Lydia C Crimp "Part of me"

Lydia C Crimp lives and works in London as a freelance artist and costumier. Her influences are cabaret, circus, fashion and literature from the early part of the 20th century. With tradeyourtalent she speaks about her huge collection of photographs dating from the late 1800's, inspiration from costumes and why she decided to start painting again.

Lydia C Crimp, http://www.lydiaccrimp.co.uk/

Why do themes like cabaret, fashion and literature inspire you most? 

I was brought up on a diet of a wide range of fiction (from Tolkien to Isherwood and back again) and a lot of folk music so I think it’s always been a part of me. I’ve always loved the decadence and faded glamour of old cabaret and circus and while I’ve often tried to pinpoint the one thing that makes this so attractive to me I’ve never really managed. As a very visual person I think it’s a mixture of everything, the vibrant colours, the textures, the shapes, the music and of course, costume.

You have a huge collection of old photographs dating from the late 1800's up until the 1950's. Do you like to use them in you artwork? 

All the time. They provide a great starting point- the characters in my paintings are mostly all imaginary. They tend to be a blend of people from my photograph collection, old film stars and a bit of myself normally ends up in there as well. Friends have sat for me in the past (and hopefully will do in the future!) although I find I often end up with a portrait that doesn’t resemble them in the slightest! I just take certain elements from a number of sources; for instance, it might be the way a shadow falls on a face or the shape of the shine on someone’s lips.    

When you are not painting you are a costumier. Is that also a form of art to you? 

Definitely. I spend a lot of time working on costumes for film, theatre and television, designing and illustrating, as well as sourcing the fabrics for a company called Academy Costumes. I do a lot of sewing in my spare time and have just started designing and making a range of hats inspired by the Mexican festival of the Day of the Dead. In my opinion anything that has been created by human hands has some sort of artistic quality to it.

Why did you start painting again? 

I’d just been swing dancing one Sunday afternoon and was in a rather lovely cocktail bar on Broadway market, East London drinking gin when all of a sudden, filled with inspiration I called over the manager and asked if I could have an art show. I sort of had to start painting again then…

If you could choose to work with another contemporary artist, who would you pick?

One project in particular that I really wish I had been involved in is Swoons ‘Swimming cities’. She designed and created these absolutely fantastic and completely eccentric boats out of all kinds of things (old stair cases, rotting doors…) inspired, as she describes it, by “dense urban cityscapes and thickly intertwined mangrove swamps”. She and her team of performers/artists then sailed them around the Adriatic Sea. It’s a bit similar to my own plans to build a galleon that incorporates a theatre. I really love the idea of having a theatre production with an ever-changing cast and show as people join and leave my boat at different ports. What fun!

Lydia C Crimp, http://www.lydiaccrimp.co.uk/

Illustration Friday - Midsummer Night

The Illustration Friday  word of the week is Midsummer Night and although I'm not a very gifted painter or illustrator I just had to write about this theme (and isn't writing a form of art too?) The image that immediately popped up in my mind was the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare. But most of all I was thinking of Puck, the little elf. (I just think he is too gorgeous!)

I guess if I could illustrate I would have sketched him. Shakespeare plays with the themes of magic and dreams, and Puck is essential to the play because he causes a lot of confusion in the lives of the main characters. However, Puck tries to explain to the audience at the end of the play that what the audience had just experienced was nothing more than a dream - 

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream. 

Even though Puck basically apologizes to the audience that everything they had just seen had been a dream - isn't that exactly what the audience wanted to experience when they came to see the play in the frist place? 
To dive into a magical world, that, even though is sometimes confusing, is filled with dreams, visions and of course love? Isn't that what all artists do, to bring their vision on paper and share it with other people? Aren't they practically inviting their audience to have a glimpse of their creativity and inspiration? 
Sharing these dreams and visions is also something very honest and of course, makes you vulnerable in a certain way, because you reveal your true feelings to your audience. I guess blogs have also changed the way artists work and share their vision - the audience can learn much more about the artists' true feelings about their own vision and of course, their dreams. It is a quite magical world at times - and I think it is truly great to be part of such a creative world, filled with inspiration. 
This is why I had to mention Puck to you - and although I wasn't able to show him to you here, maybe you can just imagine how he would have looked like. If I could draw. :-)

Art everywhere you go

What's fascinating about New York is that you find art everywhere - on the street, in the park, in Cafés. I thought I'd share some of these moments with you. I also discovered how much fun photography is, and so I recently spent two hours in Washington Square Park just trying to capture the people and how they created such a special mood in the park. 

