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Litchfield Park Gathering brings Native American fine artists and artisans to Arizona community

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Native

Members of the Duncan Family dancing together in the Cultural Education area at the Litchfield Park Gathering.

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By Litchfield Park

May 29, 2023

Litchfield Park, Arizona, is a small, charming city just 30 minutes west of Phoenix. It is home to the historic four-star Wigwam Resort and Golf Course. It is also home to several award-winning annual festivals, including the Litchfield Park Gathering. The Gathering, which is free and open to the public, is a celebration of indigenous arts and cultures. This year’s festival will be held on January 13 and 14, 2024. Now in its 32nd year of production, longtime participants look forward to this festival each year to “gather” and reconnect with family members and friends that they don’t often see.

More than one hundred Native American artists typically participate in the Litchfield Park Gathering, which is an outdoor street festival held in the center of town. Several longtime participants including Larry Ashkie, Bob Lansing, Amado Peña, Daniel Ramirez, and Baje Whitethorne Sr. have pieces in museum and gallery collections. Even more are consistently juried into the nation’s most prestigious shows, including the Heard Museum Guild Indian Market and the Santa Fe Indian Market.

This year festival planners for the Litchfield Park Gathering hope to expand tribal representation and reach. They are seeking a balanced display of artforms and are putting out a call to Native American fine artists and artisans to help them achieve this. In particular, the planning committee is looking to incorporate more carvers, potters, sculptors, and weavers into the show. This is an exciting opportunity for artists to sell their work to both collectors and consumers. Participating artists will showcase their unique talents and perspectives to the thousands of festival goers who descend upon Litchfield Park every January.

Festival attendees enjoying the stage entertainment and food options at the Litchfield Park Gathering.

The Litchfield Park Gathering will provide festival patrons with an incredible selection of Native American masterpieces, including beadwork, jewelry, fetishes, kachinas, paintings, pottery, sculptures, and clothing and textiles. Both traditional and contemporary styles of art will be included, helping attendees understand that indigenous creativity comes in many forms and should not be stereotyped. Live artist demonstrations will also serve as teaching tools. These demonstrations enable festival goers to appreciate and interact with the artists and artisans on a personal level.

Dancing, storytelling, and musical performances will be held on the main stage, as well as in the Cultural Education Area, where audience members can ask questions of the performers. World champion hoop dancers Tony Duncan and Moontee Sinquah will be among the performers, along with world renowned classical guitarist Gabriel Ayala. In the nearby Children’s Area, children can create complimentary make and take arts and crafts, such as arrowhead necklaces, cornhusk dolls and mini clay pots. Violet Duncan will also hold daily hoop dancing workshops for children. Of course, Native American fare will also be available for purchase in the festival’s food court.

Saginaw Chippewa painter Daniel Ramirez demonstrating his technique in front of his booth at the Litchfield Park Gathering.

Artists who are interested in applying to the show can do so online at litchfieldpark.gov. Artists must provide proof of tribal affiliation when they apply, along with three to four images of their recent work. All artwork must be original creations handcrafted and exhibited by the artist. Artists who are accepted into the Litchfield Park Gathering will be eligible to enter the juried art competition, if interested. This special onsite review process will be judged and juried for prizes by an expert panel on Friday, January 12, the afternoon before the festival. Judging will take place at the Wigwam Resort, which is right across from the festival grounds. Winners will be notified when they retrieve their pieces that evening. Winners will also be announced and showcased during the festival.

For additional information about the Litchfield Park Gathering, including the artist application and review process, please call the City of Litchfield Park’s Special Events Department at 623-935-9040 or visit litchfieldpark.gov. This festival is supported in part by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and by tourism dollars received through the Arizona Office of Tourism.

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Artworks in Big Rapids hosts summer camp for ages 7-13

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Printmaking

Registration in now open for Artworks Summer Camp for students ages 7 to 13. The annual…

Artworks in Big Rapids hosts summer camp for ages 7-13

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Printmaking

Registration in now open for Artworks Summer Camp for students ages 7 to 13. The annual…

The Joys of Nighttime Landscape Photography

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Photography

When you think of landscape photography, you most likely imagine doing it during golden hour, with dramatic rays of sunshine cascading across the scene. However, you can create compelling landscape images at any hour, even during the night. This awesome video tutorial will give you a ton of practical advice for tackling nighttime landscape photography and producing eye-catching shots.

