Hey, Eastside kids and parents! Looking for a creative way to keep your child engaged on a non-school day? Send your child to Silver Lake Photo Camp! We follow the LAUSD schedule and offer a day of learning when school’s out. Each camp day is structured around a different theme and concept in photography. We use lessons, games and photo walks to explain the concepts and give the kids a chance to stretch their creative muscles.
For the 10th installment of the Renwick Invitational, curators for the first time selected artists who are all Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Six contemporary makers, each a member of a separate sovereign nation.
Be careful, however, not to consider their art exclusively from Indigenous perspectives.
“All the works in the exhibition were created to intentionally communicate across cultural boundaries,” guest curator Lara M. Evans (Cherokee Nation) said. “There may be some aspects in the works that only people from the artist’s own community will understand, but the works are intended to be evocative for all of us who encounter them.”
Resist a subconscious bias to tie every Native artist and artwork specifically to Native topics as if they don’t share a common humanity.
It might feel natural connecting the large-scale mixed media works of Maggie Thompson (b. 1989; Minneapolis, MN, Fond du Lac Ojibwe) with the ongoing epidemic of violence against Native American women, but question why her work doesn’t equally speak to the ongoing epidemic of violence against all women globally.
I Get Mad Because I Love You (2021-23) uses glass beads, filament and silver-plated tin cones in referencing an abuser’s rationalization. The beads range between clear and white with different sheens, some opaque, some glossy,
“I chose to use that material because when you’re in a psychologically abusive relationship, it’s hard to differentiate what’s actually being said and the intentions behind what’s being said,” Thompson said in an interview with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, host of the Renwick Invitational. “Oftentimes, you choose to focus on the good, so I chose to highlight the words ‘I love you’ so it pops out more. Just because you say ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean you get to treat me this way.”
An experience, personal, both Indigenous and universal. Thompson’s themes of identity, grief, loss and relationships are unbound by nations.
“Yes, I identify as a Native female, but I’m not speaking on behalf of (missing and murdered Indigenous women), it’s coming from a more universal perspective,” Thompson told Forbes.com. “(MMIW) is a really important topic, but I come at (abuse) from an individual perspective hoping that others from all different backgrounds will be able to relate.”
The Equivocator (2021), rope, wire, stockings, thread and ribbon, likewise, comes from personal experience.
“A belly tied in knots with the red flags that you so delicately placed, but insisted did not exist,” Thompson wrote at the time, text which now accompanies the piece on exhibit.
Coiled nylons shaped like intestines–a belly–are tied with red flags.
“Everyone experiences grief in life, but may not always be able to talk about it so my art is a way to process and go through those emotions and put it in a visual form,” she told SAAM.
Established in 2000, the Renwick Invitational showcases emerging and mid-career makers deserving of wider national recognition. The presentation appears in SAAM’s Renwick Gallery, the preeminent center for American craft in the United States. “Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023” highlights fresh and nuanced visions by six contemporary artists who express the honors and burdens connecting people to one another.
Joining Thompson are Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan), Lily Hope (Tlingit), Ursala Hudson (Tlingit), Erica Lord (Athabaskan/Iñupiat) and Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy). The artists come from communities where making is an honored way of coming to know.
Making serves as not only a form of self-expression, but also a powerful way of processing everyday life and expressing ties to community. In doing so, each artist uses traditional forms of making—weaving, beading or sewing—and adapts the materials and techniques to create contemporary works of art. Individually, each craftsperson works in some manner with techniques, materials or concepts embedded within their tribe’s customary practices and history. Thompson’s I Get Mad Because I Love You features a fringe of metal cones referencing the healing potential of making and dancing in the jingle dress in Ojibwe culture.
Their work is also intended to engage with global audiences. The 55 artworks in the exhibition speak to the responsibility of ushering forward cultural traditions while shaping the future with innovative works of art. Think beadwork–customary–with text-based art–contemporary–as united in I Get Mad Because I Love You.
Or Thompson’s star quilt body bags which, again, incorporate traditional beadwork and recall the star quilt patterns used by select Native American tribes, but applied to body bags in memoriam of COVID victims.
