Yarnbombing in downtown Little Rock.

Mother and daughter yarn bomb together.

Yesterday as part of the Arkansas Literary Fest in Little Rock several people gathered to yarn bomb the area around the river market library and the youth section of the library itself.  Sometimes called knit graffiti, yarn bombing involves taking knitted objects and decorating typically urban landscapes, an attempt to add beauty and color to the sometimes inorganic city landscape.   (You can read the Art of the Rural post envisioning yarn bombing in rural areas by clicking here).  It’s important to also note that these activities are not wasteful, utalyzing scrap afghans and other knitted objects that were gathering dust somewhere in a back closet.  Because they’re made from natural fibers they’ll dry out and withstand the elements for some time.

We started out with a small group but pretty soon many passersby—both children and adults— joined in on the fun. By the end of the afternoon yarn poms hung from the branches alongside the spring flowers while formerly discarded knits enveloped tree limbs and park benches.

This event was held in conjunction with a talk by Gale Zucker, co-author and photographer for the book Craft Activism: People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How You Can Join In.  Yarn bombing is just one of many craft activist approaches detailed in her research.   She  and co-author Joan Tapper also highlight others who might be familiar to readers including Carolyn Mazloomi and the Women of Color Quilter’s Network, Virginia Fleck and her mandalas made from recycled shopping bags, and the Red Scarf Project, which provides scarves to students who were a part of the foster care system.  The book is a compilation of ideas, crafter profiles, and patterns for those who want to join in on the action.

I had a chance to speak with Gale about her research, as well as several others who either attended the event or simply got drawn into the bombing as passers by.   I’ll be posting a radio story featuring their comments sometime this upcoming week.  Until then, here are a few photos from the day.

Besides the great conversations we had with Gayle, it was wonderful to see how many passersby soon began to join in, picking up scrap knitting squares and sewing them onto the trees, park benches, and shrubs. As intended, a yarn bomb sparks conversation between strangers, leads to discussions about the nature of handmade, and helps us all notice our surroundings.  I even found a home for one of my fingerless glove prototypes, which now graces the trunk of a tree.  And my twin boys got their stroller yarn bombed, for sure one of the highlights of their day!

Were you at the yarn bombing or want to get involved in Little Rock yarn bombing?  Let’s discuss and get together with others who want to do the same.

Poms hanging from the trees

Passersby join in and help.

Partice, one of the main organizers, bombs a tree trunk.

Donated yarn pieces for the bombing.

A truly intergenerational activity.

Bombing the park bench.

The young ladies made this wonderful collection. Gale Zucker in the background.

You know you love granny squares!

The yarn blended in with the flowers for a magical look.

One of the youth library workers joins in to help with the sewing on of the flowers.

Mother and daughter.

“The Many Variations of the Arkansas Tattoo” in the Arkansas Times

Tesuansey Link. Photo by Brian Chilson of the Arkansas Times. Read the article to see more photos.

An article about the Us Tattooed Kids:  Arkansas Project came out in the Arkansas Times today.  Below you’ll find the first few paragraphs. Follow the “read more” link to read the entire article via the Arkansas Times site.

The next step in this project will be working toward a radio piece and a hardback book….and possibly more projects.

You can help us move the project forward by submitting your Arkansas tattoo photo and story and joining the conversation at the project’s facebook page here.

For at least a decade now, Arkansans — both native-born and transplants — have been choosing to mark their bodies with representations of the Natural State. Razorback tattoos have long been popular, but these Arkansas tattoos are more topographical, a marker of geography and a symbol of home. They range from simple outlines with a star or heart marking a hometown to ornate designs involving a birdhouse, a cotton plant or an area code.

For Cheyenne Matthews, co-host of the “Shoog Radio” show on 88.3 FM KABF, it’s the state Capitol, surrounded by stylized clouds and the word “Arkansas” inside a ribbon at the building’s base. The design, which graces her forearm, is part of a series of images created by Caleb Pritchett of Electric Heart Tattoos in Little Rock to help raise money for the show. “Everything we play and do is Arkansas-based,” Matthews said. “It’s a grassroots movement towards Arkansas stuff in general, events and music.”

