TueNight 10: Hope Meng
Hope is a designer and artist who believes in the power of letters to communicate through both their content and their form. She is the designer behind Monogram Project, and the artist behind TEXT/TILE Studio.
All posts tagged: Art
TueNight 10: Victoria Selbach
In 2008, after spending 20 years in corporate fashion design, Victoria decided to paint full-time — now she can’t be stopped. One of her most compelling series of works: “Godesses“, gorgeous, larger-than-life-size nudes. “I strive to make a deep empathic connection to the contemporary women I paint, capturing their immense goddess power.” You can find Victoria’s work in private collections and exhibits across the country and she curated the PoetsArtists exhibition The Artists Gaze; Seeing Women in the 21st Century where she brought together the perspectives of over 40 artists. Right now, Victoria is researching her next big series: listening to the stories of women and collecting related material and images. “The new paintings will be driven by the truths individual women have grown to know about their own sexuality. These are the stories they rarely share, the complex realities they know to be true about themselves but rarely wear on their sleeve.” 1. On my nightstand: Next to fancy eye shades and YogaToes, I accumulate bits and pieces of items I’ve recently read. Near the top of the heap, torn from the New York …
Healing Arts: In Troubled Times, Artists & Galleries to Support
There is so much happening inside of me as I question everything in the wake of this election’s results, myself and my work included. I’ve been letting the anger that comes fuel my productivity into asking those questions, researching answers and writing out an action plan. I’ve been using the grief that swallows me up to focus on taking care of myself as I process all I’m experiencing. There are so many unknowns ahead but what I do know is that I have my art, and I can use it in the service of others. I know I can use it as a way to keep speaking out, keep disrupting, keep connecting these issues to people in a way that pierces through their defenses. I have art. It has been what’s held me this week and steadied my resolve to keep fighting and standing up against hate. So I thought I’d share with you a list of the artists I personally follow and am inspired by on a daily basis. Their work challenges and informs …
11 Women Who Started Brand New Careers in Midlife— and Never Looked Back
Big changes in career, vocation and lifestyle in midlife or the years leading up to it are more often an evolution than a radical change. I went back to journalism school at 35 because the writing degree I’d started at 18 — and never finished —nagged at me for years. Going from full-time college counselor and teacher to graduate student was intimidating — financially, intellectually and emotionally. It was also one of the best, richest experiences of my life, and, no matter how many zeroes got added to my student loan balance, I have never regretted it. I traveled to Vietnam to cover business growth there. I was a reporter in the arena on the night Barack Obama accepted the nomination for President of the United States. I helped to run a student digital newsroom and emerged as the de facto den mother of several classmates a decade or more my junior. I now have a degree that means I can teach writing if I want to (because I loved teaching too much to leave …
A Healer with a Gun: She Tattoos for Cancer
“Angel of Abundance” watercolor and tattoo. (Photo courtesy of Amy Justen/@shhhmagic) In 2016 it’s not unusual to find out your co-worker has an elaborate sleeve tattoo hidden under her Ann Taylor blouse. But in 1990, when Amy Justen was a student at The Art Institute of Chicago, “tattoos were still very much part of the subculture of rebels,” says Justen. When Amy’s cousin, a Hell’s Angel fully engaged in the biker lifestyle, invited Amy to apprentice in his shop in Texas, she decided this was “not a career path for a young woman from a good Catholic family.” She stayed in Chicago and completed her art degree instead. After graduation, while Amy was pursuing a career in fine art, earning critical acclaim but not enough cash, two Chicago tattoo artists, Robert Hixon and Wayne Borucki, encouraged her to pick up a tattoo gun. “I was super green and had no idea what I was doing,” Amy says. “Tattooing is an unforgiving art form. I had to put all other mediums aside while I learned. It still blows …
I Rarely Play Any Prince Songs. So Why Am I Crying?