“Pushing forward, using different combinations of materials, using things in a different form, taking these star quilts and putting them into the form of a body bag, that’s not traditional,” Thompson explains.
The Renwick Invitational will remain on view through March 31, 2024.
Between August 18 and September 18, 2023, visitors to Washington, D.C. can experience “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together,” a first of its kind project curated by Monument Lab at the invitation of the Trust for the National Mall. Six new monumental scale artworks serving as prototype monuments will be placed across marquee sites on the National Mall from leading contemporary artists Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star (Absáalooke), vanessa german, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Tiffany Chung and Ashon Crawley.
The title borrows from educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune who, upon seeing the 1939 Easter Sunday performance of renowned Black opera singer Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, said the performance “told a story of hope for tomorrow–a story of triumph–a story of pulling together, a story of splendor and real democracy.”
Anderson was barred from performing at nearby Constitution Hall due to segregation in the capital.
The artworks address the question, “what stories remain untold on the National Mall?” with a goal of bringing together innovative and experimental forms of monumentality and memory-making to shine a light on and acknowledge Indigenous legacies, histories of enslavement, civil rights, LGBTQ activism, pathways for immigration, environmental justice, and other narratives of American struggle and survival.
Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia working with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory.
The photographer Danish Siddiqui joined the Reuters agency as an intern in 2010 and a year later, at the age of 28, became its full-time stringer in Mumbai. He concentrated at first on images of the city’s streets – colleagues recall how he often spent weeks getting to know his subjects in order to convey the truth of their lives. This picture of the chicken seller asleep on his cart is typical of his pictures of that period. Siddiqui graduated quickly to frontline news for the agency, covering the war in Afghanistan and the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State. He received two Pulitzer prizes for his work: the first as part of the team covering the Rohingya refugee crisis and the second for his profound images documenting the spread of Covid-19 across the subcontinent.
That latter prize was awarded to Siddiqui posthumously. On 16 July 2021 he was killed by Taliban fighters in Kandahar province, having been embedded with Afghan special forces, one of 80 working journalists to lose their life in that conflict. He was 38 years old. A book of his photographs was published this summer to mark two years since his death, with proceeds going to his widow and two children. The book is, on every page, an expression not only of Siddiqui’s talent and his courage, but of his determination to give a human face to some of the world’s injustices. He was, by the accounts of colleagues, always a man with that mission. He said in a Ted Talk in 2014: “As a photojournalist, I am exposed to the best of humanity and to the worst and everything in between. My role is as a mirror; I want to expose you to the raw truth [of the world] and make you a witness to it. You can look away – or you can stand up and act for change.”
The average tenure of a chief marketing officer (CMO) at Fortune 500 companies has dropped from 54 months in 2021 to 51 months in 2022, according to leadership advisory firm Spencer Stuart.
The report also said that for B2B (business to business) firms, this tenure was slightly longer than that of B2C (business to consumer) firms.
There could be two reasons for this. The first is that the CMO roles are tough and so the tenures are shorter. The second, the roles are critical and hence they uncover more growth opportunities for the professionals.
Both statements are true.
What also makes the role both difficult and exciting is that the CMO’s role is part art and creativity, and part science and measurement.
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So what drives success for this role of the chief marketing officer? We decode 4 key elements:
Brand Listener and Custodian
As the custodian of the brand, the CMO has to uphold its values and keep ensuring consistency in the brand, both internally and externally. While building a brand from scratch is tough in the early days, sustaining it is also no easy task. And the key to success here is often the art of listening intently to customers. The best CMOs devise various ways to do this through persona and user journey mapping, design thinking, timely customer feedback measures, beta testing and more.
It requires them to work closely with product teams building new products and also with customer experience teams to understand customer feedback, while also understanding ground reports from sales teams and leveraging data across the marketing funnel for better insights.
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The Growth Champion
The 4 Ps of marketing have been taught and practiced for ages now. The perfect combination of product, place, price and promotion is still relevant, and has to be mastered for a brand to be successful.
But as companies grow, the marketers are increasingly also being asked to take a more growth-focused outlook.
