MS. LAURYN HILL SPECIAL PROJECT
MS. LAURYN HILL
I spent a good chunk of early this year and last year working on visuals for Miss Lauryn Hill’s 20th anniversary Miseducation World Tour. It was a life-changing experience to be able to work with such an iconic creative and one that has inspired me so much. It is a real honor and I am so grateful for the opportunity. Some of the images and things are still in the work so we can’t share it all but here’s a sneak peek of some of the things that we have been working on including graphics and designs for afrochella and merch for various pop up throughout the tour we were also very honored to be able to showcase our work in her curated digital exhibition across the world.
"farewell to meat" CARIBANA 2019
"FAREWELL TO MEAT" (UPDATED)
Hiya peeps!!
Catch me this Sunday working on a live large canvas piece in celebration of Toronto’s Caribana 2019.
Did you know that the Latin derived name of the holiday ‘carnaval’ means “farewell to meat” I will be exploring this theme in terms of the objectification of black bodies and farewell to that notion.
Catch me this Sunday, Aug 4th, 2019 at
Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8
Many thanks to @harbourfrontcentre
And @supafrik fo inviting me out.
See ya soon t-dot peeps
And @toughdumplin will def be around.
Update. Here’s the final piece
REMIXED!
REMIXED
I love museums but I really have to be in the mood to go. It’s so hard to go into these institutions that basically have erased your whole existence, or minimize it ie: minimal inclusion for tokenism. That’s why I tend to go on the pay what you wish for the free days. I figure they have enough rich people upholding the racist ideas of the institution. I’ll just mosey on in and go for free because I feel like my people have paid enough, be it inspiration or sheer labor or continuing to be ‘the help’.
It’s interesting, as I walk through this whole exhibition all I see is the designer’s access, access to money, access to materials, access to audience, and access to media. I wish I didn’t recognize one third to half of the designers, but access seems to buy you a piece of the audience whether they like it or not. This access is so cloudy that it’s hard to tell if this work is amazing, or if it just had so much access that it is revered. The recognition of the designers, itself just gives the whole exhibition more gravity than I’d like to.
I’ll always be inspired by color texture pattern so it goes without saying that this exhibition is inspiring but I can’t help but feel that something is missing…oh yeah, designers of color.
Ironically the exhibitions is guarded by docile looking black people dressed up like butlers.
Side note funny story. I once went out one night in Philadelphia wearing these exact shoes only to be turned away by the doorman saying that women had to wear heels and I was out of dress code. Ironic to see these exact same shoes in an exhibition in the Philadelphia Museum of art. I guess it all depends on who’s wearing them.
The gatekeepers of history and culture seem to have those little blinders on like a horses that you see carrying people around in New York on little wagons. With blinders, one has such a limited view and the casualties of the limitations include all the people that helped inspire influence and push these fashions and art. Sometimes it feels as if they are purposely placing invisibility to all these other people that exist.
Don’t worry I won’t leave you hanging. Here’s a few notable fashion related pieces that highlight the participation and role of Black culture in fashion. The Nod did an amazing episode on the Battle of Versaille, called ‘Chitlins at Bergdorfs.’ In 2015 Sacha Jenkins directed a pretty cool doc called ‘Fresh Dressed’ that focuses on urban fashion and its role in main stream. The Mz. Icar team and I decided to remix this exhibition because we will pull up a seat at any table we want to.
Collage/ Illustration by Mz .Icar
photos courtesy of @jendayiasha, c.kennebrew and Junkprints archive// Select shoot Production by: @ediomi @efikokostudios // makeup: @_brittanyrogers // hair: @tierras_hair_artistry // accessories: @statement92
models: @mariosimonee, @annett_ka26, @sheshe_themodel
ARMOUR
ARMOUR
We stayed cultured, but we also stay maaaad suspect (insert raised eyebrow). Here are some notes from a recent trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The concept of armour is such a ‘white man’ ideology. Obviously all of these armoured gear were made in Europe. The whole idea of being so heavy and covered with limited agility limited vision and limited dexterity in order to combat an enemy seems utterly stupid. All your opponent needs to do is set you on fire and you’ll immediately burn up/melt in your armour, or they could just run around you in circles because there’s no way that you could possibly defeat anybody running around you in circles. It almost seems as if it’s the whole idea is to be so far away from the problem vs facing it honestly truthfully and with humility.
Ya’ll know how we love solutions and alternative methods so here is a list of alternatives to armour.
- Play dead, when your enemy arrives everyone just drop to the floor like the fiercest death drop ever.
- Chant.
- smile and extent a hand…genuinely.