Coming to you from Alister Benn of Expressive Photography, this excellent video tutorial will show how to take great nighttime landscape photos. While planning ahead is quite important in regular landscape work, it becomes doubly so when you start doing it at night. First, simply having much less visibility means finding the right location for a shot is trickier, so having your destination planned in advance is a major advantage that will save you a lot of time and effort. Second, working at night is more dangerous, and knowing your route will make for a safer trip. Be sure you take all the other necessary safety precautions as well. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Benn.

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out “Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi.”

LAYER Takes a Quiet Approach to Technology for Samsung

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Design

Even if you’re oblivious of the hype building around the pending finale of HBO’s Succession, you’ve probably gotten whiff of the fashionable catchphrase “quiet luxury” floating around these days, a term encapsulating the neutral, label-free, and supremely tailored fashion preferred by the Roy family as an extension of their stealth wealth. If the Roys were to ever concern themselves about their mobile devices as they are about keeping their Loro Piana caps always ready, they’d possibly be carrying around the subtly done LAYER x Samsung Battery Pack.

Each Samsung Battery Pack features a 25W 10,000 mAh capacity allowing for Super Fast Charging for multiple devices simultaneously.

The minimalist slab’s pebble-like finish is made with a soft speckled plastic delivering a quiet tactile pleasure, a design LAYER and studio founder Benjamin Hubert describes as indicative of a “clean, elegant design” evoking “soft stone-like forms” and a “palette aligned with interior design.”

The Samsung Battery Pack’s gently rounded form and flat end are conceived to clearly display access to its dual USB-C ports with just a glance. The only pronounced embellishment LAYER has given the device beyond its tactile feel is a graphic typographic “10” debossed across the charger’s neutrally hued surface, a large numeral denoted its 10,000 mAh charging capacity.

We are proud to have partnered with Samsung since the very beginnings of LAYER. The new Battery Pack is a small part of a larger collaboration, and it is exciting to release the first of many products we are working on. The Samsung Battery Pack is accessible, functional, and simple yet instantly identifiable and memorable, bringing a little bit of joy to the everyday

-Benjamin Hubert – Founder, LAYER

The Samsung Battery Pack is part of an ongoing collaboration between LAYER and Samsung, and is available for $35.

This post contains affiliate links, so if you make a purchase from an affiliate link, we earn a commission. Thanks for supporting Design Milk!

Gregory Han is the Managing Editor of Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.

Pressing Matters offers possible new coherencies for paper architecture

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Printmaking

Pressing Matters, the current exhibition on view at Modest Common, showcases printmaking work from eight architecture studios.

Making a bullet time video booth #Photography

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Photography

In case you never heard of it: The bullet time effect has been around for a while, but became really famous when it was popularized with the movie “The Matrix” from 1999.

While it can easily be recreated in purely rendered form like animated movies or video games, it is still quite involved and costly to achieve with real cameras: You set up an array of photo cameras, trigger them all simultaneously and play back the individual photos as frames of a video. The result is that the scene seems to be frozen in time while the camera moves around freely.

When I said that the bullet time effect is still expensive, I have to admit that it has become much cheaper since 1999. I looked for old used DSLRs. They have large (albeit old) sensors, they support means to remotely trigger the shutter, they have plenty of resolution, their settings can be controlled precisely and nobody except me is interested in them anymore. The trick is that we are using the photo mode of these old DSLRs to create a video, which means that we are comparing old photo specs with modern video specs. So, I looked for the oldest mainstream beginner DSLR that has a decent resolution and picked the Canon EOS 400D from 2006.

See the video below and more here. The code is on GitHub.

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Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder Identifies Your Feathered Friends Using AI

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Design

Birding, often thought of as a hobby of generations past, is experiencing some newfound popularity. So, it only makes sense that in today’s tech world the Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder exists to notify you of avian visitors, snap photos, and organize them all into a collection for perusing and sharing. Currently, there are 65,000 active feeders in 113 countries, with more than 100 million photos and videos taken of 472 species!

Each day, Bird Buddies across the world snap an average of 837,000 photos and videos. The AI-powered bird feeder gives you total control over its built-in camera from the comfort of your home – well, actually, your phone – and provides five megapixel photos and 720p HD live stream video. Featuring a 120-degree field of view and a 4000 mAh rechargeable lithium ion battery, Bird Buddy’s camera uses artificial intelligence to recognize over 1,000 species – even the rare ones you didn’t know existed.

