Ferguson

To be totally honest I'm not active on news sites; but surprisingly being on Tumblr has opened my eyes to a lot of global/political events that have been going on not just in the country but around the world. One of the most active stories that broke out this year was the massive protests that broke out on the small town of Ferguson, Missouri.
On August of this year, 18 year old black teen Michael Brown was shot multiple times by white police officer Darren Wilson. Brown was unarmed and apparently had his hands up, running form Wilson when he was fatally shot 6 times at the back of the head.
Multiple witnesses  have reported that Brown did not fight back, retaliated, or threaten the officer in any way. While the police reports say the Brown did assault Wilson.
Wilson did not suffer any consequences; he as not been fired from his job. He has been put on paid administrative leave. Certain information had been tailored to Wilson's favor as well as the Ferguson police, and to paint Brown as a thug.
This caused massive backlash from the Black community. The people of Ferguson began to protest the leave of Wilson only to be met with violent reaction from police. As the situation snowballed the riots got so bad, military action had to be taken. Tanks were roaming the streets of Ferguson. The community also took the social media where the story exploded all across different platforms; especially twitter. Even to this day the Ferguson and Mike Brown hashtags keep appearing on the popular searches on twitter. Pictures and videos of the protests have gone viral.
Today Wilson has still suffered no consequences for the murder of Mike Brown. Browns Family are planing to take the case to the UN, while a trial in the US is still on hold. Posts and tweets are still very active on social media; as well as images of the protests and evidence still circulates the internet.

Favorite Blogger(?)

So I follow a lot of people on my social media. The ones I use the most art Tumblr and Instagram. I try to find and follow artists and always on the hunt to discover more. There are a lot of people who I enjoy viewing their content. One of my favorite people who I follow is a Mexican Artist named Crystal Galindo.

I first discovered Galindo on Instagram, when I was searching for cool artwork, thats when I found images of her paintings. Her work focuses on Mexican culture and Women. She mainly does these extremely detailed portraits of friends of Mexican/Hispanic women or self Portraits surrounded by Aztec/Mexican symbolism and imagery. She is a feminist and very active in social and political activism. Posting about issues in the Latino Community, sexism, racism, etc. She has become a personal inspiration in my own artistic journey.

Heres her website: http://www.crystalgalindo.com

Tumblr: http://crystal-celeste.tumblr.com

Instagram: http://instagram.com/crystal_celeste

Online Curation (Pinterest)

So I recently got a Pinterest, and It's pretty interesting. I like that its straight forward and has a large data base. Its very useful for inspiration and research as well as just to find cool fun or useful resources. It will be useful for my research project as well as inspirations for paintings and other projects. One good thing about Pinterest is that All the images or articles are sourced back to its original site so attribution shouldn't be so hard. I'll be sure I pick images that can be properly cited. I can use it for almost anything, even to just kill time. Some say it can get pretty addicting but so far I haven't found myself there quite yet. Might happen in the coming weeks, who knows??

Link to my profile if any of you are interested in what I've pinned :)

Pinterest Page

Everything is a Remix: Copyright laws and what that means for artists/ designers (or anyone really)

         There was this really cool, interesting, very informative video/documentary? about Copyright laws and how that applies to basically everything. It's called "Everything is a Remix" and it proves the one thing that most people don't really want to admit. Everything thats created, invented, or made is at the end, a derivative of something else. Even that derivative was influenced by something else that came before it, and so on.
          "Creation Requires Influence" is the quote that justifies this. Its pretty much impossible to creative something without any form of "copying" modifying or sampling. Even todays most successful artists, designers, entrepreneurs, engineers, inventors, etc have been guilty of doing this at least one if not throughout their whole career. There is a huge difference between influence, and straight up copying someone else's work and calling it our own.
            Based on this, there are two "remixes" that come to my mind.
First is the popular Nicki Minaj song "anaconda" which uses a samples of "Baby Got Back" throughout the whole song. Minaj rapes her verses, while the sample music is used as a template:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17O3lL1aUrg

          Another example of a "remix", which I personally thing is a straight out theft of art work is Jeff Koons's "Dr. Dunkenstein" from his series "Equilibrium", a Nike poster from the 1970s of former Utah Jazz player Darrel Griffith. This poster came from another artist who came up with, and photographed the concept for the poster. All Koons did was frame it and called it his art. Unfortunately I have not found the original artist for the Nike Campaign.

             Copyright laws have both pros and cons. While the intention of these laws are to protect the works of these creators, a lot tend to be extremely vague and therefore easier to sue and get money from basically anyone. They breach the nature of the internet and its foundations, like fanwork, which is a giant culture of the online world. Anyone who creates fan art or fan fiction can easily be sued. Same goes to basically anything with any amount of copyrighted images, songs, even mentions.

