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| "Zinnia" |
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| Stormalong Album Cover |
100% Machine Separated from Alfredo Salazar-Caro on Vimeo.
Future Projects
To learn more about Alfredo Salazar and view his entire body of work visit his website and his blog.
8<3Track Honey
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| Abi Ferrin Fall 2010 Collection |
Fashion
Designer Abi Ferrin's Fall 2010 line is free spirited and daring, mixing classic fabric cuts and drapery, bold prints, and tribal accents. Now known for her popular "5 way top", Ferrin quit her sales job after her work was noticed during an industry party at Kitson Boutique, and began satisfying her aspirations to become a designer. Her line, which has been featured in US Weekly, Lucky and D Magazine is effortlessly stylish. My personal favorite is the holly dress, smooth red color and asymmetrical lines complemented by a chic belt that adorns the waistline; it's these unique accessories that make the Abi Ferrin line a stylish brand of philanthropic proportions.
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| Abi Ferrin Fall 2010 Collection |
The Designer gives back through the Abi Ferrin Freedom Project and her partnership with Gods Green America which "mobilizes green accountability" and supports her efforts in creating eco friendly clothing. The freedom project "focuses on providing oppressed women with; training, fair pay, food and shelter" while giving them the chance to practice their craft by hand making the cultural details seen in her collection. "The micro-businesses that are created due to this training also fund foster care and quality education for children rescued from slavery, women and children rescued from prostitution, and other abusive environments." The Freedom Project is primarily based at Guardian Village in Nepal, but Ferrin is currently extending the proceeds from her brand to orphan rescue organization Vision Trust, continuing the trend of using her passion for a greater purpose.
Purpose
Ferrin was able to realize her artistic dream, thus give to the lives of others through an investment from Texas Next Top Designer (Texas' very own "Project Runway" sans "reality" TV cameras). The 2007 title winner proved best in the competition which pits the collections of aspiring designers against each other in a series of board examinations that test every facet of their brand from business plans to individual pieces for the chance to win a generous grant and investment support. Last years' winner was lingerie designer Megan Summerville, an innovator and entrepreneur who has been featured in D magazine for her bridal line Something Blue, and the recipient of Austin's Love a Local Business grant.This year Red iD Agency is hosting an event to display the submissions of TNTD hopefuls before the competition commences and they've decided to open it up to the public.
I'm expecting this show to be near to fashion week proportions. I'm interested in seeing what these competitors are going to bring to the table, judging by the work of Abi Ferrin, this show is going to be seriously dope...
1.Subscribe to Art Star ("Follow" through Google Blogger)
Giveaway ends Wednesday night 12:00am! Improve your chances at winning by having whoever you plan to share the tickets submit a comment as well. *Special thanks to Green Bandana Group and Teresa Nguyen of RediD Agency for the tickets (visit RediD Agency site to RSVP by Tuesday, just in case you don't win!)
“Fashions fade, style is eternal.” (and giving never goes out of style)
8<3 Track Honey
Read Who I Was Starting Davidson here
When I was 18 and writing this poem - I was even cockier than I am today. I would imagine that I would die before 20, and people would discover my poetry, proclaim it genius, and I wanted to leave little clues that connected different poems - so that future students would have something to write about in their poetry analysis. So, this pre-amble very much references another poem - "This Is Not Light" that I had written when I was 16 at Stanford.
However, it sets the tone for everything that would come after in the poem - the love and hate relationship with the city, the idea that things aren't always what they seem, how you can get lost in reality, and how it is so hard to leave your past. Probably the most emotionally resonant line is "it hurts, to laugh and smile sometimes" - because there are just so many times in my life when I am expected to be happy, be awesome, be inspiring, be a leader - and I just feel like crying, but I just laugh and smile instead.
But it was so true that North Park at that time (before the expansion) was a very preppy mall - everyone really did wear polo and khakis. So the first stanza of Dallas is really a memory of a specific day in my life. My best friend, Danny Garcia, was playing with his band at North Park (which felt like a really big deal at the time) and he was doing great, and there was some art opening at the MAC that night and I wanted to celebrate. So, it is really the introduction to this almost glamorous life and lifestyle that was combining the arts and people who had money and prestige in Dallas, that I had wandered into through education and talent.