- if your enemy arrived in armour, just gong them in the head, or do that harlem shake thing that they do in basketball that breaks ankles.
*Since we are talking about European ‘armour’ figured we use that extra ‘u’ in the spelling. The Queen’s English seems to think o’s are lonely. Guess it’s our version of putting some respect on it.
DEAR MAMA
Studio thots:
We have been sitting on this one for a minute! I am so excited to announce our recent work with Essence magazine. One of our Mz’, had the opportunity to paint a three-story mural for the background set celebrating Tonya Louis Lee and Satchel Lee for the may issue. This is currently on the shelves right now it is so fun when you’re commercial and you’re fine art have a chance to mix and match and make babies together.
Roll call, cuz it takes a village to create this type of magic…and the Essence fam has been killing it when it comes to bringing together dope ass black talented women.
Fashion Director @mariellebobo 👗 interview by @missjulee 📝 Shoutout to the creative team: Photographer @ericagenece 📸 Art Director @mochamommy_nyc 🎬 Photo Editor @traceysees 🎞 CCCO @moanaluu 🔌 Set Designer @mz.icar🔮 Makeup Artist @jessicasmalls 💄 Hairstylist @monaeartistry 👸🏽 Manicurist @ginaedwards_ 💅🏾 Video Producer @seanandnotheard
This was painted on a continuous 3 story long 12ft canvas. This was done so that we could rotate the canvas on set resulting in various background settings and layered volume….it is very heavy!
Since we are in a sharing (aka bragging mood) and This essence issue has given us our whole lives and then some in the form of super fun work, great teams and visual candy, let me cleanse your timeline palette with dots. For this one our Mz’ made a series of custom dot backgrounds and a gazillion large dots. A period could never really be enough, a dot is much better suited.
Roll call
Photographer: @itayshaphoto
Wardrobe: @mariellebobo
MUA: @jaleesajaikaran
Haír: @naeemahlafond
Manicurist: @pipbuzzz
Set Design : @mz.icar
Model : @alyseeeuh
MAYDAY, MAYDAY, WHERE ARE THE LADY CODERS?
The project was completely laid out. All the pngs were size then ready for uploading. Sitemap was created. Funds ready to be distributed. All support images and information were ready for the right coder...the right bad ass back slash. bracket genius.
It was really important to us to hire a woman coder preferably a woman of color. This ended up being quite a challenge. We reached out to local coding organizations in which we didn't receive any replies. We also sent out feelers through our community and received a few responses. Most people were not confident about taking on the job. The only people who were confident about taking on the job were white male coders. They were highly professional a pleasure to talk to and I got the sense that the project would have been done smoothly and timely.
Being that we are all about collaboration, empowerment, balance and sustainability we felt that it was important that this job circulated money to women. This proved to be quite the challenge. We finally thought we found our star, but she thought sending screenshots of progress equated to creating a functioning site...le sigh.
The last few months resulted in us becoming so frustrated that we just created our own site in house and kept our funds to ourselves. Now on the surface this may seem like a total win. It's not tho, for the following reasons: 1. it took our time away from making other things 2. It also removed money from the pockets of other women that it could sustain. Being that we are trying to create strong roots through the community, share and collaborate, in many ways this was a fail. We hope to do better in our future projects.
We see ourselves on both sides of this project, the customer and the commissioned and hope that we can be better at both. Perhaps we are writing this as a call or a beacon to rethink the way that we are approaching things and as a reminder not to be so overcome with insecurities about our abilities to serve one another by deliver fantastic work and getting paid for it.
Welcome to the Mz. Icar website. This is just the framework but the beams are in place and we look forward to filling up the space.
LISTS
List are the greatest way to organize things.
List create checkpoints for getting things done.
Sometimes I put very simple things on the list like take a deep breath. Just so that I can check it off.
The feeling of accomplishment is amazing. you should try it. Just put read this post on your list and check it off when complete.
Other times I put things that remain on this for a very long time. Every task isn’t a quickly.
I like looking back at list they remind me of what I saw how I spent my time.
And then make a list about the love of lists.
ART? MONIES? WORTH?
One of our Mz’ was a participant in the early stages of the Contemporary DIY movement including being the first person that Etsy did a video portrait on. Her process is extremely tactile as a move through materials including yarn up-cycled found objects as well as painting and collage techniques. She shared her thoughts on that experience and thoughts on consumption, exchange and art:
The combination of running an online store and having a creative process led me to explore various contracts of exchange economics and resource acquisition these themes are prevalent in the work as I often deconstruct context and value in various manifestations.
