Author: Erika Bell

Rainy Days:From Photos to Life

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Life in Michigan involves various climate changes. It maybe sunny one day and drizzling the next, yet there is always a part of me that enjoys the beauty of the rainy days that come upon us. Mostly from the comfort of my room, I find looking out as the rain pours, the clouds fill the sky, and the darkness takes over the day, a natural beauty has taken over.

I came across photographs of Christophe Jacrot’s work, of rainy days in Paris (can you imagine that being such a bad day?), Tokyo, and Hong-Kong, and couldn’t help but feel connected to the intrigue of nature as a factor of art. The images showcased such perspective of how different rainy days in different countries created different moods and tones for its inhabitants. One photo, Alcootest, showcases a contorted view of a building as a woman walking on a late rainy-day passes it, and another, Huile 5, captures a neon-ed shot of a Hong-Kong city, as the rain softens and lengthens it’s structure.

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Jacrot/Alcootest.

Jacrot’s photographs give such meaning to the complex time that comes from the rainy season. The power of his images being focused solely on seasonal changes in humanity creates a definitive feeling about how interaction with nature is such an intrinsic emotional connection that comes with a new seasonal change.

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Jacrot/Huile 5.

If anything,  the rainy days to come, or the most likely snowy days, are opportunities for inspirational and artistic outlets. From seeing the misty silence that captures a town after a long rainfall, to the unified feeling you get from walking next to people who all feel dominated by the pelts of the cold day, there’s something to be inspired by from the nature and world around us.

Check out some of Christophe Jacrot’s Work Here!

Nikky Finney: Living in the Folds of Poetry

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Sitting down for my first poetry reading, I was overcome with nerves. Shifting in my seat, switching my legs back and forth, I began to realize that I wasn’t completely sure of what kind of audience member I was supposed to be at a poetry reading. At basketball games, I’m the obnoxious, overtly analytic member, and at plays I become the characters, I’m lost in the story, I sincerely don’t know who I am. So going into my first live poetry reading at the UMMA of Nikky Finney’s work, I was a little apprehensive of how I was going to react. What if she would look out into the audience and see my face mixed with unexpected, unrecognizable emotion, and I could ruin everything for her!

Luckily, what occurs in my mind is an overdramatized, yet very entertaining conglomeration of thoughts. As Finney was given an introduction gratifying her creative, opinionated, and humbled personality, I began to warm up to the reading. This was a real person who just happened to have written some incredible award-winning works, no big deal. Nonetheless, Finney began her readings, conversationally opening up about her moments of intrigue, and feelings of repression and progression, that brought her to relinquish her thoughts into words.

Most of her writing was so experiential. An interaction with a woman looking her in the eye telling her that “she writes like she’s never been hit before”, an affectionate love for her Uncle Freddie’s astrological beliefs, the connection to the mother and baby penguins after a viewing of March of the Penguins at the cinema, all became experiences transformed into poems about two women understanding each other’s journeys, developing an appreciation for the sheer luck of life, being the nurture that feeds nutrients to someone you care for.

By this point I was floating from my chair, no longer was I flipping rigidly from side-to-side, I was hanging on to every word Finney was saying hoping to absorb who she is as a writer and a poet, so I could revitalize who I was in return.

The poems read by Nikky Finney were complex, historical in their own right, and thought-provoking. I recommend picking up one of her collections this upcoming break and really look to take in the feelings brought on by each one, you might even float away like I did.

Smile Baby

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Gurgling in my stomach

making its way up through my chest

until its clenched in the back of my throat,

wanting a new location knowing there’s only one way out.

Starting off as a cackle it grows depth

it grows deep

it becomes as loud as the bell

interrupting much-needed sleep,

it has rhythm, soul, grit.

It escapes with a vengeance

searching for its heartless victim,

yet it will come out long, hard, strong, peaceful.

It pulsates, strengthens from the inner glow

lined with dreams and hope within the core of my body

connected like an invisible string.

It will flourish, when I flourish

Let’s be honest,

sometimes it takes every inch of every bone

in my carelessly contorted body to hear it again.

It tries.

Starting from the back of my throat,

a meek squeak escapes,

sucked clean of all soul,

a dry towel looking to quench another’s

dying desire for it’s presence.

My mouth brick ups, I tell myself

“just smile baby.”

Hip-Hop Dug Up

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In the grand plant of hip-hop lies so many stems that lead to the root of its existence. Take into consideration the art, the poetry, the dance, the culture, the beats, the lifestyle. We hear lines from over-played rappers on the radio testifying the same word of wisdom, sometimes words of irrelevance, but what really originated these rappers are their predecessors. From Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Nas, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Warren G, Wu-Tang Clan, Common,  Melle Mel, Salt n Pepa, to so many more my brain could explode. All of these people have left seeds into the art of what we call hip-hop, and are waiting to see the flower flourish.

