A.A.C.'s New Blog Address

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Poetry and performance came together once again as Art as An Agent for Change held its second Poetic Notions this April.

The event's purpose was to bring together poets from colleges all over Georgia. The youth slam was held April 16th and the collegiate slam was on April 18th. Arshay Jones walked away with $100 as youth poet of the year. And this year's collegiate winners were Chris Dixon and Sharod, who won $200.

Winners Chris & Sharod performing

Youth Poet of the Year, Arshay Jones


Here's what Chris and Sharod had to say about the event:


A.A.C.: How did you come up with the idea for your poem?
C & S: Well, that particular poem is actually a song on our upcoming album. We just took it and flipped it for that occasion, as we often like to do.

A.A.C.: Had you been in other poetry contests?
C & S: Not as a duo, but separately, we've done our share.

A.A.C.: Did you think you would win?
C & S: We felt pretty confident about our piece, subject content and all, so we just hoped for the best.

A.A.C.: What was going through your head when you were announced the winner?
C & S: ...Money in the BANK!!! lol

A.A.C.:How long have you been writing and performing your poetry?
C&S: Separately we've been writing and performing for six years; collectively as a duo, just over a year.

A.A.C.: Have you won any other contests?
C & S: No, this is the first (of many, we hope)

A.A.C.: Do you have any advice for aspiring performance poets?
C & S: Your message is just that, a message, so convey it to the best of your abilities.

A.A.C. with youth poetry slam winner and runners-up

Paul G. with Poetic Notions winner

On a Farm

I never thought I’d see the day with a tractor comin’ my way… Believe me when I say, “I’m building movements!!!” This past weekend (May 15-17) Tameka “Floetic Prodigy” Dean, Britnee “Superwoman” Richardson, and Paul Ayo ventured to the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition's: Be the Change Youth Convergence. The conference was a three day event that featured progressive organizations from all over the state of Georgia and a little group from the town of Milledgeville, A.A.C. (Art as an Agent for Change). The overall goal of the convergence was educating youth about effective activism in their community and movement building. The weekend’s grounding text was a speech by Martin Luther King Jr called “Beyond Vietnam,” where King called for eternal hostility to militarism, racism, materialism, and poverty.

A.A.C. was featured twice on the schedule. The first program involved leading a workshop, where participants created PSA’s for the Be the Change Youth Convergence.



The next day A.A.C. performed a poetic showcase featuring Tameka and Paul Ayo. Britnee Richardson was on camera documenting the performance.


Paul Ayo’s Reflection
I didn’t know what to expect when I first made the trek down to Koinonia Farms in Americus, Ga. Koinonia was founded in 1942 by Millard Koinonia is an intentional Christian community founded by two couples, Clarence and Florence Jordan and Martin and Mabel England in 1942 (http://www.koinoniapartners.org/History/brief.html). The farm was an excellent mix of simple living combined with a mission that embraces the spirit of communion rather than dominion over one’s surroundings. I embraced this spirit, and it gave me a chance to spit a few poems to goats. They enjoyed “Circles” and baa’d at the end.

On a more serious note, the experience was eye opening and established a conduit for me and A.A.C. to connect with other progressive organizations. I met folks from the Ruckus Society, Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, Alterna Community, UGA, Georgia State, Lagrange College, North Carolina, Chicago, California, and the list goes on. Attending the conference further imbued my drive to educate, inspire, and entertain, and being the change is the little spark that shines the way.

As you know, A.A.C. is holding it's second edition of Poetic Notions this Saturday. What you may not know is the definition of a poetry slam. Well, let me help you out...

What is a poetry slam anyway?
Basically, a poetry slam is a competition where individuals perform poetry. The poets usually read or recite their own work, but not always. The performances are then scored by judges.

Poetry slams were founded in the mid-80s as a way to get people interested in poetry readings. It has since developed into an international art form that emphasizes the audience’s involvement and poetic excellence.

Where did it come from?
According to slampapi.com, in 1985, construction worker and poet Marc Smith (slampapi) established a poetry reading series at the Get Me High Lounge, a Chicago jazz club. He started it as a way to “breathe life into the open mike poetry format.”

The series’ placed importance on performance and laid the groundwork for a style which would ultimately be spread all over. The owner of Green Mill, another Chicago jazz club agreed to let Smith host a weekly poetry cabaret on the club’s slow Sunday nights. The Uptown Poetry Slam was born July 25, 1986.

