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Review by Tina Koyama
I always say (to myself and others) that I’m not a sheeny, shiny, glittery gal (I’ve only ever purchased one bottle of shimmery ink, and I gave it away soon after). Obviously a liar, I recently found myself craving some sheeny, shiny, glittery watercolors. The Boku-Undo Gansai Watercolor Palette in the Aurora colors (6/$14.75) looked mouth-watering.
Before I plant my face into the sheen, I thought I’d mention that I’m already a fan of the Boku-Undo mini palettes of unique watercolors. The E-Sumi palette I reviewed a few years ago are a lot of fun to use when I’m in a dark mood. While the e-sumi palette is subdued, the Aurora set is on the opposite end of the scale: It’s all about the dazzling light.
The set includes (from left) gold, silver, red, green, blue and purple. I used both my scanner and my phone to photograph swatches in direct daylight on black and white papers. Each time, the swatches look very different!
On white paper, the shimmer is apparent in direct light, but the hues are difficult to differentiate and even seem to change. I’m not sure they are worth using on white paper.
On dark paper, however, the effect is entirely different. The sparkly, metallic particles glow on black paper. I rubbed a finger across the dried swatches, and some sparkly flecks smeared a bit like powder.
It was obvious that I had to make a test sketch on black paper, so I used a black Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook. And I had just the right reference photo to use! During the summer months when the sun doesn’t go down until 8 or 9 p.m., my spouse guy and I take after-dinner walks through the neighborhood to enjoy the light. The gorgeous “golden hour” is too brief to sketch on location, so I snap a lot of reference photos to sketch from later (like the long, dismal winters when the sun goes down at 4). The photo I used wasn’t as dark as my sketch appears, but the low, warm light gave everything a lovely glow.
Whatever gives these paints their sparkle also makes them thicker than typical watercolors. I applied them fairly thick to retain as much concentrated shimmer as possible, and they felt a bit creamy rather than watery.
Oooh, these paints are fun on black paper! I have fully embraced my inner glitter gal.
Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.
The post Watercolor Review: Boku-Undo Gansai Aurora Palette appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Monarch butterflies with more white spots are more successful at reaching their long-distance wintering destination, a new study suggests.
Although it’s not yet clear how the spots aid the species’ migration, it’s possible that the spots change airflow patterns around their wings.
“We undertook this project to learn how such a small animal can make such a successful long-distance flight,” says Andy Davis, an assistant researcher in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia and lead author of the study published in PLOS ONE.
“We actually went into this thinking that monarchs with more dark wings would be more successful at migrating because dark surfaces can improve flight efficiency. But we found the opposite.”
The monarchs with less black on their wings and more white spots were the ones that made it to their ultimate destination, nearly 3,000 miles away in south and central Mexico.
“It’s the white spots that seem to be the difference maker,” Davis says.
The researchers analyzed nearly 400 wild monarch wings collected at different stages of their journey, measuring their color proportions. They found the successful migrant monarchs had about 3% less black and 3% more white on their wings.
An additional analysis of museum specimens that included monarchs and six other butterfly species showed that the monarchs had significantly larger white spots than their nonmigratory cousins.
The only other species that came close to having the same proportion of white spots on its wing was its semi-migratory relative, the southern monarch.
The authors believe the butterflies’ coloring is related to the amount of radiation they receive during their journey. The monarchs’ longer journey means they’re exposed to more sunlight. As a result, they have evolved to have more white spots.
“The amount of solar energy monarchs are receiving along their journey is extreme, especially since they fly with their wings spread open most of the time,” Davis says. “After making this migration for thousands of years, they figured out a way to capitalize on that solar energy to improve their aerial efficiency.”
But as temperatures continue to rise and alter the solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface, monarchs will likely have to adapt to survive, says coauthor Mostafa Hassanalian, an associate professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
“With greater solar intensity, some of that aerial efficiency could go away,” Davis says. “That would be yet one more thing that is hindering the species’ fall migration to Mexico.”
But it’s not all bad news for the flying insects.
Davis’ previous work showed that summer populations of monarchs have remained relatively stable over the past 25 years. That finding suggests that the species’ population growth during the summer compensates for butterfly losses due to migration, winter weather and changing environmental factors.