Many misconceptions come with the understanding of what hip-hop music is, it having no substance being one of the biggest misconceptions, and I would whole-heartedly have to disagree with that. I know of only what I listen to and watch when it comes to the hip-hop world, and what really cements this music into the hearts of so many people I believe is its culture. From Jazz to Blues, hip-hop grew from the lyric-less tunes of the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. The soul  and vision that was made from such a simplistic music genre gave many lyricists the drive to paint the picture through words for audiences. Hip-hop reminds me of some of the most powerful and complex poetry that could have ever been spoken aloud. When you hear Kanye West begin a rhyme about college drop-outs and ending it with odes to sunny days and good mornings, it’s understandable that confusion is one of the first feelings you’ve felt. Just like poetry hip-hop music serves a purpose, to illustrate what the writer feels needs to be illustrated however befuddled it may seem.

Hip-hop music rides a beat that poetry has a difficulty in creating. Beat-makers, break-dancers, dj’ers all showcase the flow that hip-hop brings. The intricacy of one note, the power of one sound, the softness of a song’s ending, all are a part of creating some of the greatest art-forms of all time.

What keeps hip-hop growing is its fan-base. Its much-deserved appreciation is because of its reality and understanding that people experience when listening or dancing to it. The lines of hip-hop connect people to a centralized feeling of understanding, translated through that head-nod, or that hand-move, hip-hop has grown within us.

What Indie Movies Do to Me

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After my first viewing at The Sundance Film Festival last Thursday, I’ve come to realize what Indie movies truly do to me. They make me feel like a puppet. Like a stuffed doll in which they can take hold of me and make me laugh, cry, scream whenever they wanted me to. I sincerely had no idea this was possible.

I went to the Michigan Theater to view the showing of The East, an “eco-thriller” about a an agent named Sarah (Brit Marling,) whose job took her undercover to expose an anarchist group called The East. Their mission was to perform “jams” that attempted to expose large corporations who have silently abused people with their products. The group wanted to give an eye for an eye by treating the corporations with a dose of their own medicine, no pun intended. Overall I liked the movie, It was nothing that I’ve ever seen before, and I liked that because I feel like we see some of the same stale story lines in the theaters. The movie did leave me feeling a little emotionally disconnected near the end, I didn’t quite feel like I knew who the characters really were or their personal motives given the story.  However, what this indie film did to me, going back to the point of this post, was make me feel completely confused about life, not that I wasn’t already confused of course. It exposed me to a realm of society that I knew existed, but I still didn’t quite understand.

I love independent films though. They thrive on getting a reaction from their audience, opposed to simply entertaining them, and that’s brave. I guess you could say I’m a romantic, reality-driven indie movie lover, but then again all indie movies have that aspect somewhere within them. They are so raw, awkward, and real, and regardless of how unwillingly I am to succumb to the grasp of the independent films I watch, I will forever love the what they do to me.

Art for You

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For a whole summer I considered myself the connoisseur of  creating wearable art through my own do-it-yourself interpretations. I would go to my local Michael’s craft store and into the trinket aisle where the little buttons, pins, and necklace pendants were, and I’d go insane. I would grab all sorts of cool stones, some beyond bigger than any hand could rock, but I knew that once I got the backings, the super glue, and the pliers, I could make some of the coolest rings anyone I knew had ever saw.

sincerelyyoursjamie.wordpress.com

There also was my desire to become my own interior decorator by do-it-yourself interpretations as well, same summer of course. I hit the local thrift store just about every Saturday, and looked for vases that had weird shapes that I could bedazzle with cheap stones, wood that I could paint over and bombard with collage clippings, and fake flowers that I could intertwine within itself to garnish my doorway. I loved creating my own stuff that enhanced how I lived my life. It’s one thing when art is made for the opinions of others, but it’s another thing when it is simply made to help you feel proud of your abilities.

It was most likely after my trip to Harlem, New York where my creative juices wanted nothing more than to be quenched with something spectacular. In Harlem there were so many people who used their creativity as a market for themselves. There were rings, paintings, music, clothes, shoes, postcards, phone cases, anything you could think of was out there and, for the most part, was created by these people. I bought a few rings that I cherish to this day because no one has anything like them, but what I wanted most was to do that for myself.  I wanted to created my own wearable art and livable art, and maybe that’s how I became inspired.

Photo Credit: Flickr.com

Fashion and interior design have always been an exciting field for me where I could experiment with the inexpensive resources I had around, so I could translate something I initially liked into something I loved. Do-It-Yourself is a great method to produce a creative flow within yourself, whether it be in interior decor, clothes, jewelry, d.i.ying something out of an older item, or a unexpected item, can be the first step in discovering who you are as a creative person, and how you can produce your own forms of art for the world.