This man was using buckets as drums and

 created an amazing mood in the subway station. 

A piano in Washington Square Park. 

Painting in the park. 

A Letter from Rwanda, Part 1: The Covaga Women get a pavilion to showcase their work

Amakuru Sussana!

Greetings From the "Land of a thousand hills" my name is Grant Jenkin, I and my co leader Robin Ripley have arrived in Kigali awaiting the rest of our team who should be arrive this evening. Robin and I are very excited to be back for our second volunteer trip to Gashora. We met with our host partner Lama Mugabo yesterday and he brought us up to speed on where the project is and what Building Bridges with Rwanda (BBR) is hopefully expecting from our trip. 

We will be continuing with the construction of the west wing of the Covaga Innovation Center (CIC). Everyone is very hopeful that we will be able to complete the first part of the center, the pavilion in which the Covaga women can showcase there work. We will also be doing extensive work with the gardens trying to incorporate some nutritious vegetable and fruit that can be easily harvested for the eventual restaurant. It is also hopeful that the CIC will become an example of sustainable crops in which the entire Village of Gashora will be able to harvest.

It was really great finally getting here and seeing all our hard work with planning and fund raising coming into fruition. It was especially nice seeing Lama again as well as our friends from La Palisse Kigali. It makes me so much more excited to get to Gashora and meet again with all the special relationships we made with the people last year.

Tomorrow we are hopefully going to take our participants on a tour of kigali By moto and bus, and also visit the Kigali memorial center which has the history of the genocide and all genocides around the world. Monday morning we are off to meet with our partners at the Nelson Mandela Education Center, with a short visit to the Rwanda girls initiative in Gashora. And last but most certainly not leasst we will be meeting with the Covaga woman and taking a look at the project....

Chloe Allred "Collect the stories of the people"

                                                     

Chloe Allred is a sophomore at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. She recently organized an art auction at Cornish to raise funds for Rwanda Partners. Chloe is also the designer of our "Art for Rwanda" logo. With tradeyourtalent she speaks about art as a form of communication and why she sees herself as a storyteller. 

Chloe Allred, gnomecentric.tumblr.com

You recently organized an art auction at Cornish to raise funds for Rwanda Partners. Do you think art can help to raise social awareness? 

Certainly. Art is a form of communication, and a beautiful form at that. The arts not only have the potential to bring these issues to a greater public eye, but to then also spark interest and curiosity for that cause. 

Art and Rwanda, if you had the possibility to carry out any art project in or for Rwanda, what could you imagine to do? 

I see myself as a storyteller, my work a visual narrative; going to Rwanda, I would want to collect the stories of the people there and do illustrations from those stories. I love the coupling of two art forms, word and imagery, they have a synergistic effect when combined. A lot of my favorite artists are illustrators, so that tends to be what my mind aspires to. 

Besides social causes, what inspires you to your art?

I'm mildly obsessed with environmental science and just finished a 3ft by 2ft painting about endocrine disruptors in US waterways and their effects on endemic fish populations...I also like to take a general idea and explore it, see where I can push it. A lot of making art happens before you actually sit down to do the piece. Through out your day your constantly picking up fragments of information; these fragments combine, and combined make the seed of an idea. I'm always carrying a sketchbook so that I can record little details as they come to me. I'm really fascinated by the human body....there's just so much variety from person to person, little tweaks in detail can entirely change a character. I love that. I love drawing long time friends and discovering new things about their face, or little gestures that they have, that I just didn't notice until I sat down to draw them. 

Chloe Allred, gnomecentric.tumblr.com

If you could collaborate with any artist in the world, who would you pick? 

Oh man! What a difficult question.... I just finished watching Wasteland, about the Brazillian artist Vik Muniz. He's definitely super inspiring as an artist and as a human being, it would be a dream to collaborate with him. I love Michael Shapcott's aesthetic, he's been a favorite artist of mine for quite some time. David Choe. Travis Louie. João Ruas. It would be most excellent to collaborate with a writer; it would be wonderful to illustrate a story of Neil Gaiman's.   

Chloe's Blog: http://gnomecentric.tumblr.com/

Chloe Allred, gnomecentric.tumblr.com

Chloe Allred, gnomecentric.tumblr.com

Chloe Allred, gnomecentric.tumblr.com

Creative Times in New York

Finally I have some time to tell you more stories of my New York adventures. Creativity seems to grow on trees here - and I love it! I met so many interesting creative startups here already and it is so great to meet like-minded people. With all this going on we also finally launched our website, entered a creative competition and our ideas are growing and growing... maybe it's just this city which gives my creativity even more drive. 

