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.
Category Archives: Blog
JetSetter Gypsy Travel Horoscopes
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!
Cactus Heart Press
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 Like Your Style!”
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.
Reception at Institute for Human Centered Design
Poetry Slam
June 12, 2014
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.
Photos from Electrolyte!
Click the collage above to be taken to the facebook album.
A Solo Show: Electrolyte!
I had my reception for Electrolyte! yesterday at Groundings! It was a great success and the right amount of time too. I think 2 hours for a reception is good. For Studio19, my reception/party I think was 3 hours, but I guess it depends on the event. It was just enough for me to meet some of the locals and talk about my artwork.
It was fun meeting a woman who happened to work at the photography studio right next to Minuteman Press. She was their photo retoucher and just happened to be there for a massage but enjoyed the artwork as well once she learned more about it.
I want to say there was a small crowd of people at the reception. Which was nice because I did a lot of internet marketing, but I couldn’t get my press release onto any of the media websites because it was membership only. Meh. For refreshments there was snapple, water and soda and we had cookies and a fruit bowl.
Then my parents took me out to tapas food in Northampton, MA. We ate at Ibiza on Strong Ave in Noho. My parents told me that they got married in a park in Noho and wanted to check out the park as well as Main st. At the tapas restaurant we had a lot of delicious food! I even liked some dishes that I normally would turn my nose up at… and that was really refreshing. We had their mussels, crab croquettes, vegetable crepes, meatballs, pork raviolis, short ribs and raw tuna.
Internships are more than Experience
I may be really late into the game with this idea, but it dawned on me after obtaining my social media/PR Intern at JetSetter Gypsy this month that doing internships after college isn’t that bad of an idea. I did the We Party Boston one before I was hired at Minuteman Press, and I forced myself to do that one because I realized that by moving out of the Bethlehem, PA area, I literally had no contacts and no experience in the Boston area.
Internships are more than gaining valuable experience in your field, and unfortunately the word “intern” gets thrown around haphazardly in the business world as a way to gain cheap labor by camouflaging the labor as an “intern” but even the Federal Government states that interns must be paid or compensated in some way for their labor and cannot be ‘free’! But there are some decent internships out there you just have to go hunting for them.
Internships are great if you are looking to branch out in your field into a similar but different area. I applied for the one at JetSetter Gypsy because I am trying to expand my blog more and the owner and I share similar writing styles and I am hoping that by promoting my blog in response to the work I do for her I’ll gain more of an audience. I am also hoping the experience MIGHT bring me into a better position in terms of being a better print designer.
I also get to use my psychic senses by writing her travel horoscopes!
Anyway, I highly recommend taking a second look at internships because they are more than just an experience. By working with someone whose established themselves in the business world you gain a connection. But you also gain insight on the way of life within the business. That’s what I appreciated the most while working at Minuteman Press. I never really got to see what a graphic designer ‘acted’ like in the ‘real world’. All I was told that an in-house graphic design position was ideal. But experiencing something is completely different than idolizing or even reading something on paper.
I can definitely see myself doing internships even when I may be doing freelance full-time or working in-house part-time. I have been searching for a textile/pattern internship. When I interviewed for a stationery house out in Santa Barbara, CA it made me realize what direction I want to go in more than ever.
More Press and Scams
My typical ‘work day’ consists of internet crawls to find artist and exposure opportunities. I spend a couple of days a month doing this because you never know what you might miss!
Recently my artwork was accepted into two publications: Brown Rice Magazine and ICA Publishing both of which are based out of New York. They are both print publications.
Brown Rice Magazine is a self-published and ad-free healthy food zine featuring recipes, food lit, personal essays, tutorials, art, and more. The zine will be distributed locally in NYC and sold online for a small fee. http://brownricemagazine.com/
SCAMS:
ICA Publishing also accepted my artwork, but upon further investigation on the company it turns out to be a scam. To be a TRUE opportunity you shouldn’t have to pay-to-play… (In/Finite Earth wasn’t a pay-to-play) unless they state that the fees are for administration purposes, or goes to the prizes of the competition, etc. I shouldn’t have to buy two books of a publication that I was asked to be in! So disappoint. And the pay-to-play isn’t the normal affordable $10-$50 participation fee of most art competitions/exhibitions I submit work to… they were asking $232 upfront.
ICA Publishing kind of reminds me of the exhibition I participated in Marfa, TX. It was with The Biennial Project, which I appreciate what they do as their mission, but at the same time digital exhibitions are a bit of a scam as well. It was $35 for like three images I think. Which wasn’t bad, during the after math of the event, they never posted photos of the big screen which the artwork displayed and only team photos of their trip to Marfa, TX. Hmm… seems like someone is just trying to make money to go traveling while ‘supporting artists’..
For more information on ‘art scams’ the ARTBUISNESS website has some great information.
Life Updates and such
Yesterday, I installed my solo show at Groundings, LLC in Florence, MA. The installation ran smoothly and everything looks great. It will be up for the month of July.
This past week, I had a doctor’s appointment to figure out the next step for my hearing issues. After not being able to hear the other designer through a cubical at Minuteman that was the last straw for me… I may be in a cubical again in the future and I need to hear… so I had a hearing test and discussed some options and what not. They want to do a scan and figure out the best hearing aid solution for me.
I picked up my artwork from Hilary who juried the Younger than Amy show in Provincetown, MA and asked if I’d like to show some of my work at a chocolate cafe in Orleans, MA called the Chocolate Sparrow. I told her August would probably be good for me, before my schedule changes again.
Wednesday evening, before I left the Cape I was called into Boston for an interview at the Massachusetts Continuing Law Education facility for the art/publication department as a Print Marketing Production Assistant. It had great benefits and was in an area I was familiar with and my resume fit the description to a T. The events that happened following the scheduling happened so fast I was beside myself. I had miscalculated the amount of time I needed to come from Western MA to downtown Boston and was going to be a little late. I emailed them to let them know I was going to be running late – but I will be there. I thought that was OK but as I started my trip, I ran into accidents, and unexpected construction… (I travel the Mass Pike quite frequently and there were new construction areas that popped up that I hadn’t seen before). So I arrived in Downtown crossing around quarter to 2 and didn’t get to the building until 2 pm – my original appointment was at 1:30 pm… I apologized profusely to my interviewer for being late and explained the construction and accidents. He then sat me down in the auditorium and basically told me that I wasn’t worth his time because I was late to the interview and that the bosses in the building are obsessed with deadlines. Fine. Then he continues to tell me that I’m actually overqualified for the position. Great. That’s GREAT feedback – because now I won’t apply to the same position again! No more Production Assistant positions for me! I left right away because I had noticed that Mass Pike East was slow going into Boston and it took me THREE HOURS to get home. I was literally on the road for 5 hours on Friday – UGH.
Excellent Career Advice From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder Reid Hoffman
Excellent Career Advice From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder Reid Hoffman
Gallery Ehva – Younger than Amy
Here’s the photo round-up of the Younger than Amy exhibition.