“The breeding population of monarchs seems fairly stable, so the biggest hurdles that the monarch population faces are in reaching their winter destination,” Davis says. “This study allows us to further understand how monarchs are successful in reaching their destination.”
Additional coauthors are from New Mexico Tech and the University of Georgia.
Source: University of Georgia
The post Monarchs with more white spots are better at long trips appeared first on Futurity.
Quick, without looking, what color is the sun? Would you believe it's green? Also, please don't look directly at the sun.
The post What Color is the Sun? appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
How does a parent answer a child’s questions about school shootings? For instance: Why does this keep happening? Will it happen to me? If it does, will I be OK? Writer Meg Conley, a mother of three, describes the agony of not having all the answers:
After the second shooting at East High School, we started talking about homeschooling. It’s not the first time we’ve had the conversation. But my kids love lunchtime, talking in the halls, learning new things from new teachers, school plays and after-school clubs. Being separated from those things during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic affected them in ways I still find frightening to contemplate. Forming community with people who are not part of their household is a vital part of their lives. There are just some things that can’t be replicated in the home.
One night in New York City, I sat in between my two oldest daughters as they watched their first Broadway play, Funny Girl. The play opened with Fanny Brice, played by Julie Benko, sitting in front of a mirror, looking at herself before she says, “Hello, gorgeous.” When she said those words, most of the audience knew what was coming, so they cheered. But my girls didn’t, so they politely clapped. I watched them watch the play, with wide eyes. By the end of the show, they loved Brice. They loved Benko. When she started to sing the reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” the girls understood what had been and what was coming. They cheered with everyone else. They became part of the community in that room.
We were wandering through the Met museum when my daughter got a text from another friend. It was just a link to a news story. Her middle school principal had gone to the media. There is a child at her school that was recently charged with attempted first-degree murder and illegal discharge of a firearm. That child doesn’t need incarceration; the child needs help. But teachers are not trained to give that help. The district rejected the school’s request that the student be moved to online schooling. Instead, the child goes to school every day and receives a daily pat down from untrained school staff before going to class. This student is on the same safety plan as the student who shot two deans before spring break. My daughter showed me the text and asked again, “What are we going to do?”
My two oldest girls went to see a preview of the new musical New York, New York with their dad that night. I stayed behind with their youngest sister. She’s too young for Broadway, but nearly old enough to be killed at school.
inkophile
Black women worldwide value their hair. From afros to wigs, braids, and blowouts, Black women have used hair to symbolize their gendered racial identity. Indeed, Madam C.J. Walker, the first Black woman millionaire in the U.S., highlights the significance of hair to Black women as a form of labor and enterprise. In this blog post, I present five crucial insights anchored in Black feminist thought regarding Black hair.
“Black beauty: Shade, hair, and anti-racist aesthetics,” by Shirley Anne Tate, Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Feminist and Intersectionality at the Sociology Department, University of Alberta, Canada, is a commonly cited paper in Black hair studies. In the essay, Tate investigates the performance and instability of black beauty through an examination of conservations amongst mixed race Black women. Historically, natural Black beauty has been associated with textured hair and darker skin, which is then further associated with antiracism, whereas hair straightening is viewed as an artificial attempt to resemble white or Eurocentric beauty standards.
Since they are often perceived as having more European physical traits, mixed race Black women have historically been put in a complicated position in the hierarchy of feminine and racialized beauty ideals. This leads in a persistent experience of othering and difference, as Rachael Malonson experienced though in backlash for her election to Miss Black University of Texas in 2017.
Tate explains that the way mixed race Black women grapple with the normalized racialized aesthetics of Black beauty exposes how physical signifiers have political meaning that reinforce the boundaries of what constitutes Black beauty. Rather than attempting to comply to specific aesthetics, some reinterpret what defines Black beauty in diverse ways, illustrating how the performance of racialized beauty aesthetics is fluid yet indeterminable.
Good or bad; authentic versus inauthentic; natural versus straightened. In a 2009 Women’s Studies article, Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor in Performance at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, discusses how these opposing hair perspectives affect Black women’s sense of self. Thompson overviews the history of Black hair to illuminate how slavery, emancipation, and Black social movements constitute key political contexts that affect how Black people style their hair.