My conclusion is that it is harder to be an artist than to make money. Money is simple and binary buy low sell high. It’s a metrics of time and productivity. The hard part about money is we are not metric and binary in human composition. That’s the skill of robots.
Creation part of being an artist is a conversation with the gods, it’s a show up the party butt as naked thing. Its being all up in your feelings. My practice is skill based but themes are intuitive. Unless it’s used as a material or for logistics such as buying supplies, money isn’t useful in the creation stage. In the form of excess or scarcity money is generally more of a hindrance in the creation process.
Here comes the business part of being an artist. That part is a true shit show. Between buyers, curators, gallerist, commissions, day jobs, side hustles, patrons and institutions it has the potential to be the most complicated financial structure that exists.
I never subscribed to the doctrine of being a starving artist. But that’s just me. It’s not fun to be starving, it’s not fun to be able to have to decide whether or not you’re going to put gas in your car feed yourself, I have no false illusions about that. Artist contributes so much to society that it seems ridiculous to have a grumbling belly while you create vision for folks and challenge people to widen perspective. That means that I don’t find any nobility in being a starving artist. I feel like if you can have a conversation with the gods you can also have a conversation with a financial person. Money ain’t everything but options are good and struggle life is struggly. that being said,I’ve been known to be extremely frugal. I go through these periods of time where I decide that I’m not buying anything new or I’m only supporting handmade or locally made goods. Because too much stuff just feels like too much stuff and I can’t quantify the value of my purchases.
THOTS ON HORSES
Often times when we can’t see other people we try to distance ourselves in a way that puts the other person as far away from us as possible. It’s a clever way to justify crimes and injustices committed against that person or group. Just make them very separate from you you don’t have to see the humanity in them. it’s a way to excuse yourself from being empathetic to that person or group of persons. The resolution that one would find for someone that they love or considered a member of one’s community would be much different from that of someone seen as on outsider or not seen at all.
The hyphenation on American is the perfect proximity manager. Its a linguistic divider that acts as a bridge or train track to the ‘other type’ of American. They type that is so far that they almost aren’t. If they ‘aren’t’ then the dignity empathetic and inclusion awarded to those that are isn’t necessary for those that aren’t. The only non hyphenated Americans are white. Everyone else gets that nifty proximity managing hyphen. Case in point the original Native-Americans, the exploited African-American, Asian-Americans etc.
That like hyphen might as well be as long as a trail of tears. I would like to say it’s a celebration of heritage and perhaps sometimes it is, but I feel that it is used more often as a proximity to whiteness manager.
As language does, It’s evolved to reflect the guilt surrounding it. An example of this evolution is the outdated term ‘half-breeds’ which was used to identify people who were partially of the African diaspora and part white in the United States. Better translated “as half of you, half of me, kinda like a horse but not like me at all because I’m not like a horse, you are.”
My artist brain was thinking, wouldn’t the literal version of a half breed would manifest as a centaur? To put a literal figurative component to that particular term as most things that we try to distance ourselves from become so absurd.
Speaking of horses. As a kid I wanted a horse. I wanted to go horse back riding and do competitions like some rich girls I had recently read about. The closest I personally got to acquisition was my little ponies which were fine, because real horse aren’t pink and purple and do not have hearts in there eyes. Well, there was that one time when our next door neighbors from Mexico brought back 2 horse and kept them in their suburban southern California back yard. The whole block smelled like horse poo and all the kids from the elementary school would crowd the gate to see them.I didn’t want a horse any more it seemed silly. My grandmother was so annoyed and called the city and that was that the horses were gone. Don’t know where they went maybe sold to those rich girls I was reading about.
Perhaps because, I didn’t have a real horse or stable I figured only like 4 girls had that horsey life. Fast forward to college and I met those pony having girls. They were real. It was weird…it was a thing…and I wondered if they ever thought of girls who didn’t have horses. My conclusion is that it never crossed there pony having minds. At that point I was annoyed with my childself for putting so much thought into them.
CAREBEAR RUG NOTES
Thots on The care bear skin rug: The way that we love things is interesting. You'll meet an avid recreational hunter who will tell you how they love nature so much as they gaze upon taxidermy head on a wall. They love animals so much that they kill them and put them on the walls. It's a strange brand of love. This ownership destroy and conquer type of 'love'. I always find it fascinating the way that we revere things, sometimes to the point of annihilation. The care bear skin rug represents that fascination it's almost as if we can take our childhood simplicities, fantasies of share bear and brave heart bear and put them all together on a rug and put it in our living rooms and that'll be enough and proof of our dedication to peace and love.