If content is a key pillar for the company, the CMO might have to devise a programme to understand how prospective customers are engaging with the content and what can help them move across the marketing funnel.
The crafting of compelling messages is critical to ensure better sales. CMOs also need to focus on segmenting data to identify the right customer segments, both from an acquisition point of view and also for customer engagement and customer retention. Sharp insights on these can build more efficient growth funnels.
Technology and analytics are a great tool for CMOs today. But with multiple data-driven opportunities to drive campaigns that can be personalised, it is important to ensure that data privacy is maintained and that customer data is not misused.
The Data Practitioner
A CMO today has access to a plethora of data — transaction level data, customer survey data, complaints data and campaign performance data. With more CEOs asking for a return on investment in marketing, CMOs need to be prepared to both allocate their spends smartly and justify the returns.
And while ensuring a data-driven approach, they need to keep holding a space for that creativity and emotional connection that can surprise and engage deeply.
The Storyteller
The CMO has to ensure that the communication about the brand ensures authenticity, simplicity and creativity across channels and time. It is not an easy task. While advertising agencies have often been thought partners for brands to create iconic advertisements that spell magic for the brand, there is a lot that goes behind creating that perfect copy. And it does not rest with just one blockbuster ad.
Content is today the bedrock for marketing in many cases. Creating unique content, building that authentic voice with content and finding more and more believers through that are the key steps in that journey.
This also requires understanding new-age generative AI tools that claim to create copy and images in seconds. Ensuring correctness, creativity and consistent authenticity over speed is critical for CMOs.
The brands that endure with us as customers are also brands that have deeply engaging and authentic stories. And that’s a CMO skill that is never likely to go out of fashion.
Sotheby’s has blamed Brexit red tape for a decline in the UK art market as its profits tumbled by almost 75pc.
The historic auction house, which is owned by French billionaire Patrick Drahi, posted a fall in profits to $88m (£69m) in 2022, down from $318m the previous year.
Total income generated from sales slumped to $127m from $360m, according to the latest accounts for parent company BidFair.
Bosses blamed the impact of Brexit for the downturn, with imports of arts and antiques down 18pc in 2021 and a further 16pc last year. They warned the slump “may worsen over time”.
Sotheby’s said: “The increased red tape resulting from Brexit is adversely affecting our ability to move property between the UK and the European Union and the retention and travel of our employees, further contributing to the UK ad market’s decline.”
It said additional import and export taxes and duties had had a negative impact on the appeal of selling property in the UK compared to other locations.
The company added that the quantity and quality of property listed for sale in London and future demand for art in its London salesroom had also taken a hit.
The figures highlight the ongoing impact of Britain’s decision to leave the EU on the 279-year-old auction house.
Sotheby’s was taken private in a $3.7bn takeover deal by Mr Drahi through his holding company BidFair in 2019.
The deal was seen as a high water mark in the art market, which rebounded strongly from the global financial crisis.
Patrick Drahi took Sotheby’s private in a $3.7bn deal in 2019
Credit: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
Sotheby’s has overseen a number of high-profile sales in recent years, including work by artists including Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Mark Rothko.
Last year it closed the sale of the Macklowe Collection from $922m – the most valuable art collection ever sold at auction.
But beyond the blockbuster deals, Sotheby’s, which has 80 locations around the world, has been hit by uncertainty and market volatility in the wake of Brexit.
The company said the invasion in Ukraine had had little impact on its business, as it does not conduct sales in Russia and Russian clients made up less than 1pc of its activity in 2021 and 2022.
However, Sotheby’s did close a small administrative office in Moscow after the outbreak of war.
The figures come at a turbulent time for Mr Drahi, who made his fortune through his Altice telecoms empire and is now the largest shareholder in BT.
Mr Drahi’s right hand man Armando Pereira was last month arrested in Portugal as part of a major corruption, money laundering and tax fraud investigation into Altice’s operations in the country.
The scandal has reverberated through Altice’s European empire, with a string of executives and supplies suspended.
His lawyer, Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, has said Mr Pereira is “completely” innocent.
Altice has said it is a victim of alleged wrongdoing by “certain individuals and external entities”. A spokesman for Sotheby’s said it is not connected to the matter.