Beauty standards for Black women are shaped not just by white society, but also by members of their own community. Because of the cultural association of straightened, long hair with feminine beauty, Black women are pressured to alter their naturally kinky hair to conform to these expectations. Further, in their everyday life, they must manage how these standards justify prejudice and discrimination; for example, workplace hairstyle standards may impede their economic mobility in the long run. For these reasons, Thompson explains that we can’t depoliticize Black hair because of how western values affect Black people’s lived experiences.
Black women have a complex and nuanced relationship to beauty, hair, and embodiment. In western society, black hair has become politicized and hyper-scrutinized, with longstanding hegemonic standards of beauty privileging straighter hair and looser curl patterns as “good hair.” In “Rooted: On Black women, beauty, hair, and embodiment,” Kristin Denise Rowe, Assistant Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, examines the ways hair is tied to their embodied experiences for many Black women.
According to Rowe, the natural hair movement, which has gained momentum in recent years, offers a vehicle for Black women to reclaim embodied agency and interiority, in the face of misogynoir. Through this movement, Black women have created a space to rearitculate standards of beauty and to affirm their natural hair textures. However, the beauty industry has also commodified and commercialized Black women’s growing emphasis on their natural hair, with a predicted worth of over $13 billion
Overall, Rowe’s essay provides a comprehensive examination of the history, politics, and dynamic relationships to beauty culture for Black women in relation to their hair. Additionally, it acknowledges the importance of Black women’s experiences and narratives to expand and complicate ideas of beauty that shape the unique relationship of women of color to beauty culture. By understanding the complex constellation of interlocking factors that inform how Black women experience and conceptualize beauty, we can reveal what Rowe calls the intimacies, (re)negotiations, (re)articulations, and radical possibilities of Black women’s embodiment and the potentiality of “beauty” as a construct.
From precolonial Africa to the present, Black women’s hair has had political importance. Throughout the history of the Americas, Europeans used hair to demonstrate political authority over the Other. In her 2022 Sociology Compass essay “Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics,” Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas Christian University’s (TCU) Race and Reconciliation Initiative (RRI), explores these dynamics. Greensword discusses the intersectionality of race and gender in the political oppression of Black hair, as well as resistance to this oppression. The essay also explains that Black hair culture has progressed from enslavement and colonialism to globalization and decolonization, yet Black women still suffer hair discrimination and policies that privilege white hair practices.
Black women have long used West and Central African practices of hairstyling and ornamentation to resist these injustices. For example,in the 1780s, then-Governor Miró issued the “Edict of Good Government,” which forced women of color to either cover their hair with a handkerchief or comb it flat or face incarceration. In response, Black women began to wear “tignons,” elegant turbans that emphasized their textured hair rather than concealed it.
The tignon laws exemplify the weaponization of hair in order to control, hypersexualize, and defeminize Black women, denying them any claim to womanhood, femininity, or piety. As a form of political resistance, Black people praise their hair as beautiful, redefining normative standards of human value. Black people make a political statement about this (de)valuation through the time, money, energy, and care dedicated to their bodies via hairstyling.
Hair is an important part of Black women’s identities. However, for decades, the categorization of Black hair diversity into good and bad hair has been a source of disagreement. Eurocentric societies value long, straight, and silky as good, while they consider tightly coiled and kinky bad. In her 2011 Howard Journal of Communications piece, “Hair as Race: Why ‘‘Good Hair’’ May Be Bad for Black Females,” Cynthia L. Robinson, Black Studies Department Head and Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, unpacks this “hair hierarchy.”
Robinson argues that the concept of good and bad hair is based in the color complex, which refers to some Black people’s self-hatred and disdain for their Blackness. This complex is the product of years of enslavement and a lack of collective African identity, which causes Black people to discount physical attributes that reveal African heritage, notably skin color and hair texture. Rated on a scale of good to bad, good hair communicates European, Native American, or Asian trace ancestry through wavy or straight texture, and is likely to be long. In contrast, society categorizes tightly coiled, thicker, short hair that plainly reveals African heritage as bad. Thus, Black women have had to develop their own beauty standards that are particular to their hair textures, allowing for more creative range in popular Black hairstyles.
The dichotomy of good and bad hair is still a challenge for Black women. As Robinson explains, hair valuations are harmful to Black women because they elevate white beauty standards while undervaluing Black women’s hair textures. These labels also reflect the color complex and Eurocentric beauty ideals that have devalued Black women’s natural hair textures. Therefore, we must reject these harmful aesthetic standards and embrace the uniqueness of Black hair in order to move forward.
