Value: In Terms of Iconography
VALUE FEATURED IN PHOTOVILLE
Hi 👋🏾 party people. We are so excited to share a collaborative project that we have been working with Erin Patrice O’Brien on. Let’s start at the very, very beginning. We met Erin Patricia O’Brien a few years back while working under a different name. We were not new to her images as she is a veteran in the game of photography. One of our members has fond memories of going through vibe magazine, swooning over O’Brien’s work, and pretty much beginning to carve her own creative identity.
Creativity doesn’t live in a vacuum. We firmly believe that everyone is inspired by everything that they take in around them from images, sound smells, movies, experiences etc. The ability to see yourself or the potential of yourself in terms of being a woman, being black, being a person of color in mainstream and celebrated is such an honor and a gift as far as personal development goes. As creatives that identify as ‘arrangers’, we are often collecting things both literally and conceptually that serves as a palette for us to work with. It has been a real fun time to include Erin Patrice O’Brien’s archives in the mix of that palette. We sit on the back of so many other creatives who have paved the way for us, This project is a homage, archival study, and celebration of all the shoulders that we sit on.
We had the pleasure of going through O’Brien’s archives and remixing them in celebration of the value it is to see yourself in terms of iconography.
This project has been in the works for a little bit over a year. We wanted to make sure that it has its proper reverence as it does deal with value. We are super excited to announce that some of the images from this collaboration along with additional collages and photographs by Mz. Icar will be on display in downtown Brooklyn as part of this year’s Photoville exhibition.
The work will be on public display at Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 4 Beach September 17th -November 29th
Very limited edition prints are for sale please hit us up, mz@mzicar.com for the price list.
ABOUT PHOTOVILLE
The Photoville Festival, New York City’s FREE premier photo destination, returns for a ninth year in a different way – online community and artist programming plus photo exhibitions in public spaces throughout New York City.
This annual community gathering features public exhibitions, virtual storytelling events, artist talks, workshops, demonstrations, educational programs, and community programming. The Photoville Festival provides an accessible venue for photographers and audiences from every walk of life to engage with each other, and experience thought-provoking photography from across the globe – with free admission for all!
Check out the website photoville.nyc for more details.
STUDY UP
STUDIO VISIT: STUDY UP
In this week’s studio visit we explore a few archives of painting studies. The following are the pieces featured. They are all available for sale. Contact us at mz@mzicar.com.
Title: Paint Study #1005
Size: 13 Inches X 19 Inches
Medium: Plastic Sleeve, Acrylic, Paint on paper
Year: 2018
Title: Paint Study #1006
Size: 13 Inches X 19 Inches
Medium: Plastic Sleeve, Acrylic, Paint on paper
Year: 2018
Title: Paint Study #1004
Size: 13 Inches X 19 Inches
Medium: Plastic Sleeve, Acrylic, Paint on paper
Year: 2018
Title: Paint Study #1003
Size: 13 Inches X 19 Inches
Medium: Plastic Sleeve, Acrylic, Paint on paper
Year: 2018
This is what happens when your peeps put you onto ‘Alone’. Check out our remix of this week’s studio visit
THE FUTURE...IF YOU WANT IT
THE FUTURE... IF YOU WANT IT
In this week’s studio visit we do some time traveling in this video and we play outside. Please check it out and share with yer friends and frienemies.
Enjoy our latest studio visit and share it with a friend.
There are a lot of things you shouldn’t really be sharing these days but this vid isn’t one of them 🙂
BLACKOUT
We are going to tell you a true story.
there were these people who lived here, all over, and did things a particular way…as people do. then some other people came from a far place. they came because they couldn’t figure out how to be seen where they lived. these poor people, because they were never seen, they didn’t know how to see. they used this to justify and enforced dumb rules that continued not to see people and smoosh people. These folks were so blind that after the smooshing, they traveled far and brought more people that they refused to see, so that they could create little towers to sit on top of and overlook people and places that they couldn’t see. they also told the world, that this is the most wonderful place for being seen. so if they are having trouble being seen, come here, help build some towers and be seen…just a little more then the folks they brought and the folks they smooshed, but not very much. the people who they couldn’t see started removing the bricks of the towers. when the towers started to shake the blind folks picked a representative from the folks they refused to see and tried to prove that they could see, by seeing that particular representative. this was done so they couldn’t be accused of having vision problems. it did create a bit of confusion, and some residual blindness amongst the unseen. this got the unseen folks to slow down the dismantling of the towers. this went on for many years, but the towers were still being slowly dismantled from many angles. in fact, this went on so long that the unseen started to outnumber the vision-impaired folks. then the super high towers fell. after they fell, the light was so bright that all folks had to learn to see again.
i see you.
you will see me.
This is from an installation created in 2016…we been saying.
STUDIO VISIT: THAT NEW NEW
THAT NEW NEW
This period of isolation has been wonderful for us in the studio. There are so many concepts, ideas, and collaborations that we have started and have been unable to finish due to commissioned work. This break from traditional gathering and socializing has allowed us to dive into these more and focus our efforts on that work.
