“Design Activist” would be the most appropriate way to describe American industrial designer Stephen Burks. This young multi-talented visionary, who has worked with some of the world’s most recognizable names in fashion and furniture industry, is changing the we way think about design – one idea at a time. By simultaneously using a top-down and a bottom-up approach he brings together the industrialized world’s gatekeepers of culture with traditional people in remote locales to create sustainable objects and symbiotic relationships.
On Monday February 1, 2010 I ventured into the Javits Center here in New York City in the midst of the International Gift Fair. I was on a mission. I was meeting with Oumar Cisse (AKA Peace Corps Baba) from Mopti, Mali.
Togolese designer, Kossi Aguessy is best known for award winning design for the Stella McCartney perfume bottle. Aguessy who trained in industrial and interior design at Central St. Martins, has worked with Renault, Yves Saint Laurent, Cartier, Swarovski, St Dupont and Branex to create sleek, sensual objects that range from lighting to watches. A consummate artist, Aguessy has exhibited art, sculpture and furniture in Paris, Copehagen, Tokyo, Shanghai and Istanbul.
Suzanne Morlock is an artist who lives outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She is works in painting and more recently sculpture and installation involving more organic materials, paper and felt. Morlock has exhibited in the US and internationally. This posting is drawn from her experiences in the summer of 2009 with Cross Cultural Collaborative, Inc., Teshie/ Nungua, Ghana.
First, a little history – during the 1600’s, groups of escaped and shipwrecked African slaves made their way to St Vincent Island, an island of the Lesser Antilles, the islands that form eastern side of the Caribbean Sea. They mixed with the indigenous Caribs and Arawaks and the Garinagu (that’s plural for Garifuna) were born. They developed a unique language, culture and ritual. Drumming and dance had a central place in the culture.
Have you heard of the YA/YAs of New Orleans? No, I don’t mean the “Divine Sisterhood” of movie fame, but the organization (Young Aspirations/ Young Artists) whose mission is to “empower creative young people to become successful adults.” Founded over twenty years ago by Jana Napoli this organization works to give the youth of New Orleans “educational experiences in arts” and encourage “entrepreneurship…by fostering and supporting their ambitions.”
This is not your little cousin Muffie’s Barbie – not at all. With his limited-edition figurines for Mattel, Fashion Designer Byron Lars plays around with the legendary plastic style icon, keeping all the prerequisite Barbie musts intact – pointy ‘Barbie’ toes, beyond-perfect makeup, posture, and figure – whilst deftly playing around with her overall style dna.
ED: Dr. Arturo Lindsay, is a Professor of Art & Art History at Spelman College, GA
At the Artist Market of the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta this summer I was admiring a silver ring that a vendor was showing me when all of a sudden a burst of brilliant colors emanating from the adjacent stall distracted me, demanded my attention and forced me to walk away from the silver vendor. The brilliant colors were coming from BaBaBlankets’ stall.
The relationship between Black people and our hair has always been a many layered one. Awe-inspiring at best – and mind-boggling at worst – the hair as a medium of self-expression can be simultaneously representative and abstract; take a look at American comedian Chris Rock’s recent documentary, ‘Good Hair’, and you’ll see what I mean.
In my first entry for this blog I posed a series of questions raised by The Global Africa Project. One of them was “How do we define “African” in this age of nomadic and migratory identities?” Serge Mouangue, the Cameroonian designer working in Japan, wrote eloquently in the last Global Africa post about how he copes with the multiple experiences he’s had in Cameroon, France, Australia and Japan.
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