Nicole Kurtz is our January 2017 Featured Artist
She is featured in the 2017 Mixed Roots Stories calendar.
In this interview, she shared with us her story, about the piece, and her current projects.
Visit Nicole’s website HERE to follow her work!
Visual Arts
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).
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.
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
$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
The Other Project
The Other Project is a documentary photography project shared with Mixed Roots Stories by storyteller Rachel Crick.
“The Other Project is a documentary project focusing specifically on the development of self-identity of people across the country who identify as “bi-racial,” or “multi-ethnic,” or who use other similar adjectives to make sense of their racial make-up. One goal for this project is to encourage public discussion around racial identity — to be a catalyst for people to see themselves, despite their so-called differences, and find the commonalities amongst themselves. We are looking for participants of both racial and ethnic diversity for this project. If you are of a multiracial/multiethnic background, or you know of others who may be interested, please contact us.”
For more information about the project and how to participate visit her website www.rachelcrickphotography.com.
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.
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MIXED MESSAGES.4 – CALL FOR ARTISTS
The 4th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is seeking original artwork and short films with themes concerning “race, racism and the multiracial experience” for a juried group art exhibition. The art show is tentatively scheduled for June 7 through July 7 of 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Please follow the guidelines below for consideration:
- ART Submissions must include your bio or resume, high resolution photo(s) of the artwork, and a description – including the title, size, medium, and the year the artwork was produced. Artwork created before 2012 should not be submitted for consideration.
- SHORT FILM Submissions must include your bio or resume, a film synopsis, and web link to preview the film (or screener DVD).
The DEADLINE for receiving submissions is Sunday, April 13, 2014.
All entries must be submitted electronically through https://charitablefilmnetwork.
For more information contact mail@charitablefilmnetwork.org
Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care
Storyteller “Qiana Mestrich is a photo-based visual artist and writer from Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, her autobiographical work establishes a study of heritage within complex and convoluted visual histories.
She is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography History, a blog which profiles photographers of color. In 2012, Qiana Mestrich co-edited (with fellow ICP-Bard alumna Michi Jigarjian) How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a book about and by contemporary artist mothers.”
Her recent work, “Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care” can be viewed here!
Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care
“Under the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act of 1998, my husband Joseph received photocopied files from the London Borough of Camden documenting the years he spent as an orphan in several children’s homes from 1965 to 1975. Born to a Nigerian father and Irish mother, Joseph remained “in care” under the child protection system in England until 1981.
This series combines select, manipulated text from those documents with my own images of Joseph. Both the photography and text function as character assessments, questioning the inherent misrepresentation of portraiture. The third-party narrative ultimately reveals the social and moral forces that denied Joseph hi birthright to a family, while my photographs show the beginnings of a new one.”