“Smith drew on baseball and bridge terminology for the name and instituted the show’s basic structure of an open mike, guest performers and a competition. The Green Mill evolved into the Mecca for performance poets and the Uptown Poetry Slam still continues.”

From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry: “Slam poetry is the brainchild of Marc Smith (So What!), and the blue collar intellectual eccentrics who crammed into the Get Me High Lounge on Monday nights from November 1984 to September 1986 for a wide-open poetry experience. Finger-poppin’ hipster Butchie (James Dukaris) owned the place and allowed anything to happen, and it usually did. The experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed, and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rainforest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts, and verse that electrified the night.”

The general rules for poetry slams are:
Each poem has to be an original work by the poet.
Each poet gets three minutes [and a ten-second grace period] to read one poem. If the poet goes over, points will be taken away from the total score.
Poets can’t use props, costumes or musical instruments.
Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three added together; this gives the poet a total score of 1-30.

**Note that rules vary from slam to slam.**

But as slammaster Allan Wolf stated, “The points are not the point; the point is poetry.”

**Don't forget to check out A.A.C. and the other poets at Poetic Notions, Saturday, April 18 at 7 PM. Tickests are $3 in advance and $5 at the door. It will be held at the MSU Lounge at Georgia College & State University. For more info, contact A.A.C. at aacshutdown@gmail.com.

Check out the facebook event here

Profile interview with very talented artist, Keith Rosemond.

Keith Rosemond II 22yrs old, Double major in Illustration and Graphic Design, Senior at Savannah College of Art and Design, www.keithrosemond.com

A.A.C.: When and how did you discover that art is what you wanted to pursue?

Keith Rosemond: Like a lot of artists, I’ve been drawing ever since I can remember, so I guess it was always assumed that art was going to be my profession [in] some way or another. My father is actually the person who started my interest in drawing because he would sometimes sketch and doodle in his free time.

A.A.C.: What kind of art do you do?

K.R.: It’s really hard to separate different types of art, so I guess the best way to describe it is to say I create 2D illustrations using traditional mediums such as watercolor, ink and pencil. I also create more text-based graphic design artwork using computer programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

A.A.C: Who and what influence your work?

K.R.: I absolutely love comic books and cartoons; they are where I find a lot of motivation to create artwork. I think it’s simply because they really stretch the imagination of the reader and viewer. In these forms of artwork, anything is possible, and I love that. More traditional forms of artwork that influence me are African Art, African-American art and Japanese prints. These last three influences are very evident in my style of illustration.

A.A.C.: Who in the art world inspires you?

K.R.: In the world of comic books and cartoons: Eichiro Ida, Masashi Kisimoto, Ikeno, Arthur Adams, Lesean Thomas, Eric Canete and Bryan Hitch are a few artist that stick out in my mind. In the illustration world: James Jean, Yuko Shimizu and Sam Weber are great! Fine artists Maurice Evans and Kadir Nelson really inspire me, and Japanese printmakers Kuniyoshi and Hokusai are simply amazing!

A.A.C.: What is it that you ultimately want to achieve?

K.R.: That is a great question, which I don’t know the answer to, even though I feel I should. In the grand scheme of things, I guess it’s to use my gift to fulfill God’s plan for my life.

A.A.C.: What has been your greatest accomplishment(s) so far?

K.R.: Probably this interview (lol) I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to ask me questions about myself to put on the Web from everyone to see, so this is pretty cool.

A.A.C.: What have been some obstacles you've faced?

K.R.: Finding my market and audience in the art world and being able to attack successfully.

A.A.C.: How did you get through them?

K.R.: I’m currently sending out postcards with my work to potential clients to see who I get a response from.

A.A.C.: What advice do you have for aspiring artists?

K.R.: Keep creating and make sure you have the big three: Talent, Tenacity and Targeting (the ability to find you market).

Check out more of Keith's work at www.keithrosemond.com

by Jamie Fleming

Booty, ass, donk, tush-whatever you call it, the butt is here to stay.

And the butt is now so trendy that it has many songs dedicated to it and is one body part that receives the most enhancement. Dr. Anthony Griffin, a prominent plastic surgeon and recurring participant on the popular reality show, Extreme Makeover, says requests for his original Brazilian Butt Lift Surgery have surpassed all other surgeries, in spite of it’s $15,000+ price tag, according to Bootyful World’s website.