That being said we do feel a lot of guilt around finding pleasure in this and our hearts go out to everybody who has been affected by this virus. The death toll is insane and very hard for us to wrap our heads around, as well as the economic and emotional effects that this has had on the world. We also have our emotions around the treatment of Black Folks, senseless murders and attacks on joy. We do believe at any given moment multiple realities and perspectives are going on all the time. There is the reality and experience that we are having and there is the reality and experience that every other being is having as well. We acknowledge and hold space for all of those.
Let’s chat about our lastest processes, experience and manifestations. In this studio visit, we share our process, our thoughts, our themes of exploration as well as our collaborative projects. We are gearing up for a show called ‘The Church of expansion’. It will include a series of collages prints canvases banners and other mixed-media works. It also includes the collaboration print series with Erin Patrice O’Brien. We also chat about the origins of our character Matilda and an animation project that has Tanya Farmer teaching her (and you) yoga.
Enjoy our latest studio visit and share it with a friend.
There are a lot of things you shouldn’t really be sharing these days but this vid isn’t one of them 🙂
LOVE LESSONS: STUDIO VISIT
LOVE LESSONS
There are so many ways to love. Some are so complex and others are so simple. It’s always been amazing that you can tell the way a person or creature has been loved often by the way they carry themselves and express love. Unfortunately, when love is lacking sometimes folks interact with that person as if they do not deserve to be loved. When I was a child I use to get so annoyed with my mother priming me. She would carefully do my hair to ensure there were no fly-a-ways. She should make sure I never left looking wrinkled or full of holes or dirty and the most agitating was that right before she would drop me off at school she would lick her thumb and get my eyebrows right. While I would pull away and say stop licking me. As an adult, I realized that she was creating visual markers to tell the world that I was cared for, valued, and should be treated as such. It was her way of putting a lil love bubble around me before I went into a space without her. That’s one example of sharing and expressing love, and there are tons. This group of work explores a few of them.
Enjoy our latest studio visit.
All of these pieces are available hit us up if interested mz@mzicar.com
WIGGED OUT
WIGGED OUT
Let’s chat about hair. Particularly the hair that grows out of the top of most folks head. This crown and glory is often a hot topic in the Black community, often representing politics status, and culture. Basically we don’t play when it comes to hair. This hair thing has a long history and has often been a battle and struggle for many women when it comes to acceptability politics, natural vs processed. We love that our hair represents something ‘unique’ for some audiences but at the same time in the past we have had trouble with the amount of time that this consumes with Black folks, ‘is this hair appropriate?’ thinking, hours spent in salons, decision making such as not swimming to ensure not ruining the hair. Time is a valuable asset, careful how it is spent, but grooming and self-love practice is never wasted time. Is it a practice of self-love to create or desire something that you don’t have, or is the costuming fun and games? It’s just a matter of finding balance. Basically we just have trouble with things that hold folks back and often wonder if hair falls into that. Years ago (and to this day) we occasionally take on the topic of hair, as both a celebration and a weight.
Enjoy our latest studio visit which explores Hair.
All of these pieces are available hit us up if interested mz@mzicar.com
TOLD YOU SO
TOLD YOU SO
Welcome to another week our archival studio visits. This week’s visit will be centered around the theme ‘I told you so’. One of the amazing aspects of having the opportunity to exercise creativity is that it puts the artist closer to the pulse and vibration of what’s going on and maybe sometimes even ahead of the game. All of these featured pieces represent that. All of the work featured in this grouping were a bit forward-leaning for their time, but super relevant now. At the time we were imagining kinda dark futures.
We don’t really create in that vain these days. I guess you needed to be where you were at to get to where you are now. If that was super confusing, just know that you are here 🙂
All of these pieces are available hit us up if interested mz@mzicar.com
THOTS ON ARCHIVING
THOTS ON ARCHIVING
I’m not going to lie. We spend a lot of time running around like our heads are cut off. This quarantine time has been a good moment for us to collect our thoughts, align with purpose, get our inventory together and just take a breath.
Before world war COVID broke out we had a chance to get up with our friends and visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for a talk on archiving. They were specifically discussing hip hop journalists archiving, under the overarching theme of archiving Black culture. As collage artists and magazine junkies, this was so up our alley. Funny enough we happened to be in the middle of our own archiving process. We were painstakingly going through all of Junkprint’s old work categorizing measuring, storing and pricing all work to make all pieces available for purchase. Because after all if it hasn’t been archived did it even exist? And if you are relying on social media networks to create your archives keep in mind, it’s rough to build your house on other people’s property.
This time of isolation allowed us not only time to work on new pieces, but It also allowed us space and time to carefully curate video studio visits. Each week we will be pulling between 3-5 pieces of artwork and explaining the context and process of creation and how they came to exist. This group of work will be a combination of Junkprints archives as well as new Mz. Icar work.
We will be releasing the videos on YouTube, IGTV, and here every Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. Enjoy the first one below
TYPE PLAY
TYPE PLAY
We spend a lot of time playing and working on studies. Many of our projects require experimentation as they are quite tactile. We love the digital world…but real life in where it’s at, touch something fuzzy, taste something sweet, hug a tree small some plants and gaze upon something shiny in real-life, that kind of thing. These are some recent manifestations of that play. They do not have a purpose, application or home per se but one of our members has been musing about a clothing line. it’ all TBD, but in the meantime here’s some manifestations of that play.