Activist art: Research

    For my Digital Research project, I have decided to my project on the topic of Activist art and its relation to Civil Rights movement into present day.
     As an artist myself, I aspire to make work that deals with social issues and my experiences dealing with sexism, racism, and classism. My main mission as an artist is to tell my stories, as they are just as important as anyone else's, despite being a woman and an Latina. I want to prompt social change with my art, have young girls look at it being able to relate but feel empowered that they can one day do the same in any form, despite what they may encounter from others, being told that they will never be strong enough to make a change.  I've encountered the same growing up from my teachers and even my family as well as other adults.
    I have gained a lot since deciding to pursue art. I have been able to discuss things that I have gone though, that I have been scared from, that still hurt me to this day though making paintings and drawings and prints. Even if its just a painting of an emotion or a bunch of emotions from having them locked away to being able to bring out into the world in a visual form is a powerful  experience. I have surprised myself from how far  I am willing to go to get my point across. Those are the pieces I am most proud of.
    A lot of inspiration comes from looking at Activist art. More specifically Feminist art and art by   Women of color or Artists from different countries that have experienced far damaging events and experiences in their lifetime, based on historical circumstances or societal situations. Their work is important and extremely powerful and becomes a part of history even to this day.

In beginning my research I came across this great resource website called theartstory.com which lists a number of art movements including the Feminist art movement. It details its history along with a list of prominent Feminist artists dating back to the 1950s to Contemporary Feminist artists as well as a lists a quotes about Feminist art and analysis of famous pieces. Upon looking at the list of Feminist artists found a Cuban artist named Ana Mendieta, a Multimedia artist active in the 60s though 70s whose worked focused on the violence inflicted on the female body. here are a few images of her works.








Another artist (and a personal favorite of mine) that I was able to find on the website was Kiki Smith a Sculptor whose work surrounded the ides of the female experience, also focusing on the female body.
here are some of her pieces





I look forward to doing some more research. I will probably focus on feminist art but be sure to round it out with art dealing with other issues such a queer art and art dealing with racism. It will definitely help me personally with my own body of work so I'm definitely excited about it.

Identity and Privacy

Its only been within the past few months that I've started posting and sharing my artwork online; my work is the main source of content I post publicly. I want everyone to see my art, to discover it, to take an interest in it. It's a gateway to my mind, my interests, opinions about the world. A lot of people think that they have control of what the put online and who gets access to it, and they do for the most part. People chose what to say, what to post, and how to go about it; its all a choice. The scary thing is, whether you realize it or not, your information is in the hands of a lot more companies than they think. Just the past week I was reading some articles about privacy online when I came across this one:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/spring-cleaning-who-has-access-to-your-data/

It was basically a how-to for cleaning up some of your privacy settings on your Facebook. Before then, a lot of the apps I used I signed in through my Facebook so I wouldn't have to go through the annoying process of getting another username and password. I literally had no Idea that the app uses this technique to get your information through your account. When I finally looked up how many apps had my information, and I was shocked to see how many apps I've accessed though my account, apps I haven't used in years, apps I don't even remember using!
I immediately cleaned though about 250 apps. They all had my name, age, gender, birthday, email, and list of my friends. I don't even think it cleared that information from those companies, It just denied access to my info from now on. They all had this much access for such a long time without my even thinking about it for a second. It really hit me that I don't have as much knowledge of who or what had my info as I originally perceived.
I know my super personal information, like the stuff I have on my personal Facebook isn't exposed because of my privacy settings. If anything gets out thats controversial or provocative, It will be thought my art work. Thats how the world will get into my head.
A lot of adults seem to think young people don't really care what they put online or who will see it, sure we see a lot of "scandals" online exposing young peoples photos or silly Facebook or twitter posts all the time, but I don't think that the mistakes of the few (I know its ALOT more than a few) shouldn't really speak for the whole. There are just things I think a lot of kids and young adults have become desensitized too and don't create such a shock online anymore. Thats not to say we can all do some cleaning up and inspection of your privacy settings from time to time. Especially if we are looking for a job, the internet has become the new recruit grounds for companies. I also don't think just because we should be more careful with what we put online and how we perceive ourself, we shouldn't have to censor ourselves. The internet is an amazing space for discussions, opinions, movements, declarations, It has the power to change the world, and so do we.

My art

Hey whats up :)
As I mentioned in my first post, I am an artist.
Currently I am an art student going to school in New York city. I am in my Junior year. I've done a lot of the usual things such as drawing, painting and sculpting. I am mainly a painter as its my favorite medium. Although I am getting into printmaking this current semester. I wanted to share one of my painting series I did last spring. They're all acrylic paint embellished with this sequin like medium I mixed with the paint.  They are all quite huge and each painting stands at least 4 feet tall. 

This series was about exploring acrylic (this was the first time I've used acrylic paints as I was very attached to oil beforehand) as well as experimenting with textures and color. These paintings are my absolute favorite pieces I've made in school so far. 

I hope you enjoy! I'll be sure to share more of my work with you soon :)