Archive for the ‘Artistry’ Category
Banky W, Tiwa Savage, eLDee storm Lagos with Hennessy VIP gig
Posted by: Admin
November 11th, 2011 >> Artistry
All is now set for
the final leg of Hennessy Artistry 2011 VIP night holding at the Rehab
night club in Lagos this weekend. As the team returns to Lagos this
weekend for the final VIP Night, it is going to be a blend of fun,
surprise and unlimited excitement. With an eclectic combination of pop,
rap and RB, the trio of Banky W, Tiwa Savage and eLDee will
deliver the supplies and keep the crowd on their feet all night.
“It’s been so much
fun touring Abuja and Port Harcourt. Lagos Island is going to be a
blast, I can’t wait to see who’s going to be the winner of the Facebook
competition,” headliner Banky W says.
For the last time,
one lucky Facebook fan will get to win a VIP night out with the
superstars at the VIP event and hang out with them at Rehab this
Friday. Past winners include Bodunrin Oluwafemi and Kennedy Ihenacho
who were both treated like superstars in Lagos and Abuja.
“I can’t wait for
the final VIP party, touring with eLDee and Banky W has been fun. This
is the final party, but this is not the end of the journey, wait till
you see the video for “Toast to the good life,” Tiwa Savage says.
The video for this
year’s theme song, according to Hennessy’s Communications Manager
Tokini Peterside, will be premiered in the presence of select guests in
a matter of weeks.
Mr Peterside also
assures Lagos residents that “several surprise acts will be performing
at Rehab this weekend alongside the headliners. You just have to keep
your fingers crossed”
In Abuja, WizKid
made a surprise entry on stage and got the crowd cheering. Which
surprise act will share the stage with Tiwa Savage, Banky W and eLDee
in Lagos?
Like the previous
VIP nights, fans will mingle with the stars – rocking all night to
lavish beat and tunes from Nigeria’s biggest talents Since inception in
2006, Hennessy Artistry has been at the forefront of mixing and
blending hip and inspirational music from around the world. Artistes
that have been involved with the music platform include Kanye West,
Pharell Williams, Ne-Yo, Leona Lewis, LL Cool J and Fabulous.
Last weekend, the
Hennessy Artistry train made a stop in Port Harcourt, and it was fun
all the way as hit makers Waconzy and Banky W thrilled the crowd
alongside upcoming acts Mr Drill, Zealot and Lily Jeans at the Eddiez
Night Club which played host to the headliners on October 21st, 2011.
The event also
attracted Duncan Mighty who made a surprise appearance at the event
“The VIP night will be a blast, I can assure you. Hennessy is a brand
that we have been supporting for a while, we only just decided to make
it official this year. The first Lagos event and the other city events
were so much fun, I am guaranteeing you one thing for the Rehab VIP
Night – An unforgettable night-out!” eLDee one of the headliners says.
Currently in its
5th edition, Hennessy Artistry is Nigeria’s most innovative musical
platform. The series was first unveiled in Nigeria in 2007. Through the
years, it has evolved from a cocktail-mixing contest between renowned
bartenders to a battle of DJs and now a platform for experimental
collaborations among multi-talented artistes.
The final leg of the Hennessey Artistry 2011 VIP event will be at the Rehab nightclub this weekend.
After a three-year hiatus from Utah, the world’s leading Chinese acrobatic troupe will return Nov. 3 and 4 at 7:30 pm at the Ellen Eccles Theatre. The Golden Dragon Acrobats are renown for their spellbinding artistry, and this years athletic performance is sure to thrill adults and children alike.
These daring acrobats perform feats on chairs stacked 10 stories high and juggle anything from soccer balls to umbrellas. Showcasing their unique skills, the troupe has traveled to all 50 states and to more than 65 countries on five continents. The Dragons also received two prestigious New York Drama Desk Award nominations for their Broadway performances, and routinely sell out venues across the world.
“Their amazing artistry, beautiful costumes, and props provide a visual feast for the entire family to enjoy, said Cache Valley Center for the Arts Executive Director Wally Bloss in a recent press release.
The Golden Dragon Acrobat, Nov. 3-4
Ellen Eccles Theatre, 43 S. Main Street, Logan
Click here for tickets
Posted: Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 @ 3:20 pm
Categories: The Hive.
Tags: Ellen Eccles Theatre, Golden Dragon Acrobats, logan, utah.
Roczane Enriquez likes to transform people…into evil clowns, zombies and fairies.
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The more gruesome, the better, says the 27-year-old independent makeup artist.
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I like using blood, bruises, baggy eyes and open wounds, said Enriquez, who runs her own business, Zane Artistry.
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The Hayward-based skin stylist, who has more than four years of experience as a professional makeup artist, calls on her dark side every Halloween season. She says she enjoys this time of year as a change of pace to her usual clientele of bridal parties, make-overs and spa treatments.