The post Black Hair: Black Feminist Perspectives appeared first on Blackfeminisms.com.
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Greg Hart has been named chief technology officer at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently, he has been vice president of corporate engineering for Faith Technologies Inc. of Lenexa, Kansas. Prior to that, he served for four years as vice president of enterprise project management and performance improvement for Mosaic Life Care, a four-hospital health system in Kansas City.
Dr. Hart earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and technology from California University of Pennsylvania. He holds an MBA from Ashland University in Ohio and a Ph.D. in information technology management from Capella University.
Brenda Murrell is the new associate vice chancellor for research in the Office of Sponsored Programs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. She has served in the role on an interim basis for the past year. She has been on the staff at the university for 17 years.
Murrell holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Memphis and a bachelor’s degree in management from Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis. She earned an MBA in finance from Christian Brothers University in Memphis.
Todd Misener was appointed assistant vice president in the Division of Student Affairs at Oklahoma State University. Since 2016, he has been the chief wellness officer at the university. Earlier, Dr. Misener was assistant director of wealth and fitness at Western Kentucky University.
Dr. Misener is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, where he majored in kinesiology. He holds a master of public health degree from Western Kentucky University and a Ph.D. in health promotion from the University of Louisville.
D’Andra Mull will be the next vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder, effective June 1. Dr. Mull most recently served as vice president for student life at the University of Florida. Prior to her position at the University of Florida, she held leadership positions at Ohio State University.
Dr. Mull is a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio. She holds a master’s degree in adult education and human resource management from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership from Ohio State University.
Khala Granville is the new director of undergraduate admission and recruitment at Morgan State University in Baltimore. She is the former dean of admissions at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and a senior associate director of admissions, diversity recruitment, and outreach at Indiana University.
Granville holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Louisville. She earned a master of divinity degree from the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.
(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)
As soon as Lauren Elliott, AKA FlygirlElliott and Lucky Star Pens posted about the latest addition to the Lucky Star Colorverse lineup, I knew I had to buy one, which is exactly what I did at the recent Baltimore Pen Show. Colorverse Lucky Galaxy is the third exclusive release for Lucky Star Pens and was created to celebrate its 3rd anniversary. The prior two releases were Lucky Star and Lucky Star II. Like the other two before it, Lucky Galaxy is a shimmer ink, or what Colorverse calls “Glistening”. The ink comes in a 30ml glass bottle and sells for $20.
The 3 Colorverse x Lucky Star Pens inks: Lucky Star, Lucky Star II and Lucky Galaxy.
I inked up my trusty TWSBI Go with a Medium nib and used that for the writing samples on the Col-O-Ring cards. For the other writing samples, I used the Kakimori steel dip nib with 52 gsm and 68 gsm Tomoe River and Cosmo Air Light 75 gsm papers.
In large swatches, Lucky Galaxy leans more red than pink.
Writing sample on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper.
68 gsm TR.
Cosmo Air Light 75 gsm paper.
In the writing samples, the pink is more pronounced.
The shimmer is there but not in-your-face, which I like.
The turquoise/blue shimmer can make it look kind of blurple but what you see near the nib is the real ink color.
Lucky Star Galaxy had an average flow when writing but definitely took a while to dry on 68gsm TR. Dry times may be a bit slower on 52gsm TR or faster on papers like Rhodia, copy paper, Cosmo Air Light or with drier or finer nibs. The ink has blue/turquoise shimmer, minimal shading and no sheen.
Inks similar to Lucky Galaxy are Diamine Pink Glitz (gold shimmer), Diamine 2019 Inkvent (Blue Edition) Candy Cane (no shimmer), Sailor Ink Studio 731 (no shimmer but gold sheen), Colorverse #49 Felicette (no shimmer), and Diamine 2021 Inkvent (Red Edition) Pink Ice (silver shimmer.)
While I have similarly colored inks in my collection, it’s not often that non-gold or silver shimmer is used so I’m glad that Lucky Galaxy has a different shimmer. This ink sells for $20 per 30ml bottle on the Lucky Star Pens website, which is about the perfect amount for a bottle of ink.
