My Work With the Columbus Area Arts Council

This year has been difficult. That is a statement everyone can agree with. One of the brighter happenings, for me, has been my involvement with the Columbus Area Arts Council, or CAAC. This small but mighty group puts the organize in organization. I’ll admit, at some point in my 5 years of experience in the non-profit arts, I began to doubt whether small communities can get it together enough to support local art happenings, create solid relationships, and secure tiers of support. I started to wonder if only bigger cities could succeed in engaging the public in such a way. I have new hope after witnessing the way that the Arts Council here in Columbus, Indiana has responded to the challenge of COVID-19.

I began my internship as the Community Outreach Coordinator in June, continuing until a few weeks into August. Nowadays I help once a week on Fridays and as needed. There is so much work to be done. On top of an incredible project called The Mask Project, the council hosted an online fundraiser to take place of their annual gala in the shape of an online Fine Art Auction and Student Art Sale.

I gathered my peers’ chosen work for the sale and it was a hit. Surprisingly, the Columbus community is excited about student work. This applies to all grades, not only the shiny new architecture program downtown. It is evident, walking around this town, that they embrace young creativity. Almost every piece sold! The pieces were displayed at 411 Gallery, the council’s physical space downtown.

Now, let’s talk about The Mask Project, funded by The Heritage Fund and Columbus Regional Health. The mission is to make 7,500 masks with fabric designed by a handful of local artists (including myself!) and distribute them to the community at no cost. So far, TMP has produced and distributed nearly 3,000 masks. This is no small feat, considering a team of four people, not including me, have been busy since May making this happen. Of course, we are a small team backed by 100 + volunteers that have stepped forward to cut and sew masks. Most of my days this summer consisted of picking up a coffee and driving all over town blasting music and delivering / picking up volunteer mask kits. I have permanent indents in my hands from cutting fabric. All the while, I met so many wonderful people, learned my way around, and developed an affection for Columbus, Indiana.

The masks range from size XS (which is important, because kids have a hard time finding comfortable masks), to L. I believe in the impact this project has, not only to provide a life saving item during a global pandemic, but to encourage a sense of community by normalizing wearing a mask. Powerful things happen when artists gather to promote public health and safety.

My mask design, “Beauty in Diversity”

My mask design, “Beauty in Diversity”

Detroit is for Lovers / The Heidelberg Project

I’ve been to Detroit twice now. The first time I spent one day there and ate Italian food, looked from my car at the extreme duality of aesthetic consistency, and walked along the River Walk while looking at Canada across the water. The second time, this past weekend, I stayed for four days and properly studied what is going on because it’s not obvious yet it’s not subtle but it is extremely unique. On one hand you have an abandoned city left by unemployed masses years ago. Chainlink fences lined up everywhere, demolished buildings, abandoned businesses, boarded windows, and litter. On the other hand you have the community that remains that is fighting in a very colorful, loud and dramatic way to keep Detroit in conversation with other cities in America. The kaleidoscope of emotions that I have felt in this one place will remain within the patchwork of my memories. Detroit is honest about its shortcomings. Detroit is not pretending to be anyone other than themselves. The areas of the city where gentrification is taking place make no sense compared to how people are accepting their surroundings everywhere else. Around every corner is a mural done by known artists as well as those who will forever gain no credit or a word for their masterpiece. Stories compound on these walls… and it all becomes OK.

Our economy is the basis of how we think of ourselves and Detroit brakes this wheel and dares to exist as a forgotten cog in a large machine perfectly fine and perfectly OK with covering up these perceived mistakes with color. The “danger” everything seems to exude, isn’t, and the more you explore, you eventually realize that the problem of fear towards others, specifically impoverished areas, starts deeply rooted inside you. The population lives in happily and peacefully more so than the world expects.

I think I will reserve Detroit as a place to visit often as I can, always exploring and seeking the colors, murals, and the stories. At the farmers market it was Flower Day, a yearly event where flower farms come together and have a huge sale on their colorful creations. At 7:30 in the morning families of all ethnicities classes and enthusiasm levels meandered towards this market with their wagons and their carts. I saw crowds with their arms full of flowers, walking to go plant beauty in their neighborhoods, whether neglected by the municipality or not. Whether we perceive it as exemplary or embarrassing, Detroit holds genuine people who aren’t pretending. At the market I saw a woman with a shirt that says Detroit is for Lovers and I couldn’t agree more with the idea that only those who believe, love, and trust in the future of their community could live in a place that to naked eye of the world, looks quite the opposite. Quite unloved… but that could not be further from the truth.

The best example of what I’m getting at is The Heidelberg Project, an ongoing installation by Tyree Guydon. The first time I visited Detroit I went to the MOCAD and saw a video installation and an exhibition about this project. Below are photos from that visit. I was overstimulated and didn’t grasp that I could visit the installation with a 10 minute car ride.