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I enjoy making people feel and look beautiful. At the same time, I like the creative outlet of transforming people into other characters they dont usually get to be, she said.
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When transforming her clients, Enriquez draws from her background of doing special effects makeup for independent films and theater productions. She primarily uses traditional theatrical makeup techniques and likes to experiment with different materials, like latex applications and small prosthetics. As a licensed skin care therapist, she takes pride in making sure that the material she uses is not damaging to the skin, she said.
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Patch got an intimate — and frightening — look at Enriquezs makeup process as she transformed local residents into a dark fairy, psycho clown and undead doll. Check out the photos in the gallery above!
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Enriquez is available by appointment. Her rates depend on the complexity of the makeup and/or special effects and can range anywhere from $45 to $150 per person. For more information, or to get your Halloween makeover, visit www.zaneartistry.com.
Macys Passport presents Glamorama took flight Like a G6 with performances by Far East Movement and Grammy Award-winner Cee Lo Green at the Chicago Theatre. The sold-out event lived up to its reputation with guests viewing fall fashion by Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Sonia Rykiel, Papi, Tracy Reese, Armani Jeans and Bar III. The event raised more than $350,000 for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana in their efforts building the worlds largest Ronald McDonald House. I was proud to be the honorary chairwoman for this event.
My idea of street food has always been Maxwell Street pork chop sandwiches, but oh how far weve come! With the inaugural event of StreetFood Artistry, the emerging rich street food culture of Chicago is being recognized. Held recently at Galleria Marchetti, the family friendly fest featured not only street-inspired dishes, but also highlighted some of Chicagos best food trucks, cooking demos by top chefs, street art, photography and a kids corner. Entertainment was provided by MADD Rhythms, the Real Connection, Soul People and H2O Soul.
There was even a cart for four-legged guests offering organic treats from Lick-Lick. I loved the noodle dish from chef Takashi Yagihashi, who was manning the Macys chefs a-go-go truck as well as the old school root beer float cart. Founded by Patrice Perkins and Alicia August-Wright, the event also included a silent auction which benefited the University of Chicago Charter School, Common Threads and Chicago Street Musicians.
Freelance writer Candace Jordan is involved with many local organizations, including some whose events she covers.
Click here to see photos from the events.
Find Candace Jordans blog at CandidCandace.com.
CRYSTAL LAKE Creative Artistry will begin the fall session with an exhibit focusing on creations from the 2010-11 art year.
Instructors and students ages 4 through adult will show art pieces created over the past year and during summer camps and workshops, said Amber Larsen of Creative Artistry Fine Arts School in Crystal Lake.
View drawing, painting, sculpture and more. The exhibit will be from Sept. 3 to Sept. 30 at Sage Gallery, Lakeside Legacy Arts Park, 401…
Click here for complete article
Hennessy Artistry Back For 5th Edition
After a successful edition last year, organisers of Hennessy Artistry are already putting finishing touches to this year’s edition to make it bigger and better.
Crowning glories: Dallas museum doffs its cap to African artistry that says so …
Posted by: Admin
September 4th, 2011 >> Artistry
By Gaile Robinson
grobinson@star-telegram.com
Professional indignation got the better of Roslyn Walker, the Dallas Museum of Arts curator of African Art, when she saw photos of the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit that will open at the museum in mid-November.
Walker recognized historical African influences in the French fashion designers collection that were similar to the sub-Saharan pieces in the DMAs permanent collection. She said she realized that the museums collection, paired with significant loans, could result in an exhibit that would play well with the Gaultier display. It was an opportunity, Walker says, that she couldnt resist.
So, a late addition to the DMAs schedule is African Headwear: Beyond Fashion, Walkers curatorial effort to contrast headwear that signified social or marital status, gender, age, military rank, hunting prowess or religious affiliation with fashions ornamental creations. She didnt hedge her intent; the subtitle, Beyond Fashion, lays it on the line. These elaborate African works are social signifiers that carry the same weight as a five-bedroom house, desired ZIP code, sports trophy, fancy car and stock portfolio — whereas Gaultiers pricey accessories are made solely to titillate a fashion editors eye and are rarely made for resale or street wear.
In her small, three-gallery exhibit of 46 pieces are examples of dramatic heroism and sweet significance, humorous cross-cultural adaptations and extravagant craftsmanship. Accompanying the pieces are informative text panels and photographs of the pieces, many of them still in use.
There are head pieces that indicate ultimate achievement within a culture and ones that signify that the wearers have yet to make their mark. As a rite of manhood, Maasai warriors were expected to kill a lion single-handedly, armed only with a shield and a spear; those that did and lived didnt have to tell their tale — they had the lions mane fashioned into a tall hat so that they would tower over their unmanly brothers. Those young men who had yet to kill a lion had to wear a large oval covered in ostrich feathers that encircled their faces, much like a furry toilet seat. Imagine the pressure to shed the oval and step up to the mane-wearing ranks.
