{Challenge Your Peers}

To all the creatives sitting around waiting for art to strike them...
Here's to you.

Get up and do it like us hip-hoppers do it...battles are a way to flex your skills, teach something, learn something AND get inspired...

Why do we do it?
TO GET DOPE.

not because we're scared of looking like an arse. : )

Here are some artists in Brooklyn who are using this technique to create large scale, dynamic painted works.
Say hello to my little friends:
Melissa Brown and MOMO


Espeis "June" from MOMO on Vimeo.

[:Risky Business:]

A history lesson for you folks today but first -- I send my deepest apologies for the disappointing flow of content. I've been in a bit of a rut inside and out and just trying to live and breathe and be. But now, now my fingers feel nimble and frisky they tappa tappa on this here keyboard to bring to YOU [whomever you may be] a history lesson.

The art of BURLESQUE landed upon America's lap in the late 1860's by a troupe called Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes. The British troupe spoofed traditional theatrical productions and did a lot of exciting things like gender role reversal portrayal and prancing around in skimpy lil' costumes.

Since then, it has taken on the characteristics of vaudeville, comedy, cabaret and striptease to evolve into the wackyness it is today.

The mid 1990s birthed the burlesque revival! Led by bad mama jamas Ami Goodheart [NY] and Michelle Carr [LA], troupes across the country began incorporating burlesque aesthetics into their performances.

TODAY -- we've got folks like the Indigo, Yard Dogs Road Show and Tease-o-Rama mixing things up with their curation of complex/dynamic performing environments/vibrations. Moreover, they focus on the comedy, the tease and the aesthetic as opposed to the strip...so to speak.

Well...all this to say -

LISTEN MOFOS...BURLESQUE DANCERS/GO-GO DANCERS AREN'T SEX WORKERS!!!!
[well, maybe some are - but that's only because their parents have wronged them...]
It's an art. Don't get it twisted.

anyway, there are artists out there who are constantly trying to tweak and grow this American folk art -- and know what? -- they're being bombarded with ultimatums and sexy propositions. A few dumb ones accept to get the gig and it spreads like wildfire.

It is YOUR social responsibility as an artist to set the standards within your industry. You can't ask for change unless you start changing your responses...even if it means being poor and without gigs...
Skanks.

<*sigh* the plight of the artist...>

=AfterBurn=

I came home from the west coast and cried.

I wiped my face on my scarf and *ahem* cough, playadust. lol.

If there is one thing that I'm feeling right now, it's that things have changed inside and now it's time to run outside and see where I can make the pieces fit. BM is just as much Babylon for me as the "real world" is in many ways...but what I got from it was this overwhelming urge to reevaluate what it means to love, share and be an artist.

I want to be BIG do BIG and not just that...but proactive - right now, all the time...all nows and tomorrows and next days. I want to move and keep moving and moving and shit-last time I checked, that's what my job description was made for.

I'd like to get in touch with some folks in the ny burner communities to see what's what in the way of set design and traveling in style...
*whoodewhoo!*

Photos from the burn coming soon.