Anthony Buckaloo and artist, Scott Diffee, the Parlor in Rose City. Photo by Brian Chilson.

Continue reading the story at the Arkansas Times here:

Click here to continue reading at the Arkansas Times site.   

Monday Music: Mariee Sioux “Wild Eyes.”

Mariee Sioux from Know Phase.

I’ve decided there’s far too little music on this blog.  So here’s a new series: Music Monday.

Every Monday I’ll post a Youtube video of a song we’ve been loving.  Some will be new, some will be old, maybe even really old.  Some might even be brand new, though, truth be told, I like to explore music a little after the sheen has worn off.  Some will be based on traditional music and/or social action or sustainability and some won’t.  Hopefully they will all be fun to listen to and illuminate some of the undercurrents of this little ever-evolving blog.

I stumbled onto the music of Mariee Sioux via a duet she did with Alele Diane.  This is what her label, Grass Roots Records Company, says about her album Faces in the Rocks. 

Featuring Grammy-nominee Gentle Thunder’s enchanting sound on a redwood-carved Native American flute as well as her own famed father Gary Sobonya on mandolin, Mariee recorded Faces in May 2007 with a troupe of Nevada City’s talented musicians. Recorded with the intent of aligning the magnificence of the human voice with the universe’s creative energy, each song is a stirring exploration of life. Her tales range from the profundity of friendship on the single “Friendboats” to the yearning of self-understanding on “Bundles,” each laced with fabled images and poignant verse. “Two Tongues at One Time,” recently released on a rare 7” vinyl, is a sonnet-filled homage to the ancestors who traversed the wild lands of America hundreds of years ago, reminding listeners of our vital ties to our past. (Read her entire bio here). 

I haven’t heard all her stuff yet (some of it’s kind of hard to get a hold of), but, honestly, I haven’t had time to listen even if I had copies because I’m finding it quite difficult to get past this song.  I just keep hitting replay.  The repetition of phrases, building harmonies, it all gets better with each listen.  Headphones add a lot too.   See what you think.

Friday Video: Color Outisde the Lines: A Tattoo Documentary.

Filmmaker Artemus Jenkins. From Kickstarter.

Don’t forget, you can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend.  And thanks for reading!

This week’s Friday video is somewhat related to our ongoing Arkansas Tattoo Project research.  (If you want to know more about this project, go here to see all the recent posts.  You can also follow the project on Facebook and Twitter)

In researching various tattoo styles and forms of expression, I came across this Kickstarter video for an upcoming documentary.  Produced by Artemus Jenkins, Color Outside the Lines:  A Tattoo Documentary explores the work, culture, and styles the African American tattoo artists and their clients. It looks like it will also address the need for more black tattoo artists and some of the problems within the industry, including the prevalence of shops owned by white supremacists.

It looks really interesting.  Have you heard about it?   What are some of the tattoo documentaries you’ve seen and which ones would you recommend?

Arkansas Tattoo Project Update

Native Arkansan, Rapper Cboddy of Little Rock with the Little Rock symbol and ARK in graffiti-style letters.

From Cboddy:  ”I was doing shows from state to state and I got to represent where I’m from in a way.  And what better way than to put the official Little Rock logo stamped on my arm.”  

Discussing what he loves about Arkansas: “Everybody knows everybody, so to me I look at everybody like family.  Everybody is so open-armed, to me anyway.”

Recently we began a documentation project examining the diversity of ways people choose to represent their home state of Arkansas on their body.   The project is in its beginning stages, and we’ve taken the documentation process online so it can be community-driven and grow organically.

Since we started the online Facebook version of the Us Tattooed Kids:  Arkansas Project last week, thirty-six tattoo photos have been submitted and we have 236 likes!  We also started a Twitter account for the project, which you can follow here.  I’ve also been doing interviews with as many people as possible—either online or in person—and many of these stories will be featured in the upcoming article.  In case your unfamiliar with the project, you can go here to read all about it.