So, we would wander from place to place, and there was this excitement that we were all going to be somebody special one day - because we had been told how great we were since forever. And we were constantly exposed to cool things - my good friend Matt Whitenack whose mother Nancy owns the leading contemporary art gallery in Dallas, Conduit Gallery, well she was one of the first residents when Southside first opened. I remember running around there with Matt, and they working on renovating the inside of it, and Matt was a hot shot young artist and so he had his own studio on the roof of the coolest loft space in Dallas at the time, with these beautiful views of the skyline, and just this sense of freedom, of having your own space, of being awesome and artsy, that was incomparable at 17.
So, there was definitely this sense that we were a bit more awesome than everyone else we knew, because we were all doing cool things, winning awards, and knew cool, beautiful, rich people, and I was definitely a part of all of that. Definitely believed entirely in this idea of sangfroid - that everything we did we should make it look effortless, that this was all just our birthright - however it wasn't, and I think that is where a lot of the sadness came from.
My good friends at the time were all sorts of screwed up. Behind this beautiful facade - I grew up thinking that it was normal to personally know at least one drug dealer (I knew several) and that it was just part of the high school experience. I did have friends who had tried to kill themselves. And in general we were just all incredibly reckless - this was a time period in my life when my normal driving speed was 100 mph - everytime I got into a car I would break a 100 if I got onto a freeway. There was a definitely an utter recklessness and disregard for rules - so I completely had Gwendolyn Brooks poem "We Real Cool" in mind, especially her ending of we die soon, because that is where we were all headed, and not surprisingly a year later one of us would get there, and it was only by the grace of God that the rest of us are still alive.
One of the big parts of my life during this time was driving - I lived far away from where all the action was, so I was constantly in a car. And it would often be when I was driving from Dallas to DeSoto where reality would set in about my true emotional state - the glitz and glimmer of the city would be behind me, and I was left with just a sadness.
I had this idea that I had already peaked at 16. That I would never be cooler, more alive, more intelligent, more vibrant, than I was at this age. I felt that I had already lived life and really DeSoto is almost my proof for why I felt that way. I had gone to Stanford to write and had met this beautiful girl named Courtney Hopen, and she was the first girl I really enjoyed kissing. And it was a miracle for me to go Stanford, my family didn't have the money, they had offered a partial scholarship for the program, I had raised some funds, but I was still short. A few days before the program started my Dad found this saving bonds they had put away for me when I was a kid, and they had all just matured and was the exact amount of money to the dollar that I needed to go there. Add to this I finally learn how to write poetry while I am there, and I meet all of these great young writers from across the country, I fall in love with the campus and the place, and riding bikes everywhere, and now there is this beautiful girl, who is sitting with me under a tree, and we are making out and reading poetry to each other, and it is a sunny day, and I hear the lyrics to Semi-charmed life "When Im with you I feel like I could die/ And that would be all right, all right", and it is just the happiest moment I had had in my life.
So, I contrast this super happy moment with the grittier reality of Houston, TX - which for me was always where I felt most black growing up. My mother is from the inner city in Houston, and so that is where we would go when we visited (about 5 times a year) and my uncle owned these row houses in the roughest part of town - 5th Ward. So, you would have this prep school kid going to this totally different world, where people looked like me, but we had nothing in common, yet it helped expand my own experiences - and was exceedingly valuable, and perhaps most importantly at that time was something that my peers in Dallas didn't have.
I continued my case by citing some of the books I read that were really influential to me. There were some geniuses in my class, and they could beat the pants off of me in most subjects, but reading was one thing I felt I could compete with them on. I will never forget we had this Russian literature arms race, and I kicked it off by reading War and Peace. Then everyone else read War and Peace and started on Anna Karenina. Then I had to read that, and somewhere around there everyone read Crime and Punishment - but I started reading The Brothers Karamazov - it was a very competitive thing, but the point is at 16 I read some of the best novels ever written, had all of these great cultural experiences (chitlins), had won lots of awards, gotten standing ovations for my poetry, and was simply depressed by it all.
Because I was smart, I was able to pick up on patterns and have always been interested in human behavior and fancied myself a student of human nature. At this time, I would use my knowledge to manipulate other people and play games - especially with girls. And it all seemed so boring and pointless to me - I was just starting to have my first episodes with Bi-Polar back then, but I didn't understand any of that. I just knew it was weird to have all of these great things going on in my life and to still feel so crappy.
