Written by: Jill Heagerty

Zinch is offering the opportunity for talented artists, enrolled or intending to enroll in college, to showcase their work. The winner is the candidate who displays the most creativity, and he or she will receive $5,000 for school. Tuition costs are astronomical, so any money a student earns can go a long way. This particular scholarship is refreshing to see in comparison to most scholarship applications that include a GPA, SAT scores, and writing a formal essay about a completely cliché topic such as, “What is the most important lesson you have learned in life and how has it made you the person you are today?” There is nothing wrong with those typical scholarships, like I said any money can go a long way, but they are tiresome and do not accurately access a candidate’s worth and potential. Winners could be students who are very practiced at knowing what to write for those types of essays, without their own sense of self or originality. This isn’t always the case, but it is highly likely in most situations.

Art is typically placed on the backburner in the education system, with traditional subjects emphasizing math, science, and formal writing in the forefront. That is why the requirement for most scholarships are a decent GPA, a minimum SAT score, and the banal essay I mentioned before. The question is: why isn’t there more value placed on artistic abilities? If a person can think creatively and make something out of nothing, that shows the person is smart and can succeed in college, a career, and life in general, using a part of the brain some can’t even fathom to use. That creative individual is a worthy candidate of a scholarship, more worthy than a person who can just write a decent essay about a life experience.

So if you’re attending a university for the next academic school year, I encourage you to access the link above and look into applying for the scholarship. Your creative vision should be honored and awarded. The type of artistic work that will be judged includes digital art, animation, film and video, music, photography, multimedia, illustration, interior design, graphic design, and more. Even if you’re a good writer who usually flourishes with the typical essay in most applications, there is a place for you as well to show off your artistic scope that would otherwise be ignored.

Technorati Tags: art, award, college, creativity, scholarship, tuition

By: Stacy Liberatore

How many times have you walked by an empty building and said “I wish this was a…”? Well now you can visibly voice your opinion with the “I wish this was…” project.

The idea was started by Candy Chang, a public installation artist, in New Orleans during December 2010. She created vinyl stickers with the heading, “I wish this was”, with a blank space underneath. After the devastation Katrina left buy, many business owners couldn’t re-open, which left many abandoned buildings.

The idea behind the project is so the community can voice their opinions on what they would like to see vacant buildings in their town be used for.

 “When I moved to the Marigny in New Orleans last summer I was surprised by the number of vacant storefronts amidst a neighborhood chock full of people who want and need lots of things, including a grocery with fresh produce,” said Chang, “I think many of us walk by vacant storefronts in our neighborhoods and have opinions of what we’d like to see in them.”

 With support from the Ethnographic Terminali exhibit, she placed boxes of free stickers in businesses around the city and posted grids of blank stickers and a permanent marker on vacant storefronts to invite passersby to write their thoughts. “Fill out and put on buildings,” said Chang as she distributed them to the public. The stickers are vinyl and they can be easily removed without damaging property.

Stickers have been seen saying “I wish this was… A grocery store, a comfy couch, a city during a revolution.  Chang was greatly surprised, what she thought might be a fun and goofy way of expression has taken cities by storm.

The stickers can still be seen all over New Orleans and are making their way across the nation. She calls her sticker project “an experiment in public space,” meant to pose the question “what if residents had more of a say?” In addition, she hopes the exercise remains “loose, funny, interesting and entertaining.”

To some it may seem nothing more than a sticker, but to others it is a revolution of ideas.  A way to make a city the way you have always dreamed it could be. And starting in New Orleans where everything was destroyed, this artist may have opened a door and let some light shine for the city.

  “What if we could easily say what we want, where we want it? That was the inspiration for I Wish This Was. It’s a kind of love child of urban planning and street art,” said Chang “A crude tool and experiment to see what might happen if we could easily say what we wanted in vacant storefronts and beyond.”

Technorati Tags: art, Candy Chang, I Wish project, stickers

Written By: Catherine Wolinski

Last October, the New Museum in New York City presented Carsten Holler: Experience, the first New York survey of works by Carsten Holler, a German scientist-turned-artist who resides in Stockholm, Sweden. The exhibition, which will be open until Jan. 15, transforms multiple galleries into a world of research experimentation crossed with childhood fun. A firm believer in utilizing the architecture of the building where his art, its space, and its viewers will interact, the collection even includes a 102-foot slide that patrons can ride from the fourth to the second floors of the building.

Born in Brussels in 1961, Holler left his career as a scientist in 1993 to instead apply his knowledge and lab experience to

artistic concepts. Exploring themes such as safety, love, and doubt, Holler presents scenarios that force museum and museum goer into a conversation, connecting visitors to the environments he creates. By engaging the building as well as its inhabitants, Holler sends each person into multiple roles as they pass through each section of the exhibit, where they are faced with innovative structures, scenes, and tasks. Visitors are both the watchers and the watched as they make their way through the Experience Corridor, a stretch of space scattered with thought provoking activities that bring into question the conventional understandings of space, time and self.