This second time I visited Detroit, I had it on my list, and oh boy was it such a cool experience.

Very brief, quite visceral. Violent in its presence on Heidelberg street, the colors are a mockery of abandonment, daring me to see beyond a neglected neighborhood into the feeling of it being perhaps, my own neighborhood.

From the website:

“In 1986, artist Tyree Guyton returned to Heidelberg, the street where he grew up on Detroit’s East Side, and found it in shambles, riddled with drugs and deepening poverty. Bruised by the loss of three brothers to the streets, Guyton was encouraged by his grandfather to pick up a paintbrush instead of a weapon and look for a solution.

Armed with a paintbrush, a broom and neighborhood children, Guyton and Grandpa began by cleaning up vacant lots on Heidelberg Street. From the refuse they collected, Guyton transformed the street into a massive art environment. Vacant lots literally became “lots of art” and abandoned houses became “gigantic art sculptures.” Guyton not only transformed vacant houses and lots, he integrated the street, sidewalks and trees into his mammoth installation and called the work, the Heidelberg Project (“HP”).”

Photos from the project, taken from my morning walk, below.

Edit: a friend informed me about the fires. How tragic and gross of someone to do that.

Also, for fun, a Detroit Mural Dump:

Felicia Forte Workshop

May 17-19th / Detroit, MI 2019

The painting lessons from this weekend stretch well beyond painting. Felicia Forge carries her 20+ years of painting in the way she does everything, from holding a paintbrush to addressing her students’ questions and qualms. How exactly, is she so good? She says, “I’m not any better than anyone, I just try more times (to get the color, the likeness, the feeling, right). That’s why I’m good.”

Painting is no easy task, especially if you dare to try to represent your subject accurately. Not fancy flair accurate… truly accurate. The exact color on the cheeks above and under the cheekbone. No assumptions, 100% honesty. You have to stare and squint and let yourself go, forget you even exist, to begin to see the subtleties. If you do it enough, you will embody it. At least, I know and believe that now after observing Felicia’s style of both painting and being. They say never meet your herores, but what if you meet someone and they accidentally become one of your most impactful role models?

Nowadays everyone wants to be an artist, probably moreso than ever. There’s no more starving if you compare it to the past decades, centuries. You can do whatever you want as long as you put it on Instagram. If you put it on Instagram every day, no matter what kind of art it is, people start to pay attention and validation floods the insecurities, granting delusions of grandeur.

I know this because I suffer from this dualistic struggle for self-achievement. This weekend I learned that at the end of the day, it isn’t about me. It isn’t about the painting. It’s about the truth.

I expected to attend a workshop and feel really bad at painting, which absolutely happened immediately. I almost ruined the second of three works made in Felicia’s studio before she walked up and dared me to stick with it. “You can’t ruin an oil painting.” You can’t ruin an oil painting! Here I’ve been working in watercolor and hating or glorifying myself about it for years.

Everywhere I look I see a painting. This syndrome should be titled, painter’s eye or something more suitable. It’s a beautiful condition, and it lasts just about as long as you’ve painted last. I see the darks and lights, the cools and warms. I think I’m actually going to begin oil painting weekly now, if I can help it, daily. It’s only been on my mind oh, for since before I even dared to pool myself into this ever growing category of “Artist”. I was lost in the sauce of searching for subject matter when it’s been around me every day.

Speaking on that, Felicia said, if you make a mark and you can’t get it right, but refuse to patiently try again (until you do the study, the practice, the likeness, true justice…), if you do it wrong and say it was on purpose to cover yourself, well then you aren’t an artist yet. I needed to hear that so badly. In my previous entry I wrote about why I paint, and this is precisely why. The patience and honesty I search for towards myself in every other aspect of life is exemplified perfectly by what it takes to make a good oil painting. I probably won’t make my first good one for years but for once that isn’t the point. The point is not to run away from it, or sloppily paint just to post it, or just to see the likes come in, or just to keep going because I know that there is goodness and truth underneath…. the point is to stick with life so closely that each painting feels intimate. The point is to keep the conversation going, and to speak without words, which is the only true effective way to communicate anything to another human being.

Below are two studies of mine from the workshop.

You can find Felicia’s work on her website and Instagram.

Bloomingfoods Artist Showcase

Friends… Bloomingfoods has a little gallery! At the 6th and Madison location! I had a few works up for a month or so and I sold quite a few. Contact Natascha natascha@bloomingfoods.coop !!!

What AM I Up To?