Several of the headpieces on display are protective in nature, shielding the head from all manner of dangers, such as spears, as well as things that could fall out of trees, such as snakes and poisonous insects. Some are made of thickly woven fibers, others are brass-plated. But they all carry some form of decoration: cowry shells, feathers, fur or beads. One large headpiece from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that looks quite regal is actually meant for an infant. The woven conical hat with a long tapering brim in the back would shield the baby, who was carried papoose-style on his mothers back.
Many are used for ceremonial occasions. Zulu brides wear a large disc of human hair that has been felted and dyed ochre. The bride and her mother make the hat using their own hair, supplemented with raffia, which they twist and weave into the large circle. It symbolizes the bond between mother and child.
The brides of the Himba people, herdsmen from Namibia, use cowhide headdresses that simulate a cows head with a rolled front edge, framed by long cowlike ears that the bride wears for the first month of her married life. The structure causes a kind of tunnel vision, says Walker, which literally makes the bride focus only on her intended and, symbolically, on her new life as a married woman. Later, she will don a head piece of goatskin that looks like a small diadem with flowers and a long tail tufted with animal hair.
Other headdresses invoke societal strictures. The Lega people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have a governing body of elders instead of a single chief. Lega men wear the sawamazembe, a hat that looks like a womans braided hairstyle, and the women wear a muzombolo, a headpiece topped with a phallic shape. This cross-gender representation stresses mutual support for the good of the community, Walker says.
Then there are the royal crowns; the most elaborate ones are from the Yoruba people of Nigeria. Tall conical hats topped with effigies of birds and decorated with royal ancestors and a veil of beads look similar to papal miters. The bird at the apex represents communication between heaven and earth, and the long cascade of beads is to disguise the wearer so that the focus is on the ancestors.
For more casual occasions, the Yoruba king might choose to wear a cap made entirely of white seed beads that is fashioned to look like an English barristers wig. This cultural adaptation of British authority is used when the king has to preside at a local court or attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The beadwork is quite beautiful and the headpiece is much finer than the ratty-looking wigs it emulates.
For sheer volume, nothing comes close to the royal messengers headdress from Cameroon. The large puff ball of purple raffia, which is 2 feet across, is one of the stars of the show for its size and its clever construction, which allows it to be folded into itself for storage.
Also on display is a contemporary Nigerian gele, which is little more than a length of stiffened fabric about the size of a pareo that, in accomplished hands, becomes an elaborate hat of dramatic folds resembling a butterfly or flower. When done correctly, and it takes a master, no pins are used — just artful wrapping and twisting.
The African Headwear exhibit is an interesting transition between the DMAs current exhibition, Art of the American Indians, which displays headgear with similar social distinctions, and the show that will replace it, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk. It is a reminder that adornment can convey wealth and status but that, in many instances, much more significant information is being relayed.
Gaile Robinson is the Star-Telegram art and design critic, 817-390-7113
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A 100 Year Battle Over Fine Oriental & Persian Rugs?
Posted by: Admin
August 31st, 2011 >> Artistry
?The level of artistry and craftsmanship that goes into hand-weaving a single rug can take years and well-made pieces can be passed down through generations over centuries. Preserving and promoting magnificent antique and modern hand-woven pieces is worth the hard work for me.?
Pushing language’s boundaries can move mountains, nudge the world
Posted by: Admin
August 29th, 2011 >> Artistry
If nothing else, my life could be characterized as an extensive, nigh-upon reverential love affair with the English language and its exquisitely idiosyncratic trappings, an insatiable, unremitting fervor for its harebrained idioms and magnificent turns-of-phrase.
Words enrapture me, beguile me, sing to me, have fairly jettisoned themselves off the page in my direction since the time I was an elementary school student devouring page after page of the dictionary, fervently longing for the school curriculum to encompass books not written with the express purpose of appealing to elementary school students.
My history as a writer spans my entire lifetime, from the fantastical tales written in neon gel ink of my formative youth, to the illustrated picture books of the Young Writers competition sponsored in elementary school (competition entries of a childs brilliance that, to this day, I remain convinced were irreparably disadvantaged by my desolate deficiency of visual artistic ability), to the maudlin and self-indulgent short stories of middle school, and ultimately to the erudite and highly emotionally connotative voice that Ive at last settled on, though I dont presume to know everything about where my writerly odyssey will take me just yet.