BUT WAIT! There’s more!! Just when you thought this article was over, it’s not over!! I thought I’d share something new that I decided to do for ink reviews - chromatography! Basically, chromatography is a way to show the various components of a mixture (in this case, ink) as different parts get drawn up the strip via capillary action at different rates. As it relates to ink, this means chromatography allows you to see the colors that make up the ink.
What you need to do ink chromatography
Wine glass (cuz I’m bougie that way), binder clip, chromatography strip, paintbrush.
Strip is on the outside of the glass so I can see if it will touch the water.
Testing this outside the glass so I can add/remove water as needed.
You can see the ink line is above the water line and is already beginning to “move up.”
Roughly 4 minutes in.
I waited until 5 minutes when the ink “stopped moving” before removing it from the glass. Duration of wait time will vary based on how quickly the ink is separating up the strip. If you wait too long, the colors may get too diluted and be harder to detect.
Letting the strip dry on a paper towel (no, those aren’t blood stains, just Lucky Galaxy!)
Closeup reveals a hint of shimmer at the base where I drew the line and basically pink ink throughout.
Contrast that with a multi-shading ink (or chromashader) like Sailor Manyo Fuji which shows shades of magenta/pink and blue, with a bit of yellow above the pink.
While chromatography isn’t necessary to enjoy inks, it is a fun way to see how similarly colored inks may have underlying differences that aren’t as noticeable in writing samples or ink swatches. I can’t wait to see my future ink chromatographies.
(Disclaimer: I purchased Lucky Galaxy ink at regular price from Lauren Elliott at the 2023 Baltimore Pen Show.)
Social movements are a process of collective action aimed at structural change. I am interested in the social psychology of collective action from the standpoint of Black women activists. My research adopts Black feminist thought as a lens through which to conduct a sociology of antiracist social movements in the contemporary era. However, Black feminist scholars from a wide range of fields have done research on Black women’s activism throughout history. Below is a list of five groups of Black women activists with some insights from Black feminist scholars.
The Black Panther Party was formed in 1966 in Oakland, California. This worldwide network of chapters advocated for Black self-defense and self-determination by publishing a Ten-Point platform based on anticapitalist and antiracist ideals, which included a demand to cease police violence. Their political expressions reimagined femininity, masculinity, and empowerment to challenge hegemony and patriarchy as well as to mobilize women. For example, in Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era, Ashley D. Farmer argues the work of Gayle Dickson for Bobby Seale’s mayoral campaign in 1973 portrays Black women as “militant domestics” or “revolutionary women” for the purposes of communicated global solidarity among U.S. Black women.
In “Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California”, Robyn C. Spencer writes that Black Panther Party historiographies tend to portray Black women as victims or opponents of misogyny and sexism in Black nationalist social movements. However, this framing obscures the agency and empowerment of Black Panther Party women:
The Panthers created images that valorized the armed, revolutionary black woman at a time when the dominant sociological and public policy arguments said that strong black women were detrimental to the family and therefore the community, and both liberal integrationist and conservative nationalist rhetoric promoted patriarchy. In stark contrast to the image of women spontaneously and individually engaging in self–defense, which emerged from the civil rights movement, the Panthers posited black women as proactive and organized—acting alongside men as defenders of the black community.
- Spencer (2008:99)
Spencer and Farmer’s work both highlight the significance of Black feminist thought in Black Power throughout the 1970s, challenging long-held assumption about Black women’s marginalization within the Black Power Movement.
Historically, anti-racist social movements in the west have centered men of color as the primary victims of racism. For example, the #BlackLivesMatter social movement addresses police violence as a global issue that all Black people suffer, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Yet, the media and internet advocates of #BlackLivesMatter tend to amplify police violence against Black heterosexual men.
The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS) initiated the #SayHerName campaign in December 2014 to respond to the lack of attention to Black women victims of police brutality. In 2015, AAPF Executive Director Kimberlé Williams Crenshawand Andrea J. Ritchie, a researcher in resident at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, released a report that demonstrated the pervasiveness of police brutality against Black women.
>>>CLICK HERE TO READ THE SAY HER NAME REPORT<<<
#SayHerName activists engage in multiple strategies including direct advocacy and policy suggestions to support in Black women and girls slain by police. As suggested by the “#,” advocates also use online social networking tools in their activism. Therefore, #SayHerName shows how Black feminism today uses both conventional strategies and new media to achieve its aims.
