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class...and how it's transforming work, leisure, community, and everyday life, in which the author argues that today's young professionals are demanding the ability to lead creative lifestyles, lifestyles that turn a lot of the things our parents and grandparents took for granted on their heads, and productively fucking shit up in the process. Florida argues that by “apply[ing] or combin[ing] standard approaches in unique ways to fit the situation, exercis[ing] a great deal of judgment, [and] perhaps try[ing] something radically new from time to time” (Florida, 68-9), today's professionals are introducing creativity into the workplace and American culture overall; we're on a road to ALL being identifiable as "creatives". And with that, I say go fuck some shit up. Ask questions. Raise issues. Be heard. Hear others, and help others hear them too. What you make is up to you, but create.      

I absolutely love this piece.

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

Tim Okamura is the dopest.

I've posted his work before, but I just stumbled across this over at Afro.Art.Chick:

 

(1)ne Drop: A project i'm DEFINITELY interested in:

You know anything that touches upon what it means to be Black today will find its way onto my radar sooner or later. When academics and artists join forces, what can result but beauty and a sense of the profound? This project aims not only to challenge people's understandings of Blackness, but also to challenge the way we expect understandings to be challenged, and that in and of itself is beautiful. Watch the promotional video:

I must learn where this is!

Reblogged from As far as i'm concerned...

*remembers that Google has a new search-by-image feature*

*drags image to Google Images search page*

*learns that its artist is England-based and goes by the name Bansky*

*finds more gorgeous street art on his personal website*


*wonders how people did ANYTHING before the internet*

It is not uncommon for Joshua Bennett to stop me in my tracks

or, the internet version of this, to make me click pause while I recollect myself, reassembling the looser pieces to incorporate the gem he just gave me that I never want to let go of. He often makes me feel like I'm breathing from my diaphragm like my middle school choir teacher used to make us practice laying on the floor with our textbooks on our tummies, but that fullness in my midsection isn't air, but soul. He overwhelms me in a delicious kind of way. There are parties going on tonight, but I am laying in my bed being simultaneously soothed and stimulated by Joshua Bennett and wanting to give myself permanently to someone who has that kind of relationship with words. It's just these recently redecorated walls and me in here, but I'm still clapping, clutching the skin in the hollow of my neck when he says something particularly noteworthy, and occasionally letting out one of those involuntary "Mmmm"s like imaginary dude just got an especially good stroke in.

This video got two pauses and inspired me to write this post. Watch it. (And see if you can guess where I had to stop to recollect.) 

Also, I have realized that he may be subconsciously behind my fascination with Black hipsters. And I have no problem with that. 

I love pro-black/minority art.

I already have lots of posters in my dorm room, and I want to someday own lots of real art. This guy just got added to my radar: Portuguese artist Luis Alves--

Is this an appropriate graduation present?

'Rainbow' by Jason O'Brien

Because this needs to be in my first apartment/everywhere I ever live for the rest of my life. Thanks to As Far As I'm Concerned for the art-lust-inducing.