Yay! Recently I was accepted into an artist residency that is science inspired but for artists. It is in Canada and I’ll be there for the week at the end of September and beginning of October. I’m really excited about this. As there will be lab workshops and other inspiring opportunities. I’m also going to be bringing my process with me and will be doing a bit of a ‘show and tell’.
(photo cred sophie lindsey via the Ayatana Researchers facebook)
My artwork was accepted into an exhibition at Boston City Hall starting on September 15th. End date, I don’t know yet, but I’ll post an update when I do get the info. This exhibit is also celebrating artists with disabilities!
EXHIBITION DATES:
September 15th – September 30th
Reception on the 30th from 4-5pm.
The exhibit that Pine Needles is in at the Institute of Human Centered Design will continue to be there until October 1st.
If you are in Boston this fall, stop by and see my two works available at these locations!
My artwork was accepted into an indie magazine called Bitterzoet Magazine! Very excited.
If nothing else, our press is about the heart. Each issue should bring about a sense of connection and matters of the shared human experience. We want to foster a love triangle between the reader, the author, and the words. In reading Bitterzoet (pronounced Bitter -“joot”), we hope to invoke the ideas presented in Anne Carson’s essays on Eros and the Bittersweet. We publish a mostly bi-monthly online magazine and ‘bonbon’ chapbooks throughout the year.
Also got some exciting news about another publication that my artwork was accepted into. I’ll give more details once it’s been finalized!
I received word this morning that my artwork “Fern” was accepted into a Philadelphia based literary online magazine called “Apeiron Review“. The issue will be released mid-September.
This past July, I signed onto a social media/editorial internship at a travel website/blog called Jetsetter Gypsy for the next six months. August 4th, the first round of travel horoscopes was published. You can check them out here!
July 23rd, I went into Boston to attend the reception for the ADA 24th Celebration at the Institute for Human Centered Design. I really wanted this exhibition, and I’m glad that my artwork was accepted! This was pine needles second exhibition (Gallery Ehva was first). The reception was very nice and it great to meet the people behind the exhibition and event. There was a poetry slam after the reception and then my family and my brother’s girlfriend and I went to Ward 6, a really good restaurant near by. Great evening!
I left at 11am this morning to go to an interview in West Babylon, NY for tomorrow. It is an in-house graphic design position. I am excited for it, as the position fit me to a T. I used Airbnb again and my host is lovely. He’s a desktop publishing teacher for the financial sector so I thought it was interesting that I picked his apartment! I went up the day before so I could arrive on-time and stress free at my interview.
The company is called Saberin Systems and they generally make products in technology for the 
financial sector, I guess their office is expanding and they are looking for more internal employees. It looks like the work will mostly be internal and not for external customers.
On the way I passed I wicked cool cafe on Hempstead Turnpike in West Hempstead called The Witches Brew Cafe! It was a bit expensive, but I wanted to try it out because apparently it is a very popular attraction. I had their baked brie and cho hazelnut marsh drink, the baked brie was delicious. I thought it was very good and the decor is very cool! As a gypsy soul I felt very at home there. 🙂
I then walked around a bit and bought milk for breakfast tomorrow. I’m planning on stopping by The Genie Within, a metaphysical store in Babylon before my interview. I don’t expect to buy anything but it’d be cool to check it out at least. I’m also hoping to snap a few photos before I leave.
This is where I sat in the Witches Brew except this is a photo during the winter time
Yay!! My second publication with my artwork. I was notified this week that my “Flowers” was accepted into their upcoming issue. Below is the cover of their last issue:
About Cactus Heart:
When I was entertaining the idea of starting a literary magazine, the name Cactus Heart got lodged in my brain and refused to move. I’m a lover of all plant-life, but the ones that most grab my attention are those bizarre survivalists of the desert: the cacti. Crack one open (if you dare) and find the juicy pulse of what’s inside – the cactus’s heart.
Cactus Heart is, of course, a metaphor for how I believe literature and art should be. It should shock and wound and delight us; it should fill us with delight and terror and mystery. It should survive.
And so Cactus Heart, an e-literary journal, began. The tagline is spiny exterior, succulent interior, and I take that to heart when I consider the work I publish within. I am devoted to spiny writing & art—sharp, relentless, coursing with energy and able to thrive in the harshest of places, all while maintaining a vulnerable, succulent interior.
I have been recently working with a client based out of Universal Studios in California doing an on-going series of posters for club events. It’s good experience, and feeds my creativity – keeps me busy. Recently, said client acknowledged my style and said it was ‘cool’. I thanked him, but it began to have me thinking about what my style is – exactly.
I don’t think I have any particular style… I do my visual and intellectual research and build the design from there. Visual research – as in – paying attention to photographic details or other visual clues. For example, in the poster I recently did for a club called – RAIN – located in Studio City, CA – I noticed that the club was a bit retro-like. Their interiors used geometries and straight edges to provide a modern and contemporary feel – not at all organic and earthy. My client wasn’t feeling the fonts I chose originally, and wanted something a little livelier which I then looked to the photographs for details that I could in corporate into the design. In the end, I chose BOLD, THICK fonts with a neon color to speak to the club atmosphere.
If there is intellectual research needed, I head to google. I research my terms and techniques and see what I can apply to my design.