After the National Women’s Clubs barred black women from attending the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, they formed their own clubs. Many club women were former slaves’ children who had to contend with White feminists who held racist and classist views.
Ida B. Wells embarked on a global anti-lynching speaking tour, exposing the bigotry of American liberal organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) whose sole Black executive member was Frances Ellen Harper.
>>>Click here to listen to Making Ida B. Wells from WBEZ Chicago.<<<
Following the President of the Missouri Press Association’s retaliation to Wells’ campaign, 36 Black Women’s Clubs formed the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Margaret Murray Washington, Booker T.’s wife, was president. The organization ultimately became the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which was led by Mary Church Terrell.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, middle-class Black women spearheaded the Colored Women’s Club Movement. In her 1993 book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church: 1880-1920, historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham coined the term politics of respectabilityto describe their activism. Respectability politics enabled women to combine their spiritual practices with their social and political values, allowing them to use the church as a home base for teaching, organizing, and community outreach.
According to the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, communism is “a concept or system of society in which the major resources and means of production are owned by the community rather than by individuals.” For the most part, the role of Black women in communist movements has been suppressed. However, scholars such as Erik S. McDuffie and Carole Boyce Davies have started a new wave of literature that illuminates the legacies of Louise Thompson Patterson, Audley Moore, Eula Gray, and Claudia Jones.
Michigan State University Associate Professor of History LaShawn Harris documents this history during the Great Depression in a 2009 article, “Running with the Reds: African American Women and the Communist Party during the Great Depression,” for the Journal of African American History. The Great Depression exacerbated the existing employment problems faced by Black people including poverty, low wages, and discrimination. The refusal of governments in the South to extend the New Dealto Black Americans pushed many to turn to leftist organizations for assistance.
Communist-based organizations such as the League of Struggles for Negro Rights, the Unemployed Councils, and the International Labor Defense, provided support for issues such as housing evictions, food for the jobless and homeless, and labor marches and strikes. Additionally, the Communist Party gave Black women leadership roles in local, national, and international movements against intersecting oppressions, further propelled community growth and institution building. According to Harris, Black women’s engagement with communism to reconstruct the politics of respectability, forging strategies of liberation through new ways of protest that contrasted to the bourgeois ideals of racial uplift.
For the most part, U.S. society frames support for reproductive rights via the pro-choice framework. However, historically, this movement’s singular emphasis on abortion gas mostly served the interests of white upper middle class white women. Furthermore, its legacy of birth control advocacy and forced sterilization emerges out of models of population control rooted in eugenics. The choice framework also conceals the state’s involvement in propagating reproductive sanctions and differentially rewarding various groups’ reproductive practices.
In “Understanding Reproductive Justice: Transforming the Pro-Choice Movement,” Smith College Associate Professor of Women & Gender Loretta J. Ross explains how Black women and other women of color developed a different strategy against reproductive oppression with the reproductive justice paradigm.
Reproductive Justice says that the ability of any woman to determine her own reproductive destiny is linked directly to the conditions in her community—and these conditions are not just a matter of individual choice and access.
- Ross (2006:14)
Ross also explains that proponents of reproductive justice fight for:
- The right to have a child
- The right not to have a child
- The right to parent, the children we have, as well as to control our birthing options, such as midwifery.
This engagement in reproductive rights and social justice, built on the human rights framework and intersectionality, extends the heritage of resistance among women of color, particularly Black women, to coercive and incentivized depopulation policies of the state. For example, the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, based in Atlanta, was founded in 1997 via the merger of sixteen groups funded by the Ford Foundation. Human rights principles and intersectionality were included into the group’s educational initiatives, which included national and regional trainings and seminars. SisterSong, according to Kimala Price, creates a strong collective identity in order to attract individual and organizational members, especially women disenfranchised by the pro-choice social movements.
The post Social Movements: 5 Key Insights from Black Feminist Scholars appeared first on Blackfeminisms.com.
Welcome Home is a recently completed project by No Architects, who designed a modern apartment for a family with small children. The Prague apartment received a reconfigured layout that includes a new multipurpose room that works as a study, playroom, and guest room. Sliding doors can close to hide the room from the living room when it’s not in use or for privacy when someone is visiting or needing to work. Even with the doors closed, the open kitchen, dining room, and living room provide ample space for the family to enjoy.
