This month we will have additional programming from artist, is. is will be hosting, Sip & Craft, May 23rd from 5 pm to 7 pm. While sitting outside in the backyard, we will craft together with recycled bottles or whatever materials you bring along. Tools, materials and luxury waters will be provided. Or bring your own post-consumer materials for reinventing.
Artist statement: is = curates connection to self, other and nature, through many different media, reflecting experience as an educator, performer, artist, and linguist. As a trained art director and aspiring cultural architect, big picture solutions are envisioned to address how we interact with the spaces around us, including the people within them and ourselves. Newfound approaches to conflict resolution, diplomacy, and expression lay at the heart of this work.
Super grateful for all that came out to @thefrontnola last night. And for doing this first show with such an amazing group of artist-creatives plus the whole crew of artists who put in much work to keep this gallery up and thriving. Last night was super fun. And at closing time, looking back at the lights showed something unexpected.
Performing with @blocosereia and seeing the magic of the lights on the night sky was so cool. My mom is all about colorful lights, just starting to lean in to it.
The last week or so of getting the show up, it was revealed that it's also about ancestors, aging, life cycles and how precious this life is that we've been blessed to enjoy.
Super mega shout-out to @jwgoedert whose installing brilliance got this work up in the air. And to @lalaflowaa for all the things.
❤️
“Meditations on living with blight” was the first subtitle for this show, “Ephemerist.” Blight — as in allowing a thing to get so deteriorated that it falls away. Living in Black neighborhoods, well, mostly their suburbs/peripheries, you learn to see when a neighborhood is about to turn. The prejudice of architecture shows up, not just in the angularity of buildings, but in little happenings popping up around you.
Sure, there are neighborhood cleanups, and we do our parts, but it means something to see trash like a second pavement, how do you live with it — blight? Anyways, the act of reimagining offered meditative moments to consider how many ways I can make a change by cleaning up my act.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to @thefrontnola for @givenoladay . It's really cool to feel the electricity in the air on one day of people giving to help support people working to service people.
Tonight was my first time in the gallery for a show in my own room. It's a different feeling, I tell ya. And calls in a surge of appreciation for all that so many people are doing to share their creativity and problem solving in times like these.
It is incredible that we can be inspired to stretch ourselves, to think outside of boxes, to return to ways of ancestors; making, reusing, reinventing. Creativity = salve.
❤️ @lalaflowaa@movingpicshow@ayeshatjordan@delia@animal.fm@lubazygarewicz ...
I'm stunned and honored to be presenting my first installation @thefrontnola this weekend alongside amazing collective-mates @sly.watts@tay836tay and @dejamojo bringing in @_a_correspondence This has been an incredible journey of learning about self and other, choice and...well, you get the point. Hopefully we will see you there! And would also be so honored if you'd consider contributing to The Front for the last two hours before Give Nola Day ends. Grateful to be an artist in a group of artists collectively keeping a gallery up and thriving, especially in these times when our voices as creatives are needed most. With gratitude and love. ❤️is
/organization/thefront
This upcoming Saturday will open up our new shows. In Room 1, we will have artist is, @is_ing with a show titled, Ephemerist. There will be a multitude of different mediums including post consumer material waste of deconstructed and reconstructed water bottles, aluminum cans, grommets, bells, dried ginger leaves and palmetto stalks, sequins and seed beads, thread, wire lot, copper wire, fishing line, Times Picayune articles on water and trash.
“Ephemerist” offers an invitation to examine daily consumption habits and think ahead to how these may be transformed as we restructure the type of world that works for all. As things fall apart, we are encouraged to turn to thoughts of reconstruction, and how we may use curiosity, wonder and imagination to create something new amidst the wreckage.
is turns a mass of post-use, gallon water bottles into a meditation on blight, reindustrialization, and other challenges facing her chosen home of the Lower Ninth Ward. “Ephemerist” seeks to bring to life questions of how one moves around blocked thoroughfares if proposals like the Grain Train or Industrial Canal lock expansion were materialized.
📡Have you ever had a book, poster or flyer printed at Antenna’s print shop located at Antenna:6330? If so, you’ve probably been supported by our Lead Print Production Specialist is - @is_ing
📡Our Communications Coordinator FreeQuency @freequencyspeaks caught up with is this past fall for a brief profile about their work at Antenna, their work as an integrated artist, their dreams of visiting Black port cities with a shipping container full of art and the “wholing centers” they build for Black folks to move through collective trauma
📡Check out the profile and other posts such as Second Saturday photo recaps and Interviews With Exhibiting Artists now on our blog TRANSMISSIONS over on the Antenna website (link in bio) or comment “is” to have the post sent directly to you!
Come celebrate our living legend Stevie Wonder at “Love, Stevie” being held at Drawathon* this weekend. Festivity info below.
Saturday, 5pm, Marigny Opera House, Drawathon.
5pm: Draw your inner visions
5:30pm: Recreate Wonder’s Works (album cover drawing)
6pm: “Love’s in Need” choir, group singalong.
Followed by Album Jam 5: Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions”, analog group sing & play, all levels
Hosted by SLO Media Group. We love you Stevie!
*It’s Drawathon’s 20th anniversary! Check it out at the Marigny Opera House, from Saturday (29th) at noon to Sunday (30th) at noon. Free, all ages and open to the public.