I visited this gallery which was showing some of Andy Warhol's soup cans, although I didn't find it that spectacular... Just lots of soup cans in lots of different colours... (Am I allowed to write that? I apologize to all the Warhol fans... )  I actually asked to meet the manager behind the exhibition and when she came down to meet me I realized I didn't have anything to ask her...

Even the shop dummies do pilates over here...

 The Guggenheim - many people are always lingering infront of it which creates a really nice atmosphere

My friend the amazing photographer trying to ask this homeless man if she could get his picture. They ended up having a really long conversation but he still didn't want his picture taken - so I just took one from further away...

Washington Square Garden - the parks in New York are very beautiful. There is always something going on, music or a photo shoot

Introducing: Talent Traders and Colobus Creative

The last couple of days have been very hectic, I've been inspired by this city so much that I'm thriving on creativity - let me show you what I've been working on: 


TALENT TRADERS
I'm currently working on our TYT website and I'm introducing a concept called Talent Traders! Many artists have told me that they would love to collaborate more with different artists, but it is often hard to do this, especially across the globe. I would be happy to try this project out - but I need your help for it to work! It is really simple - I just need to hear what you've been up to in order for me to introduce your project on the website. And please spread the word about this!!!
3 Easy Steps
1) Tell us about your creative ideas or your project that you've been working on in your community!
2) Let us know if you are looking for a photographer, illustrator,  painter, journalist, producer... to work with. If your idea fits our creative criteria we will write about your project on the website. Just send in a short summary of your request, maybe even attach an image of what you've been working on and contact details. 
3) Tell a friend about this over a cup of coffee or tweet about it! :) This could be something really great! + Let me know what you think!


COLOBUS CREATIVE 
Our startup for developing children's book apps and eBooks finally has a name :) We have been working on getting the twittername (@colobuscreative) from another artist who has actually thought of the same name a while ago, which I didn't know until a couple of days ago. But he really supported our project and gave us the account, as he is not using it anymore!! This is really exciting news! We also started a website www.colobuscreative.com  to introduce our concept! 
Feel free to spread the word about all of this, repost or tweet it, I would love to get as many artists on board as possible for both projects!!!! ;) 
Have a great week! 
Susanna

Following your dreams

Today I wanted to tell you why I started this blog in the first place. Exactly one year ago a good friend of mine died in a horrible accident in China. She was an amazing artist and very young. She had this amazing personality, she believed only in happiness, inspiration and that you should follow your dreams. From this moment on I realized I would start living this way too - and that I want to help artists follow their dreams and passion. 

Many young artists go on studying business or law, because they are told you cannot make a living from art. I really think you have to follow your true passion and inspiration, otherwise you spend many years in life working somewhere where you might be unhappy – and after a while you realize you could have been much more true to yourself by doing what you actually enjoy.

A year ago I started thinking of possibilities of how artists can be supported and how you can help them follow their dreams- and so I started Trade Your Talent. It also keeps my friend close to me in a special way – it makes me feel like I'm doing something in her name. It keeps me connected. With my own startup I'm trying to create even more possibilites for artists, and through this project I've started following my own dreams. 

Thank you Dana. Because of you I learnt that all that matters 

is being happy and true to yourself. 

Some doodling and surprises...

Today something really good happened... but I can't tell you about it just yet, but I hope I can write about it soon enough. Until then a small doodle that shows how I feel like right now: 

Book Arts: "Art as a healing tool"

Today I discovered another amazing arts project in New York and it is hard to describe my fascination. The moment I held the book art in my hand today, books created by people who recover from psychiatric disabilities, I knew I had to share this with you immediately. Looking at the individual books made me feel like I was looking at something really personal, it was a bit like taking a peek at someone else's diary. The honesty of the art is what I found most touching. The Art Collective, which is part of the New York Community Access platform, uses art as a healing tool for helping people recover from psychiatric disabilities. It expands opportunities for personal and artistic development in visual and literary arts and helps these people develop their own language. It is the only one of its kind in mental health services that specializes in teaching Book Arts: the process of creating, designing, writing, binding and exhibiting unique and limited edition handmade books. 

The Art Collective

621 Water Street

New York, NY 10002

212-780-1400, ext. 2000/1

If you would like to donate visit Community Access homepage: 

http://www.cairn.org/ways-to-give