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“… And if my art does nothing else, I pray it makes you feel.” — Na’Tosha De’Von
Artists 360, a program of the Mid-America Arts Alliance, provides grant funding and professional development opportunities to individual artists of all disciplines in Benton, Carroll, Crawford, Sebastian and Washington counties. Among 2022 recipients was Na’Tosha De’Von, a talented actor familiar to theater fans from Northwest Arkansas stages like TheatreSquared (“School Girls,” “The Royale,” “Detroit ’67”), Trike (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and the University of Arkansas (“Macbeth,” “Avenue Q”).
A native of Chicago, De’Von was raised in Mississippi and says she began her journey into the arts “by way of God’s design.” She has an undergraduate degree in Speech Communication and Theatre from Jackson (Miss.) State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the UA. Since receiving her MFA, she has become a teaching artist, freelance poet and a professional, working actor.
“I believe the purpose of my art is to expose and heal,” she says on her website. “One cannot heal the parts that are broken if they do not see them. So the exposure, while brutal, is a necessary madness. I would like to think the first words I ever spoke were in the form of a metaphor. With that, I acknowledge the power of words. My love for language has allowed me to develop poetry and take on the nuances of characters as an actor.”
Her Artists 360 project, “Ain’t I a Woman,” a one-person show about a young Black woman named Nia, will take the stage Aug. 10-12 at the Global Campus Theater in Fayetteville. De’Von answered these questions for What’s Up!
Q. How did the Artists 360 grant impact your artistic life to allow this to happen?
A. The Artists 360 grant has allowed me to share my artwork with my local community. It has helped me publish my poetry chapbook. And honestly it took a lot of the financial burden off of creating.
Q. Tell me a little about you and growing up and what inspired your passion for acting — and for teaching?
A. I grew up in a single-parent home in poverty. I am a first-generation college student on both sides of my family. I wanted to go into something more practical. I started doing poetry and acting because God showed me this was what He wanted me to do with my life, and I just listened. I teach because there is such an importance for Black teachers, and I love the concept of giving back.
Q. How did you wind up at the UA? What did you learn there that has shaped the course of your career?
A. I went to the University of Arkansas for grad school to get my MFA in acting. The one thing that I would take from the UA outside of my training is the impact of my voice — how my voice is one that the world needs to hear. I learned that my voice has the ability to impact others and make space for change and growth.
Q. Tell me about the plot of your show, what inspired it and how much of you is in the story?
A. The show is about a young girl name Nia. It takes you on her life’s journey as she tries to create her own version of womanhood. It is a beautiful, poetic story that is full of emotions and comedy. I was inspired to write this story as a form of therapy and healing. I wanted to create a piece that opened the doors to needed conversation.
Q. What do you hope audience members are talking about as they leave the show?
A. I would love for the audience to leave the show feeling seen and that they are able to take the first step in their healing process. I also want the audience to leave with their hearts full. I plan to continue to push the story out there and travel it to different universities and theater companies.
FAQ
‘Ain’t I A Woman’
WHEN — 7 p.m. Aug. 10-11, 2 p.m. Aug. 12
WHERE — UA Global Campus Theater, 2 E. Center St. in Fayetteville
COST — $15-$25
INFO — eventbrite.com
NaTosha DeVon is already well known to theater fans from Northwest Arkansas stages like TheatreSquared (“School Girls,” “The Royale,” “Detroit ’67”), Trike (“A Midsummer Nights Dream”) and the University of Arkansas (“Macbeth,” “Avenue Q”). Now, she is producing her own one-person show as the result of an Artists 360 grant. (Courtesy Photo)None
FAQ
‘Aint I A Woman
WHEN — 7 p.m. Aug. 10-11, 2 p.m. Aug. 12
WHERE — UA Global Campus Theater, 2 E. Center St. in Fayetteville
COST — $15-$25
INFO — eventbrite.com
Rexburg’s Art Market returns for the third time this month.
It will be held August 26 at the field behind the Madison County School District building. It costs $75 to set up a booth at the market and artists are required to set up their own booths.
