SALAMANCA — The Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center recently hosted the opening of its new exhibit, “Here, Now and Always: Haudenosaunee Beadwork,” housed in the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum.

The Sept. 23 event celebrating beadwork from the museum’s vast collections gave the public an opportunity to view the pieces, both old and new, and see the inspiration for contemporary artists. People also watched Haudenosaunee artists working on their craft.

Director Hayden Haynes said the staff wants to highlight the museum’s collections and is putting more emphasis on the beadwork because it’s so vast. He said they invited people to come to the opening and view the old as well as the more contemporary pieces on display, learn about their origins and what they mean to the Haudenosaunee culture.

“We wanted to exhibit these pieces, not just to show the collections but to also open conversations about Haudenosaunee history that includes the beadwork,” he said. “Beadwork is not just a form of self-expression; it’s also tied to our identity, our beliefs and our culture. The motifs, designs and even the forms themselves all tie to other things in our culture. We want to show how our ancestors’ pieces inspired us and continue to inspire contemporary bead artists, along with other artists.”

Haynes said beads, in general, have been employed by the Haudenosaunee people for many different uses since time immemorial. He said beads themselves are important to his people and they’ve been used for tens of thousands of years, having been made out of stone, bone, wood and marine shells.

Randee Spruce, educator and curator, said she prepares most of the exhibits at the museum, including putting the current beadwork exhibit together. She was educated at the Institute of American Indian Arts where she majored in museum studies. Spruce, who is also a beadworker, said she first learned the art from a friend and her friend’s grandmother.

Two well-known bead artists presented at the opening. Through their presentations, Grant Jonathan gave a detailed history of Tuscarora Raised Beadwork while Ken Williams Jr. took visitors on his personal beadwork journey. Both presenters gave an inside look at their lives growing up and how Haudenosaunee beadwork influenced their own beadwork.

Jonathan, who grew up on the Tuscarora Reservation near Niagara Falls, is a renowned beadwork artist and an attorney who has spent over a decade bringing home the beadwork crafted by his Tuscarora ancestors and sold to tourists from across the world at Niagara Falls. He said they were called “whimsies” and are beaded souvenirs that first appeared in the mid-19th century and were sold to tourists throughout the Northeast. Based in New York City, he started collecting whimsies in 2008 and currently has more than 2,100 of the historical beadwork pieces.

Williams, an award-winning bead artist, is Northern Arapaho and Seneca. Originally from the Cattaraugus Territory, he now lives in Santa Fe, NM. He talked about the traditional art of the Haudenosaunee and how modern design is integrated into his works today. Drawing upon Indigenous history, popular culture and high fashion, his work merges earlier Seneca and Arapaho styles and techniques with his own contemporary twist on pictorial imagery. He manages the Case Trading Post at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, N.M.

Bead artists from across Turtle Island were invited to the event to sell their finely crafted pieces. Beadwork vendors included Lexi Sickles (Oneida), Iakorihwato:ken Hemlock (Mohawk), Courtney Regis (Seneca), Grace Crowe (Seneca) Robin Seneca (Seneca), Katwite:ne and Kwaharani Jacobs (Mohawk), Alayna Jimerson (Seneca), Kahionwinehshon Phillips (Mohawk), Kehala Smith (Tuscarora), Barbara Jonathan (Seneca) and Melissa Smith (Seneca). Visitors had the opportunity to watch Regis, Sickles and Hemlock demonstrate the intricate beadwork in their own styles.

Haynes said the beadwork exhibit will be on display until next fall. Staff are currently planning the museum’s November Winter Art Market, which is always well-attended. The market will feature traditional and non-native vendors showcasing their amazing works of art, jewelry and home decor. He said they are also working on their Annual Spring Art Show for 2024, which is one of their most popular events. Carson Waterman’s painting exhibit will be on display through February.

The Seneca-Iroquois National Museum is located within the Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center at 82 West Hetzel St. For up-to-date information, call (716) 945-1760. The museum’s website, senecamuseum.org, is currently under construction.

Tina Kraus (previously) recreates nature’s beauty, idiosyncrasies, and diversity through her intricate paper sculptures. Though the environment has been a source of inspiration since her childhood, Kraus explains to Colossal, “In the past decade, I have become more and more worried about the future. The climate crisis, pollution, and the loss of biodiversity already have a big impact on nature and life on this planet.” These disquietudes gave rise to her Paper Life! Ocean series, in which she focused on marine pollution by depicting a hermit crab living in a tin can, a squid trapped in a fishing net, and more.

Kraus challenges herself to create sculptures that are more and more life-like every time. Working intuitively with a bit of experimentation and spontaneity, the Münster, Germany-based artist always starts with a sketch before continuously building up layers of crepe paper to create depth.

Kraus’ Paper Life! Ocean sculptures will be shown early next year in an international group exhibition at MAKE Southwest. For more updates and artwork, visit her Instagram and website.

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A humble rock doubles as a savior in a new music video for The Chemical Brothers, featuring Beck. Directed by Pensacola and produced by Canada, “Skipping Like a Stone” opens with Kurt Steiner, a real-life record-breaking stone skipper shown with what appears to be his actual equipment, including a specialized tool case. After a series of impressive jumps across the water captured from increasingly spectacular perspectives, the individual rock launches into a fateful journey. Chaos and destruction ensue, although the stone plays good samaritan as it thwarts violence and saves several lives.

It’s worth reading Outside’s profile of Steiner from last fall, which dives into his incredibly precise technique shown in slow-motion in the video above.

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In recent years, many people have been asking, “Is it cake?” When it comes to billboards, there’s another age-old question: “Is it paint?”