When I received my undergraduate degree from Indiana University I swore I would leave Bloomington immediately and dive into a bigger city with more creative opportunities. Little did I know that I would discover chances to do what I love right here and now. Two years have passed and I have established somewhat of an identity as a cultural-working-adult-human-artist. Bloomington has been surprisingly and refreshingly fertile for my creative seeds. I feel useful here... even valued! That, to me, encapsulates the feeling a community should offer their artists. I feel lucky to know so many small business owners (mainly strong women) that have been role models and catalysts for my work and creative support. There are so many reasons to stay. Below is a quick update of the recent work I have taken on right here in the heart of the Midwest and a peek at the near future.

Wild Orchid Mural

A work in progress! I will make a bigger post about this when it is complete but I am too involved not to talk about it for just a second. I am installing three garage door murals for an aerial fitness studio on the B-Line, Bloomington's walking and biking trail. The scale of this project overwhelmed me at first but now that I am actively making it a reality I decided I want to do more of this work. Everywhere I go I am accidentally scouting for mural locations. Painting a mural is worlds different from watercolors and I am happy to have learned so much from this challenge. Below are some progress pictures:

 

Haute Life Magazine Illustrations

So happy to have contributed a selection of watery illustrations for a neat article in Haute Life Magazine announcing a series of 30 self-care email prompts - the emails are simple, delightful, doable, and really well written. We all need this so much and you can never have enough reminders. I’m doing it and it’s free! Sign up here to get started loving yourself a little more each day.

 

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Up next:

Mural at Vibe Yoga? I will also be co-teaching a yoga class where I paint participants in motion and they take away an original watercolor representation of their movement. More on that soon. A solo show at Untitled Light's Blueline Gallery in September. More on all of this very soon.

I am the good kind of overwhelmed and so, so grateful. 

quotes

“I see you doubt the parts of you that love the world so much
you wonder if you’ll ever be able to show it.
I want to take your face in my hands and say,
You who love the world so much,
That’s what you are here to do.”
— brian andreas
“He reflected deeply, until this feeling completely overwhelmed him and he reached a point where he recognized causes; for to recognize causes, it seemed to him, is to think,
and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost,
but become real and begin to mature.”
— siddhartha
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you…”
— georgia o'keeffe
““That is what artistic work and child’s play have in common; both, at their fullest, are experiences of being lost in the present, entirely occupied.”  ”
— Mark Doty  The Art of Description
““Now we recognize that in meaninglessness we are our own sole value, and that art is our chief instrument in the imaginative creation of this value, the turning of human experience into human meaning, the making of selves.” 
”
— Hayden Carruth  Selected Essays & Reviews

Send Me Your Insides

There I said it. I care about what others think. I want to know what's in your brain and I  want to make art about it. I want to feel what you feel and in turn feed you something visual. 

You don't have to put your name here or anything unless you want to. 

 

Kids Gallery Walk

This Friday I was lucky (and brave) enough to host a group of 25-30 kids from Fairview Elementary at the gallery, or as I like to call it, "Kids Gallery Walk".

Humans have always needed art, but kids NEED it. They NEED IT.

Art validates the imagination and fosters individuality, building character and meditative habits.

If you have kids, take them to see it, make it with them, supply them with colored pencils and paper instead of an iPad at restaurants... expose them to local art especially! How about next week, First Friday,  from 5-8PM? :-) Link

I was given a $40 budget and with it I bought various goodies for a Halloween Chex mix (gummy worms included), some paint, plates, plastic table cloth, goodie bags, and of course, Ghoul-Aid Spooky Berry flavor. 

Kids are crazy. So utterly raw and content to speak their minds. Especially little boys. I've always known this growing up with two younger brothers who are almost a decade younger. Despite my attempts to split the group up into two gender neutral groups, the aid asked boys and girls to separate. What a difference in terms of their behavior. However, I noticed no difference in the amount of enthusiasm towards making a painting and talking about the work up on the walls. 

I asked the group, grades 1st through 5th, what they think art is.

A seemingly shy brown haired 5th grader with glasses said, "It means you can do whatever you want."  Other responses included: 

"You make cool stuff", and my personal favorite, "It's good for when you're stressed out; it calms you down."

They did make cool, really beautifully color-study-type abstract stuff! Pics below. 

I asked them to pick out their favorite leaves on the walk to the gallery, which we then dipped into ink and stamped onto our "canvases".

Even in the short 30 minutes I spent with them before they moved on to the next stop on their walk, I feel so good knowing that no matter what their home lives are like, what they've been through, and how they felt about existence that day, for 30 minutes they let go of everything to make artwork amidst some really awesome paintings. 

One small boy whose hand had turned completely pink from the ink (sorry parents...)  turned to me and said simply, 

"I want to live here", to which I replied, "Me too, man... me too."