The day of Prince’s death, I, like you and everyone you know, was distraught. For hours, my despair was haughty and demonstrative. But late last Thursday night, there was a pause in my grief. It came around 11 p.m., which is just about the time that my aunt said this: “But I never hear you play any Prince songs….” Her voice trailed off, stopping short of a direct accusation. But the implication had been cast, and it was damning enough to stop my mourning in its tracks. Was I not enough of a hardcore Prince fan to be in such hardcore distress? In the wake of a famous musician’s death, the only thing worse than being outed as a non-fan is being outed as a semi-fan acting like a fanatic. I know diehard Prince fans. Fans who go to the annual Prince vs. Michael Jackson Soul Slam dance parties. Fans whose homes are decorated with lithographs en homage to the purple one. Fans who can tell you every member of every one of Prince’s offshoot …
A “Young American” Remembers David Bowie
Bowie was my everything music – the alpha and omega. He was the artist who singlehandedly turned me on to sound. So when he passed yesterday, I was demolished. In his last album Blackstar, Bowie continued to tweak musical boundaries, creating a bleaker version of himself — a Major Tom still in outer space. In hindsight, his customarily freaky and brilliant videos clearly hint at his coming demise. I wrote a little something a few years ago for my friend Nancy Davis Kho’s Midlife Mixtape site about one of my favorite Bowie albums that was still in heavy rotation — Young Americans. On the occasion of his passing, I thought I’d share that here. I’ll miss you David. Gone but never, ever forgotten — your legacy lives on in every musician and fan. ** As an 8-year-old in mid ‘70s Philadelphia, I’d rise most school days to the snap and crackle of WFIL-AM, and the Bay City Rollers, Starland Vocal Band or Hot Chocolate imploring me to get up, “you sexy thing.” Whatever that meant. (I also used to sing, “Voulez vous couchez avec …
7 Handmade Gifts for Your Girlfriends
(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight) Here at TueNight we love to think of ourselves as crafty and creative, but the fact is we’re busy and distracted and still haven’t quite finished that scarf we started knitting in 2007. That’s why we’re grateful for our relationship with Great.ly and the textile designers, artists, jewelry makers, knitters and carpenters who actually put their tremendous skills to use. There’s no better way to say “I care” than by giving something handmade while supporting a true artisan. You can finish that scarf next year. 1. Flower Designs Coloring Book For your work friend who knows more about your daily life struggles than your mom does. These grown-up coloring books are ravishingly pretty yet inexpensive enough to justify as a sweet treat. And there’s a reason these books are trendy among stressed-out adults; they’re highly meditative. $15, great.ly 2. Gold foil lip print There’s something so Debbie Harry about these luxe gold lips. Remind your old college pal of your youthful indiscretions with this fabulous minimalist print. $43, great.ly 3. Leather …
Fear and Listings in Philadelphia
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in the Philadelphia City Paper July 19, 2001. As a former Listings Editor myself, I can 100% identify. — Margit Lots of people ask me, “What’s it like to be a listings editor?” I tell them it’s sort of like being shot into a cannon every day. Other people ask me, “What does a listings editor do?” I hate people. The short answer is this: All week long I get press releases and calendars from local galleries, rock venues, artists, musicians, comedy clubs, hospitals, rodeo planners, fetishists, support groups, cat lovers, etc. My crafty fleet of interns and I sort the press releases into little piles and type them into humorless little summaries. Then something magic happens when I sleep and the listings show up in the paper. But this hardly explains my job here. To help you see the world through the Listings Editor’s eyes, I decided to keep a log of a typical day in my professional life. Mon., July 9, 9 a.m. sharp. I arrive …
Anatomy of a Working Relationship (and a Sustainable Skateboard)
Frieda Premo, Brooklyn girl, riding a Bucket Board. (Photo courtesy Mac Premo) The first time my husband told me his idea, I wanted to throw up. Not because it was a bad idea — but because it was an idea that I could envision really, truly coming to life. My husband Mac is an artist who has spent the last two decades building with junk, er, found objects. He shows in a Chelsea gallery that features collage art, and he recently turned a 30-yard dumpster into a traveling collage. So when he was approached by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to create a piece of art out of trash, it wasn’t totally surprising. The WWF’s “Do The Green Thing “ campaign, in conjunction with Earth Hour, invited 15 artists to create something to inspire conscious, sustainable living, and he was one of them. We were standing in our kitchen, arms folded and leaning against the counter, and Mac told me he didn’t want to make art out of trash, he wanted to make a thing to use: a …
The Disappearance of This New York Icon Made Me a Little Sad
I was so sad — quite disproportionately sad — when I read that after 42 years, the Metropolitan Museum has decided to discontinue the use of its medal admissions tags. The price of the tin got too high. I’ve always loved those metal admission buttons; I loved their changing colors, the nice feeling of bending the tin in my fingers, the feeling of satisfaction I got when I put the button in the special receptacle on the way out of the museum. And now they’re gone! An icon of New York City — finished. My mother is visiting from Kansas City, and she visited the museum, so I just saw her wearing the newfangled admissions sticker. “It’s just not the same,” I told her. (Left: The 16 colors of the former Metropolitan Museum Metal Buttons. Source: Hack the Met. Right: Wesley Yiin for Untapped Cities)[/caption] The end of the buttons is a good reminder: appreciate the little things while they last, because even things that seem as though they’d never change, will change. Feel grateful for …