For anyone who’s ever seen hand-painted ads in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, or Portland, Oregon, chances are high that they were done by Colossal Media. The company began in Brooklyn in 2004 with a goal to revive the once-dying art of sign painting, and has since expanded to 85 locations around the country, Jennifer Edelberg, VP at Colossal, told us. Clients over the years have included Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and Gucci, which has its own designated wall in Manhattan in partnership with Colossal.

“We singlehandedly resurrected this craft,” Edelberg said, calling other companies that now offer hand-painted ads “an honor and a testament to how powerful the format is.”

With Colossal’s 20-year anniversary approaching, Edelberg walked us through the craftsmanship that’s been driving the company and keeping advertisers hooked for nearly two decades.

School’s in session

Edelberg credits Colossal’s ability to bring back hand-painted murals—which were once the norm in OOH advertising before fading into ghost signs—in part to its paid apprenticeship program. Apprentices in New York and LA, Colossal’s two biggest markets, spend about a year in the program alongside anywhere from one to 11 others. After graduating, he painters—informally known as “wall dogs”—can go on to work for Colossal either full-time or or part-time for a ”sustainable, long-term career in the arts” complete with benefits, Edelberg told us.

“We’re the only company in the world with a program like this—and you don’t even have to be an artist coming in,” she said.

What does Colossal look for in a potential painter? It goes beyond artistic talent.

The mural-painting world requires “a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of challenges, a lot of environmental adversity faced from snow to really hot temperatures,” Edelberg said, “so we don’t only look for individuals who are committed to and passionate about the arts, but also those who have a background in construction…we look for people who are committed to all the different elements of a job like this.”

Once in the program, artists are trained to develop a skill set rooted in tradition.

“How we sign paint is based on the same fundamental principles that were used by the early greats like Michelangelo, and how he painted the Sistine Chapel,” she said. “We have an exceptional level of quality.”

A picture is worth a thousand brushstrokes

Colossal Media murals are often praised for their photorealism, a quality the company prides itself on. With some campaigns spanning multiple locations—like a recent Lil Nas X/Vitamin Water campaign in LA, Atlanta, and NYC—Edelberg said brands are given assurances that “the portraiture of the celebrity or anything we’re replicating will be exactly the same from state to state and mural to mural.”

To get that realistic look, she said about three weeks of pre-production is needed for Colossal employees to pattern the artwork, color mix, burn butcher paper, and transfer a rough image outline onto the wall. From there, she said it takes about three days to paint a simple graphic and around 12 days for complex portraiture—a timeline that she says is roughly similar to lead times for traditional OOH installations.

All that work (and ensuring the real estate on which paintings can be placed, for which Colossal has a dedicated management team) doesn’t come cheap. The point-of-entry cost for a four-week-long mural (Colossal’s “minimum flight time”) is usually around $30,000 but can go as high as $200,000 depending on the size, according to Edelberg. Some companies go even bigger: Gucci, whose wall in Soho has its own tag on sites like Google Maps and Yelp, is on an annual contract, she told us.

“What we do is harder, it takes longer, it’s a premium experience, which also translates to something that’s oftentimes more expensive,” she said. “But every single time we paint a mural, we see people stop in their tracks to look or engage with the brand almost like it’s a live performance. The memorability, the stickiness of that is so powerful.”

Beyond the memorability—and the selfies and social posts often generated from installations—Edelberg said Colossal can also help generate buzz around its murals by incorporating mobile geofencing, QR codes, augmented reality, and shoppable experiences.

“The other really powerful thing about murals, aside from being very human and soulful and colorful, is its ability to really take on a cross-platform reach, and [generate] so many touch points from a single wall,” she said.

What’s next?

Fall tends to be the busiest time of year for Colossal Media, with back-to-school campaigns and fashion week leading into Q4 holiday campaigns.

As the firm approaches its 20-year anniversary, Colossal employees are thinking about how to redefine the company as a “cultural connector in the community,” not just an OOH advertiser, Edelberg said, while celebrating its success embracing a format with such a storied history.

“We’re just proud that we can continue to offer this as an opportunity for aspiring sign painters and that we can keep this craft and trade alive,” she said.

In Anatomy of the Radiant Mind, Jason Boyd Kinsella considers what lies beneath the surface of our online identities and public-facing personas. The Canadian artist conjures a cast of characters, each based on distinct Myers-Brigg personality types to which he attributes unique colors, shapes, and sizes that comprise his figures. Working in what he describes as “fleshless portraiture,” Kinsella focuses on the intricacies of the human brain and emotional states, all conveyed through Cubist forms.

On view next month at Unit London, Anatomy of the Radiant Mind presents large-scale oil paintings and sculptures that, together, question dimension and depth. How can we understand one another when viewed through the flatness of social media? What do we lose when we’re not sharing a physical space? These questions surround the works, each of which is titled with the subtle anonymity of a single, given name like “Geordie” or “Lukas.”

To create the portraits, Kinsella begins with a preliminary structural sketch on paper and then translates his figures to canvas. He stacks three-dimensional triangles, cylinders, spheres, and blocks into facial features before applying vivid color. “Howard,” for example, exudes an aggrieved energy with a curved body in black and glowering expression, while “Kate” is dainty, her shapes stacked into a slim, pastel-hued tower.

Anatomy of the Radiant Mind runs from October 3 to November 4. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

Left: “Howard” (2023), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters. Right: “Patricia” (2023), oil on canvas, 145 x 115 centimeters

“Lukas” (2023), oil on canvas, 185 x 155 centimeters

“Kate” (2023), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters

“Rich” (2023), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters

“Lane” (2023), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Personality Types Emerge Through Colorful, Fragmented Shapes in Jason Boyd Kinsella’s Portraits appeared first on Colossal.