That’s my style. I don’t necessarily have a ‘visual style’. I think having a specific style as a graphic designer is limiting, and restricting. It’s good to show case a variety of different styles. I enjoy being versatile and consider it being a huge core value to me. I guess being versatile is my style.
Whenever I need to get out of the house just to do something, I’ve been known to take a drive around the neighborhood. I’ve done this a few times since Minuteman and ran across an old abandoned warehouse in Enfield, CT that is up for sale. I thought it would make an interesting nature vs. man series. I also saw using Instagram filters for it. Something about the lighting, coloring and area seemed fit for it. 🙂 Below are my results.
Collection: Abandoned Warehouse
Year: 2014
A series of 2×2″ photographs taken of an abandoned warehouse in Enfield, CT.
Join us in celebrating the 24th Anniversary of the ADA with the juried Poetry Slam winners and juried Art Exhibition by artists with disabilities. Colin Killick, Ekiwah Adler Belendez’s by skype, Kythryne Aisling, Eli Wolff and Mani Iyer will read their poems.
July 23, 2014 at the Institute for Human Centered Design 200 Portland St. Boston, MA 02114
6:30-7:00 PM refreshments and art exhibition
7:00-8:00 PM Poetry Slam
RSVP to Stacy Hart shart@IHCdesign.org
Follow us on Twitter: @NewEnglandADA and join the conversation #ADA24
Directions to the New England ADA Center which is located at the Institute for Human Centered Design.
The Featured Poets
Colin Killick is a poet and disability rights activist based in Somerville, MA, where he is the chair of the city’s Commission for Persons With Disabilities. He has appeared as a featured poet at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA, GotPoetry Live in Providence, RI, and the Parlor Cafe in North Adams, MA. Some of his pieces are focused on disability issues, and his experience with dysgraphia. More information at colinkillick.com and @killickwrites
Kythryne Aisling is a full-time artist, part-time poet, and occasional musician. She is a brain tumor survivor living with C-PTSD and chronic Lyme disease. Most Thursday nights she can be found at Slam Free or Die in Manchester NH, usually wearing too much glitter. In her completely non-existent spare time, she lifts weights and usually manages to avoid dropping the barbell on her head. She has been favorably compared to a poison dart frog, owns a geiger counter and a large collection of hammers, and occasionally actually remembers to eat dinner before midnight. She tweets about work, life, poetry, dis/ability, gardening, shiny objects, raising a toddler, and anything else that crosses her mind at @wyrdingstudios.
Eli A. Wolff directs the Inclusive Sports Initiative at the Institute for Human Centered Design. Eli led a global effort to include provisions addressing sport and recreation within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Eli also participated in the process to establish the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. He was a member of the United States Paralympic Soccer Team in the 1996 and 2004 Paralympic Games. Eli is a graduate of Brown University and is currently pursuing his PhD through the German Sport University of Cologne. He has a creative writing and expression blog: Writing Down a Dream. Twitter handle: @eliwolff10
Mani G. Iyer was born and raised in Bombay, India. He has lived in the United States since 1985. He is deaf/blind due to Usher Syndrome, a genetic disorder that is the leading cause of deaf/blindness in the world. Many of his poems have appeared on www.visionthroughwords.com, a blog site dedicated to writing by and for the visually-impaired and the blind. In September 2013, he was awarded a Poetry fellowship by the National Endowment of Arts(NEA) for a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont. He is currently enrolled in the MFA program for Poetry at Lesley University.
Ekiwah’s poetry opens surprising windows to personal mystical experience delivered with a playful and at times whimsical and irreverent spirit. Much like Gregory Orr, Ekiwah believes poetry can save a life.
Born September 14, 1987, Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez is from Amatlan, Mexico, a small village an hour from Mexico City. The son of a North American father and a Mexican mother, Ekiwah Adler Belendez is the author of five collections of poetry, Soy (I Am); Palabras Inagotables, (Never-ending Words); Weaver (2003), his first book in English; The Coyotes Trace, which features an introduction by Mary Oliver. His journey with poetry began early. At the age of three he recited spontaneous verses to the mountains and at twelve he published his first collection of poetry. His work has been published in diverse poetry magazines and journals in the U.S.
He has given numerous talks, readings and workshops at colleges, high schools and festivals both in Mexico and the United States. Including The Dodge Poetry Festival, The Poetry Therapy Conference, Mythic Journeys and Writing the Medical Experience He has had the pleasure of reading with the poets Li-young Lee, Coleman Barks, Franz Wright, and Mary Oliver. Some of his work is featured on blueflowerarts.com. and on his website www.ekiwahadler-belendez.net
Ekiwah’s name means warrior in Purepecha, an indigenous languageof Mexico. His name is a fitting one. He has had to embrace the challenges and learn to accept the gifts of being born with Cerebral Palsy and using a wheelchair. His latest work, Love on Wheels, deals with coming to grips with the richness and complexities of life in a wheelchair, taking into account its symbolic connotations as well. Love on wheels also explores the relationship between poetry disability and sexuality – a theme that often is not so nakedly addressed.
Ekiwah also offers poetry workshops for people with and without a physical disability. As well as workshops to parents and teachers who work with people with disability. A graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock and Hampshire College, where he studied poetry, theater, and world religions he spends his most of his time Mexico, where he was born and raised, and travels frequently to the U.S.