Bootyful World, a 25-minute documentary created by Avital Levy “explores mainstream culture’s growing fixation on the butt.” Although society appears to be moving towards new, more open-minded beauty standards, the film asks if this is actually liberation or solely another mold we are forced into.

Levy created the film in graduate school at the University of Southern California about three years ago. She was in a class focusing on documentaries and had to produce a documentary film.

“I came up with this idea, trying to get a laugh, and then it really came into an idea,” she says. “Then a lot of people ended up talking about it, (they) looked into it, and there was really something there.”

Her film concept was given the go-ahead and that’s where the journey began. And as a woman, the booty was something she always conscious of.

“Men can be very vocal sometimes about what they think about you, and when I moved to LA, it was like more and more (were) people focusing on the butt and just making comments,” Levy says.

The film also looks at Sarah Baartman, a South African woman exploited for her very large rear-end at the start of the nineteenth century.

“It’s a documentary about butts and that intrigues a lot of people,” Levy says. “But it’s really about beauty standards and specifically how hip-hop (seems to) influence mainstream American culture and American beauty standards.”

The film process was pretty demanding, according to Levy. Every week they would shoot or edit something; they would then show it in class and have it critiqued. Levy and her crew were only given 15 hours of film, where as most documentaries have around 80. And in addition to the small amount of film, they had to cut the film down to 26 minutes.

“It was a really rigorous process, and it was a lot fun,” she says.

Besides conducting interviews with Dr. Griffin and people on the street, they also filmed Dr. Griffin doing a Brazilian butt lift, scenes from a dance club and a model photo shoot.

The title, Bootyful World, just felt right to Levy.

“For me, it seemed like the right fit,” she says. “Booties can be beautiful; you don’t have to feel embarrassed by what you have, that’s sort of what the title meant for me, but I don’t want to say it’s one way or one meaning because people interpret things differently.”

Levy says that the film’s target audience is Black women, but it does appeal to men as well. (And with a title like that, who could resist?)

“I’m glad that a lot of men watch it because for whatever reason, some of them go in and probably watch it to be like, ‘oh, I might see some women and get to see their bodies,’” she says. “But I think that the good thing about that is men…may get something out of it, which is hopefully a vision of how these women feel about their bodies.”

Levy says that anybody should see the film, with or without a butt.

“I think people should be interested in the film just because it’s kind of something that you don’t talk about,” she says. “I think it speaks to a lot of people and a lot of issues.” ‘

Through the documentary, Levy hopes that people learn to feel better in their own skin and to be more sensitive to others.

“What I’m hoping is that people are open a little more in (their) viewpoints,” she says. “I’m also hoping they enjoy the film and take it seriously in the sense (of) people’s feelings and how people feel about their bodies…but not taking it too seriously; you know, it’s about butts, it’s going to be a little light-hearted and little bit playful. Everybody is going to have their own reaction to it.”

Ultimately, the film explores societal beauty standards and ideals, and it examines the way others view us.

“My main purpose was to question the value we place on how other people perceive us and to some extent, to say whether it’s important to (care) about how other people perceive us,” she says. “The broad purpose is to question the value of how people perceive us.”

A.A.C. is showing Bootyful World at GCSU on March 11 starting at 12:30 P.M. The viewing will be held in the University Banquet Room. For more info, email A.A.C. at aacshutdown@gmail.com

First Lady disses Black designers?

According to the New York Magazine website, The Black Artists Association is not very happy with First Lady Obama for not wearing clothes by black designers.



Co-founder Amnau Eele, a former runway model, told Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) , “It’s fine and good if you want to be all ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘We Are the World’ by representing all different countries. But if you are going to have Isabel Toledo do the inauguration dress, and Jason Wu do the evening gown, why not have Kevan Hall, B Michael, Stephen Burrows or any of the other black designers do something too?” Eele plans to make a formal appeal to Michelle’s office.

Eele was then asked if maybe Mrs. Obama was looking at the world colorlessly; she said, “It’s one thing to look at the world without color but she had seven slots to wear designer clothes. Why wasn’t she wearing the clothes of a black designer? That was our moment.”
First Lady Obama rocking Isabel
Toledo at the Inauguration.

I don’t think Michelle should have necessarily chosen a black designer, I mean, it’s not like she said ‘I’m going to look at some designs and pick ones by non-black designers.’ It’s really kind of ridiculous if you ask me. She wanted to look fab, she did, the end.



What do you think?



Source: http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/01/michelle_obama_under_fire_for.html