By way of his participatory installations, Holler challenges human perception and logic by igniting, and perhaps overwhelming, the senses with interactive experiences.  Using the architecture of the building to map out these sensory events, Holler engages viewers with

the works of the past eighteen years of his career, chronicling numerous ventures that push the limits of human sensory perception. Such works include the untitled slide installation, which he describes as an “alternative transportation system,” Double Light Corner, a disorienting light installation that gives the impression the room is flipping back and forth, Mirror Carousel, a full-size swing merry-go-round that reflects and illuminates the space around it as it turns almost imperceptively, and finally, Psycho Tank, a “sensory deprivation pool” which literally puts the viewer into a pool—stripped naked—for a mind-altering out-of-body experience.

Carston Holler: Experience employs multiple disciplines to destabilize and reinvent viewers’ knowledge of the world around them, and how they fit into it. By using the scientific method in conjunction with his futurist design, Holler’s art forces viewers to see, feel, and understand art and space in a new way.

Technorati Tags: art, art exhibit, art museum, event, experimentation, German, mind altering, museum, new york, new york city, perception, science, works of art

President Robert Mugabe

When Owen Maseko decided to explore President Mugabe-related violence, he thought it best to gather the photos of missing people, the pictures of the mine shafts where they are allegedly hidden, and the reports that document the 1980 massacre of thousands of civilians in the western Matabeleland district. But, the police in Zimbabwe weren’t very amused with the exhibit, and they quickly shut it down by cuffing Maseko on incitement charges.

Attorney Kucaca Phulu reported that his client spent the weekend in jail as a result of all of the excitement.  Maseko reportedly sought bail the following Monday, but the courts postponed a ruling until Tuesday. The very next day, Harare Police reportedly pushed a human rights group to abandon another exhibit, which also employed photographs to illustrate the rampant Mugabean political violence. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who now works with Mugabe, condemned the police’s repeated attempt to seize the entire 65-photograph display. Tsvangirai believed that such exhibits were a portion of the campaign for national healing.

Owen Maseko hard at work

Today, with the death of Joshua Nkomo – Mugabe’s vice president – the allegiance is with Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change party. As more proponents for free-thought art jump onto Mugabe’s payroll, it grows ever more doubtful that a third violence exhibit will even have a chance to be torn back down.

Technorati Tags: exhibit, owen maseko, pictures, police, president mugabe, zimbabwe

Shepard Fairey and his famed Obama portrait

Today, Shepard Fairey, the once co-founder of BLK/MRKT Inc. (1997-2003) – which worked with high-brow clients like Pepsi, Hasbro, and Netscape – is so popular from his HOPE portrait of Barack Obama that he’s walking door to door at Deitch Projects in New York, searching for building owners that will premiss him to use their exterior wall-space for his exhibition this May.

This is a new relatively new concept to this contemporary artist, who admits to being arrested, getting locked up overnight, and a sentencing of two years probation for his past (illicitly performed) building pastings, which he accomplished long before a retrospective at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Boston

And, while many aren’t too keen on the artist’s vision, he tries his best to offer the building owners a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to contribute to the enhancement of the urban landscape, and to experience art as a part of the current OBEY phenomenon. Even though the over-sized stickers could remain for years to come, several cities have already granted the urban artist permission to paste in Boston, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Now, as May rolls around the corner, millions of Shepard Fairey fans are hoping to see the newest exhibition of modern-day artistic talent.

Perhaps Fairey should bring Obama for some assistance; after all, he did get a lot out of the famed portrait.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Deitch Projects, exhibition, HOPE, May, new york, Shepard Fairey

Woodstock '69 - Soul Sacrifice

On March 18th, the  human rights advocate – and internationally acclaimed musician – Carlos Santana recieved the 2010 Mayor’s Art Award from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Over 300 attended the regal Green Room of the War Memorial Opera House.

The famed musician moved from Los Angeles up to San Francisco in 1961, where his father got involved with a mariachi band. Carlos graduated from Mission High School in 1965, and made his debut with The Santana Band at the Fillmore West theater on June 16, 1968. The following year saw their international success – via the stage of Woodstock ’69 – and the release of their self-titled debut album, which included the top 10 Billboard hit “Evil Ways.”

“Carlos is one of the greatest artists of our time and any time,” said Mayor Newsome during the two-hour long ceremony, “He is an international superstar who keeps his heart in San Francisco and has humanity of a social worker.” Santana embraced his flowery San Franciscan roots, claiming that he’ll always be a rainbow warrior – or hippie – at heart. He warned against the destructiveness of the ego, and closed his acceptance speech with a frank metaphor:

“Music is the water, people are the flowers and I’m a hose.”

Wise words from a wise guitarist who helped feed the flaming live performance of “Soul Sacrifice,” that fateful day at Woodstock al those years ago.

Technorati Tags: carlos santana, gavin newsom, mayors art award, san francisco

A Banksy maid sweeps up the messy streets

A statement made possible by the mysterious Banksy

Though a frenzied crowd of hundreds lined up hours before its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the success of “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a documentary by the English enigmatic artist, Banksy, still failed to find an interested distributer.