Each time a feathered friend stops by, the camera snaps a photo and sends you a notification of its latest visitor. Get closer to these shy creatures than ever before, thanks to the camera’s selfie-like perspective that uses a wide-angle lens. You can even draw specific birds to your feeder by browsing hints that share what type of food will attract various species.

While the technical assets are indeed impressive, the body of the Bird Buddy is manufactured from new and post-consumer recycled plastics (BPA-free). The modern bird-friendly design includes a protective roof, dual sided windows for seed visibility, and a rear door for easy refilling. Choose to hang the bird feeder using the included bottom mount with pole, wall, or fence mount.

Though already packed with great features, there are add-on accessories available to take your Bird Buddy to the next level of birding. Upgrade with a detachable solar roof panel and provide the feeder with all the power it needs – no recharging necessary. Attach your Bird Buddy easily to a wall through the use of a wall mount, simply drop it into the plate and rotate it in your preferred direction. Or, easily mount a suet ball holder with the treat of your choice (suet ball not included). Lastly is the 3-in-1 Nutrition Set that can help local birds stay refreshed at all times by bringing together the functions of a water fountain, fruit stake, and jelly tray.

But the Bird Buddy isn’t just about what’s been mentioned. By using one of the feeders you’re also contributing valuable information to the database of bird migrations and populations that will help experts better understand and protect them.

Bird Buddy is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for their next two products: the Smart Hummingbird Feeder + Smart Bird Bath.

smart hummingbird feeder and smart birdbath outdoors

Smart Hummingbird Feeder + Smart Bird Bath

To learn more about the Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder, visit mybirdbuddy.com. Check out their latest Kickstarter to fund the Smart Hummingbird Feeder + Smart Bird Bath at kickstarter.com.

Kelly Beall is senior editor at Design Milk. The Pittsburgh-based graphic designer and writer has had a deep love of art and design for as long as she can remember, and enjoys sharing her finds with others. When undistracted by great art and design, she can be found making a mess in the kitchen, consuming as much information as possible, or on the couch with her three pets. Find her @designcrush on social.

Not Even a Sculpture of a Black Woman Can Escape Racist Hate

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Sculpture

Three hundred people in the UK gathered to clean a sculpture of a Black woman vandalized with white spray paint.

Ad Museum Tokyo

May 29, 2023 By Admin in Art World News

Like everywhere, advertisements are everywhere in Japan. It’s also quite infamous for its T.V. commercials, often shocking the world with their bizarre touch. Despite (or because of) our familiarity with it, however, advertisement largely remains an underappreciated art form. The Ad Museum Tokyo was established in 2002 to turn people’s eyes to the fun, creative ideas that lie in ads.

Set in chronological order, the museum starts off its permanent exhibition with a variety of business tricks from the Edo period, the last of Japan’s feudal periods, circa 1603-1867. It suggests that the world’s first marketing genius may have been Takatoshi Mitsui, a claim supported by famed management consultant Peter Drucker.

In 1673, Mitsui founded the kimono fabric shop Echigoya and quickly made a fortune with his innovative business style. Instead of visiting the would-be customers’ houses door to door, he sold his wares at the storefront while widely distributing hikifuda, an early form of flyer with a daring catchphrase printed on it, advertising his policies: fixed prices and on-the-spot tailoring. His business would later develop into Mitsukoshi, the oldest department store in Japan, and Mitsui Group, one of the largest corporate groups in the world.

By the 19th century, shrewd Edo merchants had found a myriad of ways to advertise their businesses. Meanwhile, artists often featured contemporaneous establishments in their works, from kimono shops in ukiyo-e paintings to teahouses in theater plays, some of which remain in operation to this day.

Japanese advertising rapidly Westernized and modernized in the Showa era, circa 1926-1989. Influences from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements were clear as day, catering to the general public’s taste. In the museum’s collection, you may also recognize many of the brand names from this era’s adverts, including Shiseido, Calpis, and Morinaga Milk Caramel.

As the exhibit goes on through the post-war era to the Heisei era, you can see how advertising developed into the late 20th century. An array of posters, newspaper clippings, and the like are on display alongside the products they advertise, serving as a perhaps nostalgic trip down memory lane for those who lived in these eras.

There are also four cloud-shaped audio visual booths suspended from the ceiling, inside of which visitors can watch an assortment of T.V. commercials curated depending on the “feelings” they evoke: “Yeah!,” “Love,” “Humm…” and “Wow!”

In addition to its vast collection, the museum has a reference library, a unique gift shop, and a temporary exhibit usually displaying recent award-winning ads and their creative processes.