All I know is where Ive been and where I want to go: to the editors desk at a major publishing house, to having tea with the leading lights of literary fiction that I hope to call my contemporaries, maybe even to giving an acceptance speech for the coveted Pulitzer Prize, if all these years that have been and will be of reading dictionaries and writing enough fiction to burn down a forest ultimately have a yield, if the stars align in my favor. I refuse to believe the artistry of words is dead and buried, and if it is, Im going to bring it back or die trying.
Ive little interest in chronicling the past, in attempting to distill light and life into that which cannot be altered in actuality, but it is at once the prerogative and the duty of the writer to accurately depict life as he or she sees it. After all, what is literature if not a representation of the human mind and condition at the time of publication, if not an intimate discourse between writer and reader across the insurmountable distance of numerous bygone eras?
I scour newspapers and literary periodicals such as Timothy McSweeneys Quarterly Concern and the Kenyon Review, I habitually tune in to Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow, my Web browsers homepage is the Huffington Post; as a writer, I am a cultural steward of the contemporary period, tasked with an undertaking of awe-inspiring responsibility to initiate that intimate discourse across centuries, to communicate the importance of words to future generations, to be well-informed when an enterprising reader looking to learn about the turn of the new millennium unearths my novel. Id hate to be caught lacking or inaccurate.
My greatest asset as a writer, as one who is doomed to feel stories with a poignancy that others dont and to stay awake into the wee hours of the morning committing those feelings to word processor not unlike a madman, is at once my livelihood, my passion, my greatest weakness: my indelible love of words.
In an age in which, to me, one of the most pressing issues of the generation is the bleak lack of appreciation for and criminal devaluation of good writing, such an ardent zeal for language is deemed too dense, too intellectual for the populace, too close to veering into the distasteful territory of purple prose. And yet, there are those who would disagree, those who would appreciate my writing for the monumental linguistic effort that I pour into getting the right words in the right order with the right emotional connotation, those cultured critics and visionaries of literary fiction who remain bastions and beacons for those such as myself who are proud to be self-professed writers and prose stylists, not mere storytellers.
I endeavor to pack my sentences with such imagery, energy and exhaustive grammar that they become almost mathematically hefty, bending and bowing and threatening to break under all of that beautifully verbose weight, so much so that they become somewhat polarizing in that some would scoff at me, some would think it extraordinary. Ive found that Ive grown up enough to no longer be bothered when the former occurs.
Perhaps my burning infatuation with words and my insatiable consumption of dictionaries both contribute to my being something of a literary island, a lone figure battered by a murky, seemingly bleak sea of hack authors. In this class, I long to be exposed to more erudite luminaries such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon and Nicole Krauss, more like-minded writers who reside under stones Ive yet to overturn, to be assured that there are others who ruminate endlessly over beautiful passages, whose very hearts and souls burn with language, who marvel at its elegant malleability, who believe that we need not all be economical of words and that we need not all be action writers.
I yearn to be given evidence that linguistic artistry will live to fight another day, to confirm that I am not the only one with an ineffaceable belief that the pushing of languages boundaries can move mountains, shake the floors of dusky, primordial oceans, even so much as nudge the world, if only just a little bit.
Adrienne Westenfeld graduated from Homestead High School in June and is about to begin school at DePauw University.
GUILLERMO DEL Toro has vowed his Dont Be Afraid of the Dark will cause folks to poop in their pants, but if you go, dont bother donning Depends.
Dark is a well-crafted old-school haunted house movie (based on a 1973 TV movie), one that favors atmospherics over gore, but its the sort of movie that leaves you more impressed with artistry than moved to poop by the proceedings.
Del Toro has described the 73 original as the scariest movie hes ever seen, and you can see why it appeals to him – creepy old house, inhabited by an evil presence that can be appeased by an offering of childrens teeth.
Childrens teeth!
And if those teeth happen to come with children attached, well. . .
This is right up the alley of del Toro (Cronos, Pans Labyrinth), so skilled at investing objects with portent and meaning. Here, Del Toro (producer and writer) off-loads that task to director (comics artist) Troy Nixey, making his debut.
The story opens with an architect (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes) welcoming the mans estranged daughter (Bailee Madison) to the old mansion hes working to restore.
The little girl, essentially abandoned by her mother, is obstinately unhappy about her new living arrangement, and spends much time exploring the spooky house alone – exposed, of course, to the supernatural danger that lurks there, the basis for the movies suspense.
Dont Be Afraid of the Dark is a welcome return to the pre-gore tradition of classic horror craft, but its also an indication of why Hollywood prefers the modern tradition of simple, graphic slaughter. Its easier.
Building a mood, creating an accumulating sense of dread – thats hard work, difficult to achieve. And Dark, despite its ambitions and its artistry, is only partially successful. Evil eventually takes physical form, and when it does, the air goes out a bit.
A better example of old-school scares is Insidious, made by the Saw guys earlier this year.
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Johnson, directed by Troy Nixey, written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, music by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders, distributed by Film District.