Sunday, August 19, 2012

Adventures With JR


You remember JR?
Last week I volunteered to help some students from the Beacon summer program put up posters for JR's Inside Out project. It is a participatory art project in which people upload portraits that are printed on 4x5' sheets. The people then wheatpaste their portraits onto walls. JR is using the money from his TED grant to fund the project which recently met its goal of 100,000 portraits from all over the world.



These are some of the young ladies from the summer art program. They were lovely people and it was a blast working with them. They wanted to send a message against bullying.







































Thursday, August 9, 2012

Looking for dream images


Although I still have a lot of photoshopping to do on my first dream series, I decided that the young son and I needed a break from the city. So we went out to an odd spot in New Jersey where my best childhood friend used to live. It was supposed to become a reservoir, but that plan fell through and the area was declared protected farm space or something. The dream I want to illustrate was about a part of Bed-Stuy where the descendants of freed slaves lived, farming on land that was given to them. The farmhouse in the dream was from this area in New Jersey. We hung out near the canal, everything was so green and calm.
 

The surrounding nature did not deter the young son from his video gaming.
 

This is the house from my dream (with son crossing into the frame). But the reality of the house did not fit with my dream view.
 

I decided that this barn was better for what I am planning.
 

I found this farmer from a group of fsa photos online. The farmer in my dream was older and more grizzled with pride in his eyes. This farmer is at least smiling so I think he will do. It is a small image so I will have to work on it the way I did with my visitation pictures

And I know that New York slaves were freed way before abolition, They probably did not receive any real estate, certainly not any 40 acres, but it is a dreamscape.