Here are just a few photo updates we’ve received and a glimpse into some of the things people are saying about their tattoos and the larger concept of Arkansas as home.  If you know of someone with an Arkansas tattoo, please spread the word.  We want to hear from you!  To read more and join the conversation, visit us online on facebook or Twitter.

Basic state outline uploaded by John Crouch, a native Arkansan and classical composer who now lives in Maryland.

From an email interview with Crouch:  ”I had been saying for about a year that I wanted it. I don’t know if I would have gotten it if I still lived in Arkansas, but living in Baltimore for 6+ years made me miss Arkansas.”      ”After high school in Springdale, my formative early adult years were spent in Fayetteville. Now I’ve lived in Baltimore for six and a half years and I’m still amazed at how much more interesting and progressive a small Southern town can be than a fairly large Northeastern (technically, to some, a Southern Mid-Atlantic) city. I’ve had more than one instance of proclaiming the virtues of my small college town and how it adopted progressive causes and issues years prior to Baltimore.”

Here’s a few more images that have been posted to the site.  We’re still waiting to learn more about them.  But the images are pretty strong as is.  What’s your story?  

Submitted by tattoo artist, Scott Diffee. Waiting for more info on this tattoo.

I've been wondering if there are other city specific tattoos besides Little Rock. There are! Tattoo by Scott Diffee at the Parlor.

Skyline of LR. Tattoo by Scott Diffee.

Arkansas Tattoo Project Expanding: US Tattooed Kids Page

From US Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project. Photo of Cheyenne Matthews' Arkansas Tattoo by Electric Heart Designs.

If you like what you read here, you can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  Thanks for reading!

———————————————————————————————–

The Arkansas Tattoo Documentation Project is expanding!  In addition to the oral histories I’m compiling and upcoming article I’m working on, for a while now I’ve been thinking about how this project should be more community-driven and interactive.

And then the perfect opportunity presented itself.  Last week while interviewing several people at Pizza D’s in Little Rock, I got to talk to Cheyenne Matthews, host of Shoog Radio on KABF 88.3 FM, a show which showcases Arkansas music. When I mentioned the possibility of a Tumblr site, she ever-so-kindly offered to set up a Facebook and Tumblr page and serve as a co-admin so that more and more people can get involved in submitting their photos and telling their stories.  How cool is that?  She also came up with the names on the page, “Us Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project,” which sounds way better than my ever-so drab, “Arkansas Tattoo Documentation Project.”  haha.  I’m really thankful she’s a part of this project.

The first phase of research will be an article and an audio montage of oral histories.  But I’d love to see this become a full-length book with portrait photography, quotes from interviews, and the like.   If these pages take off I think this could be a real possibility. So if that’s something you’re into, you can help us out by getting involved in the project and uploading your photos and stories.  It will be amazing to see the diversity of tattoos and reasons behind them.

In the beginning these pages will serve as part of the larger research project, but they’ll also have a life of their own and will provide people with an easy way of sharing tattoo images and stories.  The great thing about such sites is they’re so organic.  So we’ll see where it goes.  While folks are sharing their photos and stories perhaps these sites will also serve as platform to discuss what Arkansas means to all of us, both individually and collectively.

The Tumblr site is still in the works, but the facebook page is up and running and a few people have already uploaded photos.  And the response has been great.  In less than 24 hours we’ve got 70 likes.

So, please visit the facebook site, “like” the project and submit your own photos and stories.  Go here to check it out and please help us spread the word!   And if you want to know more about the back story of this project, go here.
Once the tumblr site is up I’ll post that too.

Thanks for reading and thanks so very much to Cheyenne Matthews for her enthusiasm and help!

Sincerely,

Meredith Martin-Moats

Imagined Family Heirlooms, Tintype Photos, and the Work of Keily Anderson-Staley.

From Imagined Heirlooms

I recently came across this project by Keily Anderson-Staley while wandering aimlessly through Kickstarter projects.

