Loving Day Mixed Media Collage Project

Happy Memorial Day Weekend Friends and Followers!

This weekend the MXRS team got together in preparation for our commemoration of Loving Day 2015: Visualizing Loving Day. This year we thought it would be fun to celebrate the radical love of Richard and Mildred Loving, as well as the pivotal Supreme Court Ruling allowing interracial couples to marry by creating a mixed-media collage. Check out what we did and share your own Visualizing Loving Day projects, activities, and stories!

Materials:

Printed Copy of The Loving’s Story (Print story from www.lovingday.org : here)

Small Canvas

1 Pack of Sticker Numbers & Letters

1 Tube of Paint in a Color of Your Choice (acrylic works best, but tempora will work too!)

Sponge brush or old dish sponge

Decoupage or Mod-Podge

Glue Stick

Scissors

Old Magazine

How to:

Step 1: Read the Loving’s Story. If you are doing the project with friends and family members, discuss what this story means for you and why learning their story is important. If you are doing the project with children consider “The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage” by Selina Alko.

 

Step 2: Cut or tear images, colors, interesting words, and/or textures from the magazine. Collage pieces together with quotes from the Loving’s story and adhere to your canvas using the glue stick. TIP: Concentrate color and meaningful text in the center of the canvas. Bright colors and unique textures work best.

                     

Step 3: Once you are satisfied with your collage, use the Mod-Podge to seal your design. Let this dry completely (at least 20 minutes).

 

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Step 4: Once your collage has dried use the sticker letters to spell “Loving 1967,” or “Loving Day 1967”.

            

After the stickers are secured to your collage in a place of your choosing, use sponge to dab paint over your collage, covering the letters completely. Let dry.


            

Step 5: After the paint has completely dried, carefully peel the letters off of the canvas.

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That’s it! Now display your collage momento for friends, family, and guests to see in order to continue the conversation year round!

 

Happy Loving Day from MXRS!

Be sure to send us pictures of your Loving Day Mixed Media Collages!

 


Visualizing Loving Day

Loving Day is celebrated every year around June 12th. This year we celebrate 48 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.  Mixed Roots Stories wants to celebrate with YOU!

We are seeking visual submissions that commemorate and celebrate the history of the Lovings and show a vision of what we have learned from the Loving’s that can help us move towards justice today!

It is time to get creative!  Draw, paint, collage, record, build….

Get the kids involved. Read “The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage” by Selina Alko with them and let them celebrate by creating too!

Craft with New Friends. Have a gathering at your house with people you have been wanting to get to know better. The new neighbors. The person at work.  Tell them the Loving Story and create a group collage or painting. Check out this Mixed Media Loving Day collage activity that the Mixed Roots Team did.

Explore Expression with Technology. Create a short video, animation. Get creative digitally.

Send your Visualizing Loving Day submissions to info@mixedrootsstories.org.  We need the name of the artist, the medium (i.e. ink drawing, water painting), the title of the piece, and any bio information of the artist you would like us to include. You can submit in the following formats: JPEG, TIFF, GIF, .mov, link, etc .

We will post your Visualizing Loving Day submissions to our gallery in the month of June!

Happy Loving Day!

 


Short Film Contest – $50,000 Plus More in Prizes for Three Filmmakers

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$50,000+ IN PRIZES WILL BRING 3 FILMMAKERS’ DREAM PROJECTS TO LIFE

Project Film Supply (#ProjectFilmSupply) wants to help filmmakers bring their vision to life.  According to Daniel McCarthy this is how it works:

Step 1: For the month of August, we’ll ask the filmmaking community to submit a short film idea + mood board for the project they’ve always dreamed of creating.

Step 2: Those who submit an idea will ask their friends, family, and followers to vote for their projects.

Step 3: The Community + TMB will decide which three stories rise to the top and which one absolutely has to become a reality (the two runners up will receive loads of incredible prizes)

This is your chance to bring your dream project to life! Click on the Link above to learn more and to apply!

 


Funding Your Projects – Creative Capital

We know what it’s like to try and get funding for the projects you’re passionate about, especially when you are just starting out, or when the ‘gatekeepers’ tell you they don’t think there will be enough interest in your story. That’s why we want to be a resource to help you find ways to garner financial support. One such resource is Creative Capital. Even if you haven’t begun to put pen to paper, take a look at their requirements, and the other projects they have supported – so when you are ready, you’ll have strong guidelines to help you get the funding you need.

Website: Creative Capital

 


In/visible Ethnicities – Portrait Project by Vanessa Newark

A portrait photographer in the United Kingdom takes on self-identified mixed-race individuals as subjects with lovely results:

This project is about how people of mixed ethnicities self-identify and explores how they have been identified through Census forms and in society. The work also highlights how the subtle differences between self-definition and ethnic categories are often too varied to fit within the single tick-box “Other”. (from http://www.vnewarkphotography.co.uk/)

Click here for more: In/visible Ethnicities Portraits

Follow photographer Vanessa Newark on Twitter here: @vnewarkphoto

 



Laura Kina: Blue Hawaii

We work closely with visual artist, scholar and professor Laura Kina on the Mixed Roots Stories programming for the Critical Mixed Race Studies conference (November 2014). She consistently explores the mixed experience in her work and in her classrooms. Here’s information on her current exhibition:

This week in Memphis – join Laura in person for the opening reception and artist lecture or visit the show virtually.

University of Memphis
The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art

Laura Kina: Blue Hawai’i

February 21 – March 27, 2014

Opening reception: Friday, Feb 21 5:30-8:00pm

Artist talk: Thursday, Feb 20 7:00pm 3715 Central Ave. #310
“Remembering Painting, Forgetting Photographs”

University of Memphis
The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art
Art Department
Art and Communication Building
3715 Central Ave.
Memphis, TN 38152
Tel 901-678-2216
http://memphis.edu/art/fogelmangalleries.php
https://www.facebook.com/FOGELMANCONTEMPORARY

Join the event on Facebook

All events are free and open to the public.

View the digital exhibition catalog featuring an essay “Okinawan Diaspora Blues” by Wesley Uenten, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies San Francisco State University

See the works online

You won’t find Elvis or surfboards or funny umbrella-topped cocktails in Laura Kina’s dystopic Blue Hawaiʻi. Drawn from family albums, oral history and community archives from Hawaii and Okinawa, these ghostly oil paintings employ distilled memories to investigate themes of distance, longing, and belonging.

Featuring new works and a selection from her ongoing Sugar series (2009-present), the setting is Kina’s father’s Okinawan sugarcane field plantation community, Piʻihonua, on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi near Hilo. Her obsession with blue was inspired by the indigo-dyed kasuri kimonos repurposed by the Issei (first generation) “picture bride” immigrants for canefield work clothes, and colored by stories of hinotama (fireballs) shooting from the canefield cemetery into the night sky. Blue Hawaiʻi echoes the spirits of Kina’s ancestors and shared histories of labor migration.

Pictured above Laura Kina, Elementary School, 30×45 in, oil on canvas, 2013