Banksy is the notorious creator behind spontaneous street art that is both politically jostling, and – at times – absolutely hilarious. Two well-known examples of Banksy’s political humor are his portrayals of two male police officers locking lips, and a chimpanzee with the face of the Queen of England.

The film is an examination into the roots of the guerilla art scene – and concurrently traces the rise of Thierry Guetta, Banksy’s videographer – which develops into a sly satirical rendition of the art world, the celebrity and consumerism. And, though it wasn’t sold to a distributor after all the love it received at Sundance, Cinetic Media developed the Producers Distribution Agency, with full intentions of releasing the movie.

One of the more politically-charged works

John Sloss,  Cinectic’s principal, feels that the do-it-youself model is the best way to handle a film like”Exit Through the Gift Shop.” In a situation where neither the star nor the filmmaker are available for promotion, the success depends on using Banksy’s mystery as a selling point.

And, considering how many people showed up in 15-degree weather in hopes of admittance, there’s no reason to doubt that the movie will eventually find its way into theaters.

Technorati Tags: Artist, banksy, documentary, exit through the gift shop, sundance film festival, utah

When not using walls, Snacki prefers wood over canvas.

They’ve been popping up all across Chicago for the past four months: saggy-eyed and highly expressive faces are tagged across the weathered walls of Chi-town, and they’re beginning to attract a considerable following. But, for the artist known by the humble pseudonym, ‘snacki,’ graffiti is an illegal addiction to child-like behavior, and not something that’s meant to be taken too seriously.

Snacki is just simply interested in the general public getting exposed to his work; unlike galleries, which tend to only attract the “college hipsters and 40-year-old art collectors,” he wants to offer the entire general public an experience the abstract reflections of his unique perspective. In his mind, painting on billboards is just a better – and cheaper – way to reach a highly diversified audience. And, considering the city’s anti-graffiti campaign – a well-oiled machine, which happily chugs along on a $9 million street-artist-stomping budget  - it’s probably better that snacki keep his identity hidden from the world.

Typical snacki-tag face

Graffiti art isn’t just a hobby for snacki, it’s a self-proclaimed addiction; “And like any addiction,” he said, “everyone starts for a different reason.” But, unfortunately for snacki, the worst addictions can end up with thousands of dollars in fines, or a potentially serious jail sentence. Whatever happens, if the Man squashes the snacki sasquatch, at least he knows that his fans are willing to bail him out.

Long Live Graffiti.

Technorati Tags: Artist, chi-town, chicago, graffiti, illegal, snacki

The Infamous Artis

To say that the swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, seems a bit paranoid is to completely underestimate  the circumstances surrounding this rather controversial character. Needless to say, it is with good reason that this 63-year-old artist had recently secured his property with a homemade panic room and a booby-trapped work of art; after all, not only does he have a $100,00 bounty hanging over his head, but  just this past Tuesday, seven people were arrested in Ireland for their alleged plot to kill the scoundrel responsible for that infamous image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Now currently living in southern Sweden, Lars is armed with a razor-edged axe in case the electrified-barbed-wire sculpture doesn’t get the job done. And in the event that this plethora of defensive measure fails, he rests assured with the knowledge that he always has a safe space to hide.

The Notorious Drawing

This humble old artist may have caused some Swedes to consider Mr. Vilks’ threat as a national threat against the constitutional right to freedom of speech, while Lars himself sees the ploy as a failed attempt by a rather “low-tech” cluster of individuals. But, whatever the case may be, out of their fear of letting the image disseminate across the globe, newspapers have elected against running the cartoon on their websites. As it stands, they reportedly cited the Islamic prohibition of any physical representation of the Prophet as a very good reason to end a potentially lethal controversy.

Technorati Tags: booby trap, bounty, Lars Vilks, panic room, Prophet Muhammad

"Animals, Then and Now"

Lions, and tiger, and bears…oh my!!!  The North Dakota Museum of Art is bringing them to life through an extraordinary touring exhibit, “Animals, Now and Then”.  The museum features artists’ works in the form of captivating video, stunning photography, numerous paintings, and sculpture.  This contemporary exhibit highlights the work of twenty artists from across North and South America, and was put together by Museum Director, Laurel Rueter

The art that has been assembled paints a picture of the complexities of the animal kingdom, and reminds us that we (humans) are but one of the nearly 10 million species of animals inhabiting this planet.  The exhibit reveals contrasting points-of-views and conflicting visions of life.  The North Dakota Museum of Art, through their careful selection of pieces, has assembled an interesting and unique showing.

This is a worthwhile exhibit for any of us, but students in particular are encouraged to take a tour.  Schools within a 50 mile radius are eligible for reimbursement for the cost, so no excuses.  The North Dakota Museum of Art has painstakingly put together this amazing exhibit for our enjoyment and appreciation.  Take a walk on the wild side!

Technorati Tags: animals, art, art exhibit, North Dakota Museum of Art