Hello Everyone!
I am now part of the design team for Creative Paperclay®, so I will be posting tutorials on their blog on the 4th Friday of each month! My first post for their blog series demonstrates how I created this Art doll in a frame. Head on over to their blog to see how it was all put together!
https://creativepaperclay.blogspot.com/…/art-doll-in-frame.…
I had a very unfortunate situation leading up to my last workshop. There was a writer who decided that she would “share” my content with her community, but never asked my permission or even contacted me beforehand. She took my blog posts, images, unrelated personal work biography with previous job titles and assignments, patched it all together and printed it out in her local newspaper that boasts a reach of 10,000 in Harlem and the Bronx. I found out from a friend of mine who saw it in a building she was working in and sent a photo of it to me. At first I was a bit flattered, but then I realized that she copied and pasted word for word from both of my websites and passed her story off as an interview that she never conducted with me. The images weren’t even credited to the photographer that took them, and now a bit of my personal information which I would have never disclosed for this story, is out there. If asked ahead of time, I would have totally agreed to speaking with her and giving her permission to use my content, but the opportunity was never presented to me.
I understand Google is a living and breathing thing and that we can discover all the information that we could ever dream of with it, but should we compile everything we find on a person and distribute it throughout their neighborhood without their permission? I think not, and it’s quite alarming when you think of it. And if you are wondering, yes I did receive an apology but it was more like a sorry, not sorry type, with an emphasis on trying to spread the word about my workshop over respecting copyright laws and my privacy. I enjoy sharing what I’m doing with everyone, but this experience has been a real eye opener for me. As a result, I will be putting even more limitations on what I do share online. Be careful out there folks!
I have a workshop scheduled for next week Saturday, October 28th at the Huntington Free Library in the Westchester Square section of the Bronx. In my head, I had it down for it’s original date that was discussed which was November 11th, so it kind of creeped up on me. I pretty much know exactly what I plan on doing, so I feel like I’m prepared for the most part. I just need to round up my materials for the participants. I can’t wait to meet the group that I’ll be working with, it’s always interesting to see what people come up with!
This was my first time ever attending the Chashama Gala, and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before in person. So much craziness going on in every corner, but it was a lot of fun. I had four of my larger sculptures there for the night, and I am thankful that I was able to leave them in place so that I could walk around and take a look at everything. Most of the other artists were performers, so they didn’t have this luxury as I did. There was a BDS&M room, live music, live painters, dancers and a group of people from “Lust” who prepared sushi and placed it on naked people for guests to eat off of. It was a one night only event, so I had to wait for them to drop off my work in the morning. I hope to be chosen to participate next year as well!
I finally decided to get all my ducks in a row and create a press kit! It’s so much easier to send one of these out than trying to track down of all the pieces such as the resume, bio and samples separately. It took me a while to decide what layout I would go with, but I decided to just keep it simple and clean with lots of white space as in my 4″x 5″ cards. Here’s a few of the pages that I’ve put together for it, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out!
I had another successful go at the Northside Festival with my larger works! This year it was for two days instead of one AND they offered free over night storage so I wouldn’t look like a crazy bag lady with my shopping cart on the train. There were less kids at the festival to play with the pieces as they did the year prior but the “adults” were taking selfies as usual, I found a few uploaded to Instagram 🙂
I’m looking forward to participating again next year!
For those who haven’t seen this piece named “Women’s Troubles” in its entirety on Facebook, Instagram etc., here it is completed. As I may have mentioned before, this piece explores the problems that women face in the workplace and at home. At work, women face issues such as being overlooked for promotions, unequal pay and sexual harassment, while at home they are to assumed to take on all of the domestic duties. Our roles have changed drastically but society still views us as being less than that of our male counterparts, making it very difficult for us to succeed in the workplace.
Melandolly 