I continue my case for great life experience at 16 by listing these opposite things that I had done. I had this great experience in Houston where I stole a wheel chair with a friend of mine from a hospital, and it was the first real thing I had stolen, but I was also an Eagle Scout (which you wouldn't expect to steal things). The Door was this christian club in Deep Ellum and I had gone to concerts there but was very much in love with hip hop both commercial and underground. In fact, my mother hated the fact I would constantly listen to hip hop because of the profanity but I loved it. So, all of these contradictions that were and are my life, the entire poem, was really just a giant lead-in to the penultimate stanza.
I had struggled for a long time about how to write about trying to commit suicide. I didn't want to glorify it, because there is no glory in it. However, it felt dishonest not to mention it - because by nature it becomes one of the important parts of your life. Most importantly, I knew that no one knew or could really believe that I would have tried to kill myself. I was the kid who had it all. When I applied to college I was accepted to Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis, Rice University, University of Texas, Plan II program, Davidson College, Austin College, University of South, Emory University, and even got a nomination to the Air Force Academy. I got scholarship offers from every school - clearly whatever you were supposed to do in high school, I had done it just as well as anyone in the country.
Yet, I had tried to kill myself. And it would take another few years before I could reconcile that, but the truth was I felt worthless, I felt like I had nothing to live for, I felt that I had done a lot, so I didn't feel all that bad about ending my own life. The most important part was that no one knew I was dealing with any of these emotions in high school, no one knew I was depressed, sometimes suicidal, it was nothing I could talk about with my parents. All everyone saw was the lakes calm surface, the very talented, accomplished, outgoing, and well-spoken young man.Yet I think it is a powerful (and perhaps familiar) story that the most talented can end up the most lonely, the most depressed, and the most hopeless.
However, I was not 16 when I wrote this poem, I was 18. And I wasn't dead. And the last stanza is really about why and where I was a couple years later, going to college. And there was this girl named Mariana, and she was my first love, and she talked me out of killing myself once, and I will always love her for that, because I might not be here if it wasn't for her. Although, the fact that she was so far away added to my general angst. But I have already written about her in much greater detail elsewhere.
The last thing I want to talk about is The Great Gatsby. When I first read this book it was like reading an autobiography. To this day I still often think about certain lines in the book. But there was/is this idea of some far off, marvelous thing, that I am so desperately trying to get to, but trying to get to it is much more important than actually getting there. So, it is important to me that the poem does end on a very hopeful and redemptive note - because ultimately I think that was my high school experience and life experience. I have had moments of intense sadness but I have also had great joy and triumphs and friendships and lovers and unfortunately my periods of normalcy and happiness will always be interrupted by times of sadness and depression, but I don't let it stop me. I am trying to become whomever I am supposed to be, reach my potential as soon as possible, and in truth, I haven't slowed down yet.
Click here to read the poem Who I Was; Starting Davidson.
Before I begin the actual stories behind the poem - I want to talk about the experiences I have had performing this poem.
From really 2001 - 2008, I was blessed to have many great performance experiences, at many universities across the country, at art festivals, for talent contests, opening up for established groups, and of course the normal open mic scene.
However, the most special performance experience I have had involved this poem and happened right after I turned 19.
As I alluded to last time, when I was 19 I had won some grants to travel and make art abroad. Thanks to the support and patience of Dr. Arturo Lindsay, I was able to take part in an artists colony in Panama called Taller Portobelo.
In addition to making visual art, I also did some writing, and one night shared some poems with the other artists in the colony. They were all pretty impressed, and decided I needed to read at the festival - Feria de Portobelo.
Now this was an international arts festival that was sponsored by Panama's government, and the reading at the festival featured some of the most notable poets from Panama. It was like being invited to read with Nikki Giovanni, Amir Sulaiman, Black Ice, and Billy Collins.
Not only that, we were in Panama - they speak Spanish in Panama - so I had to translate my poem, which is the longest poem I have ever written, into Spanish.
I had never really done translation of poetry - but boy is it hard! I had a very patient artist from Spain, Gustavo, who worked to help me translate it and after a week, we finally got the thing done.
So, the day of the performance, which took place in this great old world Spanish fort, there are 1,000 people gathered to hear it - I am a 19 year old kid on stage with these great poets from another country - at an international arts festival- and I am terrified.
We had agreed that I would perform the poem in English, and then another person would read the Spanish version of the poem (because my accent was/and is still quite terrible).