“Imagined Family Hierlooms” is a collection of modern tintype portraits paired with found objects set up to resemble the way such heirlooms are often displayed in homes.

From the project’s Kickstarter page:

I  bring objects together from a wide range of places and times, sometimes even my own family, but no real family is represented by the installations. They are potential but imaginary heirloom collections, fragments of other collections that have been forgotten in boxes or abandoned to thrift stores. When combined with my own work, each of these objects is put into a new context, a new history, even as the individual object still evokes the unique past it has been separated from. Read the entire write-up here. 

Staley’s project explores the role of photography in creating family history and sheds light on the gray area between fact and fiction, which is the undercurrent of family identity.

Besides the pure aesthetic delight of this collection, I love how the artist is exploring the contextualization of images and stories and their role in the creation and perpetuation of individual and collective identity.  Endlessly fascinating. Have you seen this exhibit?  What are your thoughts on it?

From Imagined Family Heirlooms.

Watch her Kickstarter video here:

To see more photos and learn more about the artist and her other work be sure and visit her page here.   Anderson-Staly works in Arkansas and appears to have a studio here, and we hope to have more posts on this artist in the near future.  Stay tuned.  If you know the artist or are familiar with her work, please let us know!  We can’t wait to learn more.

The Seed and the Story for November 30, 2011: Dardanelle Mural and Upcoming Christmas River Walk

Dardanelle Post Office Mural

The Seed and the Story is published every other week in the Post Dispatch and syndicated in the Courier.   Thanks so much for reading and don’t forget to support your local paper!

Just a bit of information for the web readers: This column was written for readers of the Yell County and River Valley area papers, but we hope there is something here for all readers wherever you live.  And we’d love to have you come visit the River Walk if you are going to be in the area!  Thanks to our wonderful volunteers we will have some homemade cookies and the mayor is providing cider and coffee.  Come out and say hello!

Last week art historian Dr. Gayle Seymour visited the Dardanelle Historical Society to discuss the history and importance of the Dardanelle Post Office Mural.   You may recall a previous column from August of this year explaining how the mural was created under the Percent for Art model, a Depression-era federal program that provided employment to out of work artists and brought art to highly-accessible public buildings.  The artist who created our mural was Ludwig Mactarian, an ethnic Armenian who escaped the Armenian Genocide and came to New York at the age of thirteen.  Our mural, which features workers in the cotton industry, is one of very few Percent for Art murals depicting African Americans.  Equally important,  the artist’s focus on the struggles of share croppers suggests a multi-layered social commentary, making our mural unique and important on both a local and national level.

Close up of man in center panel.

Thanks to the hard work of Dr. Seymour, the great folks at the Dardanelle Historical Society and many concerned citizens, there are plans in the works to call more attention to the mural and work toward its eventual restoration. 

You have probably heard about the upcoming downtown Dardanelle Christmas River Walk December 9^th from 5:00-8:00 P.M.  Organized by the wonderful folks at Renaissance Front Street Restoration, this event will feature area artists, carolers, music, and more.  To help draw attention to the mural and its importance in our community, the Dardanelle Historical Society will be serving refreshments and handing out information about the mural inside the post office lobby.  Be sure and drop by and check out this historic work and learn more about its history. 

I’ll be present at the Art Walk as well, sitting at the booth for the The McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action.  We will be discussing various ways we can engage in research and public education programs centering on the mural and the history and themes it represents.  We’ll have some homemade treats on hand made by volunteers and information about documenting oral history in the area, especially cotton picking as depicted in the mural.  Did you grow up picking cotton in the area?  Did your grandparents?  We’d love to hear all about it.  One of our main goals of the McElroy House is to help document these community stories and preserve them for generations to come.  Please stop by and pick up a cookie and visit with us.  If you’ve got photos or other things you’d be willing to share, bring those too.  We’ll have a scanner on hand to scan in your old photos as well as other photos for people to view. If you want to know more about the McElroy House organization, visit us online at www.mcelroyhouse.wordpress.com. 

Thanks so much for reading and I look forward to seeing you at the Christmas Walk!