The unique kitchen boasts an oval, angled island with two bases in different finishes. The larger white base rests upon an elevated floor decked out in a patterned tile, while the wood column base sits on the main herringbone floor. The cabinets include a row of wood fronted uppers with light blue cabinets surrounding them.
The blue cabinets curve at one end, complementing the curves of the island and raised tile floor.
A double-sided, navy blue leather sofa floats in the center of the living room surrounded by built-in storage and display cabinets. One side of the sofa faces the television, while the other looks towards the windows with views of Prague.
The combo room just off the living room houses an elevated, built-in bed with storage under and behind it. On the opposite side, a light blue desk setup lives beside a large wooden storage cabinet with red legs.
The all-white hallway gets a boost from a cobalt blue console table that rests against the wall.
A seating nook with storage is built into the hallway near the front door, offering a good place to drop belongings after entering the apartment.
More wooden storage cabinets with red legs outfit the entryway.
A child’s room features a modern bunkbed that’s complete with storage, stairs, hidden lighting, and a privacy screen.
No Architects
Photos by Studio Flusser.
Review by Tina Koyama
Although I’m mostly a colored and graphite pencil sketcher, sometimes I get into a painty mood. If I haven’t used paints in a while, though, I get a bit overwhelmed by choosing and mixing colors; I just want to grab a brush and hit the page with it. That’s what I love about a watercolor set like the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Graphite Colors (palette of 6/$16.50). The neutral, near-black hues require no mixing to have fun with.
The set comes in a cardboard palette of six pans that are larger than traditional watercolor full pans (though a bit shallower). The color name (in English and Japanese) and color number appear on the underside of the pan, and the number also appears on the palette. I find the color name on the pan to be especially handy because the subtle, dark hues can be difficult to identify when dry. (Apparently, these paints are not available individually at JetPens.)
When swatched, the hues become more distinct. The lightfast colors recall the Boku-Undo E-Sumi Watercolor Palette that I reviewed a while back. While that set evokes the rich blackness of ink, the Kuretake set is more subtle and matte like graphite. (I love having both pen- and pencil-like watercolor sets!)
According to the JetPens product description, “the surface of the paint can be polished to reveal a metallic luster.” That statement piqued my curiosity, so I took a paper towel and rubbed the concentrated ends of my swatches. It was difficult to photograph to show the luster, but with light reflected directly, the paints do show a subtle, graphite-like sheen.
To make test sketches, I first used green and red to sketch a portrait (reference photo by Earthsworld).
Then I sketched my friend Skully (inspired by the X-Files character, of course) twice in a gray Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook – once with blue and once with violet. (The white highlights were made with an East Hill Tombstone white brush pen that Ana and I both reviewed several years ago.)
I used a standard-size East Hill Kumadori water brush to make these sketches. With a finer brush (and a finer hand), I think these graphite-inspired paints would be lovely for calligraphy as well as painting.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.
The post Watercolor Review: Kuretake Gansai Tambi Palette Graphite Colors appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
ColorVerse has released an amazing variety of ink over the last year. One of the most recent inks is ColorVerse 2023 New Year. A big thank you to Dromgoole’s for sending this ink for this review!
2023 New Year is a fabulous bright green ink with lots of sparkle – the closest I have in my collection is Anderillium Spirula green although 2023 New Year is darker.
2023 New Year surprised me with the amount of shading – that isn’t something I usually expect with sparkling inks.
The sparkle is a bit wild – both gold and silver particles. I had no issues with 2023 New Year clogging or even hard starts – ColorVerse uses a small enough particulate that the ink flows well.
Now for the paper. The first paper here is Tomoe River paper (TR7). Lots of shading on TR paper and a bit of a black halo sheen as well.
I’ve angled the same swatch so you can get an idea of the sparkle!
Cosmo Air Light paper, as usual, brings out the blue undertones of the ink, making it more of an emerald green
Sparkling inks have a great time on Cosmo Air Light paper, although the sparkle has the tendency to drift across the page.
Midori MD paper shows ColorVerse 2023 New Year much closer to a true green.
However, the sparkling characteristics of the ink are wasted on Midori MD.
2023 New Year is a 30mL bottle and is priced at $24 MSRP which works out to $0.80 per mL. While not as expensive as Sailor’s small bottles, it is a bit pricey, but I do think the novelty of both silver and gold sparkle makes this ink worth grabbing while it is around.