At this time the poem was still really fresh for me - and when I performed it I put everything I had into the piece. And I know we always try to put everything we have into our performances, but in a real way this poem was all I had for therapy.
It was the story of why I hated Dallas (I did back then, never wanted to come back), why I couldn't leave Dallas behind me, the beautiful, artistic, and dangerous lives of my friends, and then the personal pain that was hidden beneath it all.
Because at this time I am still very much wrestling with the fact that I hated myself, didn't care about my own life, definitely didn't care whether I lived or died, was pretty convinced that I would die before I turned 20, and from time to time would try end my life by my own hands.
And this poem was the first time that I had ever admitted any of this - really to anyone, and I will get into much more detail in Part 2, but at this time - nothing meant more to me than this poem.
So, when I say I got up there and delivered the performance of my life - you have to believe me. I was crying by the end of the poem - it was so emotional to me, because the irony was here I am telling all these people about how I wanted to kill myself, at the apex of my artistic career. And add to that I had just learned two days ago that GianCarlo had died, and so I was kind of doing it with him in mind - and it was everything that poetry can be.
Yet, if that was end of it - I don't know if it would be the best performance experience I have ever had. What made it transcendent was when one of the Panamanian poets read the Spanish version of the poem.
All of the emotion, and anger, and sadness - all of it was gone from the piece. In Spanish, the poem was just simply beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful. And it was amazing how it could have even been the same poem - but by changing the language and changing the reader - it totally transformed the piece and the crowd loved it.
A few months later I had the opportunity to perform the piece at the Undermain Theater for a Word Space event. This was the first time I had actually performed the piece in Dallas, which the poem centers on.
As I started getting into the first half of the piece, I heard the strangest sound - laughter.
In North Carolina, the piece was emotional/angry/defiant and the crowd reacted in stunned, appreciative silence and applause. In Panama, the piece was angry but then turned calm, beautiful, and meditative - due to the translation. In Dallas, they thought it was funny.
Mainly because the crowd was in on the jokes - I wasn't exposing something new to them, I was telling them about who they already were, and they reacted with a chuckle - yeah you got us.
So, besides the content just from a purely performance standpoint I learned a lot about how important the audience is in terms of how your piece will be interpreted - and just because you get three sets of applause, they may be clapping for three different reasons.
Next time, I will get into the stories behind the piece so keep reading and stay tuned.
I have rarely actually talked about my own poetry - I like to think that the work speaks for itself.
However, since much of my poetry is autobiographical (and I recently had a great conversation with some friends about autonomy and art) - I figured that I will start a series where I expand on some of my poems - VH1 style - and discuss the real life situations that were going on that made their way into the poem (or didn't).
We will see if this is worthwhile or not.
Emperor Penguin
Ive been frozen in the suburbs for 19 years
without a parka on. Slippin on black ice, all white,
all boy school; Goin between two worlds in one city,
without a snowmobile – I was snowdriftin,
with friends chasin snowpowder,
brain freezing, trippin on ice, hangin down to our knees
wonderin why these white lines were makin nose bleeds?
And why Im behind this dumpster hidin from the police?
Shocked at the world behind popped collars and khakis.
Last month Giancarlo threw himself in front of a train.
Unable to flee suburban gated caged communities.
An atlas on piano he couldn’t shrug the weight.
Didn’t get to see 21, so we pour liquor,
gettin drunk tryin to make tears freeze-dry quicker.
I was trapped in a blizzard and thought he was still alive,
but its so cold in the snow you can’t feel people dying –
And even though my fingers are forever stuck to this pen,
my frost bitten hand can’t ever write him back in.
Crazy to think last summer we were snowdriftin;
Goin to the conduit, mac, and west village,
with shauna, danny, cour, and nikki.
We were all so young, so talented, and so damn hungry
Our eyes so wide we couldn’t watch TV.
My pen’s so charged I short circuited the electricity.
On frozen dark nights I’ve taken the stars and replaced them with black ink.
They call me young Dante cause I’ll show you the way,
And tell you bout them other things.
How I walked 8 blocks with a lonely lady who was an amputee,
but got her daughter into college cause of her infirmity.
Her story made me want to cry, it was beautiful to see
how her love for life transcended her vulnerability.
But I kept my face turned up, so hard and icy
Had to keep muggin them cause they keep muggin me.
Behind The Poetry:
One of the biggest challenges that I dealt with as a teenager was this incongruency between my surroundings, my culture, and my self. The first stanza, is really one of the strongest stanzas I've written in my life. There is this feeling that because you are from the 'burbs you don't have anything interesting to say, or that your story doesn't matter.
There are certain customs and mores that are respected in the 'burbs - the fixtures of the American Dream, and a certain level of "this is how we do things". So the first line of the poem is really announcing - this is where I am from: the suburbs, and I've been stuck there for all 19 years of my life.
However, it was never really that simple - and I really hope my poetry suggests that these types of issues of culture and place aren't ever really simple - because all of my life I have been caught between very different cultures.
There was the culture of my extremely wealthy, white, elite, prep-school. Then there was the culture of the mostly minority, mostly poor, West Dallas middle school where my mother worked, and where I would spend a couple hours at every day after school. And finally there was the culture of the middle class - where I grew up in DeSoto, Texas.
My daily life growing up in high school was divided between these different cultures that really could seem like entirely different worlds. However, what was surprising for me is that the drugs and violence that most people would associate with urban culture - I experienced them in the context of the elitist culture.
My first encounters with serious drugs, cocaine, was at a party in an Mansion filled with rich prep kids. The first time I ever had to hide from the police was at the elite liberal arts college I attended. And there was always a sense of shock for me - that wow this world, that is so hidden to most of the people I knew who were middle class or below, is really crazy - and just as crazy if not more crazy than what is portrayed as urban culture.
And, I am still trying to deal with how this reality didn't make sense with what I learned through the media, namely rich and white equals safe and successful. However, this poem was written because of the story in the second stanza - Giancarlo, a former school mate of mine, had committed suicide.
Now, at this time I was still super mentally and emotionally unstable - this is pre-therapy - and I had decided some time in high school, that I wasn't going to make it past being a teenager. So, to have a friend of mine, who was an incredible artist, had a scholarship to Stanford for his ability to play piano, a very creative and nice guy, who went to the best school in Dallas just like me - for him to have killed himself felt like a precursor and validation of my own eventual demise.
But the thing that bothered me was that I found out about it on a trip abroad where I gotten these grants to make art - and there was this sense that I had to keep on being productive, I had to finish this installation I was doing for a show in Panama. So, I couldn't even really grieve for him - I felt that I was too wrapped up in my own life. And when I finally did get around to doing it (this poem), I ran into the problem that this was just a poem - it is a nice gesture but it doesn't bring GianCarlo back- and that felt very sad to me - because I believe in the power of art as creation, and that when we create we are most like God - but in this case it wasn't going to bring him back.
So I did what everyone does when they realize they can't bring the dead back to life - reminisce about the "good times". I hung out with other artists -as most young artists do - and we were just starting to really believe that we could all change the world - that electrical grids would fail and stars would be replaced by the power of my art. However, I pivot from merely bragging about how great I was and my friends were, to telling you about "the other things". And this is really a form of more bragging, because I stole the rhetorical strategy that Dante uses in the Inferno - during this period of my writing I enjoyed slipping in references to classic literature - namely to let an informed reader (probably an old white one) know that I wasn't just another slam poet.
The final story in the piece is true - it happened while I was working at Target and had to help this lady take her purchases to the bus stop and then helped load them into the bus. And I remember being touched by the story - but as I said I was pre-therapy and didn't believe in crying. In fact, the ending is really about this need to always be tough and resilient no matter how much crazy stuff happens to you. Even if a friend dies, even if you are doing all these crazy dangerous and illegal things, even as you go between these different cultures, even as you are an artist, and yes, even when you hear a good sob story, you can't let your guard down, you have to stay strong, because if you don't - the world will tear you apart.
If you slow down and ease up for a second - you will be overwhelmed and devoured.
I definitely believed that at 19, and to a certain degree I do now. The world is often a cold and overwhelming place, and you do have to keep moving to survive. However, I don't think you have to be so hard - I think there is a lot more room for vulnerability than I would have allowed at that stage of my life.
But that was the reason I named the poem, Emperor Penguin - because these birds are amazing survivors and take amazing journeys. They are able to handle environments that most other animals couldn't. There is something majestic and royal about the species, and at the end of the day I was hoping that my life and experiences could be redemptive like that - that all of the craziness, all of the journeys between different cultures, the heartbreak, sadness, and pain, the human condition - that all of it would ultimately be redemptive and make me a stronger person, and I think that so far it has.