DISCLAIMER: The ink included in this review was provided free of charge by Dromgoole’s for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
The post Ink Review: ColorVerse 2023 New Year appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Color is a very subjective quality in the eye of the beholder but leading materials manufacturer 3form continues to prove that it has its finger on the pulse when it comes to creating and curating colors that the design community is looking for. For its 2023 Color Collection, the brand is adding 10 new pastel hues to its permanent color system, offering new ways to brighten up commercial environments. “Color is at the core of what we do, and this collection allowed us to be more introspective about the meaning of color in our lives,” shares Ryan Smith, 3form’s Chief Creative Officer.
The new collection is inspired by the four seasons and the emotions they evoke, like the blues of a winter day and the purple tones found in spring. To begin the process of expanding its color system, the design team at 3form first laid out swatches of current colors in order to identify missing colors. They noticed an opportunity to introduce soft, subtle versions of their saturated tones and, in the end, settled on 10 new hues: Lavish, Graceland, Alta, Smolder, Honeycomb, Rhubarb, Talc, Cedarwood, Adobe, and Comet.
The colors can be applied to 3form’s Varia, Chroma, and Glass platforms that can be constructed into partitions, wall accents, reception desk wraps, ceiling features, and more for public spaces like offices, hotels, schools, hospitals, and wellness centers. The translucency of 3form’s materials brings the colors to life, especially when natural light, which gradually changes throughout the day, diffuses through.
Lavish
Lavish
Graceland
Graceland
Alta
Alta
Smolder
Smolder
Honeycomb
Honeycomb
Rhubarb
Rhubarb
Talc
Cedarwood
Adobe
Comet
Comet
For more information on 3form’s 2023 Color Collection, head to 3-form.com.
The writer has asked to remain anonymous.
History repeats itself with the governor’s attack on Florida’s higher ed
In 1956 a Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, known as the John’s Committee, was created as a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education and modeled on the efforts of Joseph McCarthy to root out Communists. The John’s Committee looked for evidence to connect civil rights groups, like the NAACP, to communism. When these efforts failed, the committee shifted their focus to target and remove homosexuals and the “extent of [their] infiltration into agencies supported by state funds.” Suspected homosexuals, both faculty and students, were interrogated, outed, and fired at a time when sodomy was illegal in the state. The campaign ruined the careers and destroyed the lives of many ensnared in it, both falsely accused straight and homosexual. The John’s committee also attacked academic freedom by singling out faculty for such “offenses” as the perceived discrimination against male students, teaching evolution, and assigning books they deemed “obscene.” If you’ve been following along with what Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican legislature are doing in Florida, this should all sound eerily familiar.
It is no secret that Governor Ron DeSantis has declared war on education in Florida through authoritarian tactics targeting curriculum from pre-K to higher education. From book bans to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, he has k-12 teachers removing and covering up books to avoid felony charges and hiding pictures of their spouses to avoid termination. He forced university instructors to return to the classroom during the Delta variant surge, and students were asked to report non-compliance (virtual teaching) through a “course concern” button added to a phone app that was designed to report tips to the police, make emergency calls, and other functions that “improve their personal safety and security.” The Stop W.O.K.E. Act prohibits teaching any topic that might make students feel guilty based on race, color, national origin, or sex. He has declared war on Critical Race Theory (a concept he cannot even define) and asked over 2 million state college/university faculty, staff, and students to complete a survey that all experts agree would not clear the Institution Review Board’s process that ensures the protection of participants in a research study, to suss out our political leanings. There are many more truly fascist overreaches and mandates coming out of Tallahassee, too many to list. I invite you to listen to the Banished podcast “The Sunshine State Descends into Darkness (Again)” which covers Florida’s all-out assault on academia.
I am a queer contingent faculty member, and the chair of my department’s DEI committee at a very large public university in the state of Florida. I’ve watched as my personal liberties and those of my colleagues have been whittled away. The latest involves reporting of spending and resources used for campus activities that relate to diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory initiatives, and collecting information about the faculty, staff, and students serving on DEI committees. In a separate action, DeSantis has requested information on individuals who have or are receiving gender-affirming treatment at Florida universities. These moves come on the heels of legislation passed to remove our promotion and tenure process from the departments and peer evaluation committees, and allow the university president or board chairman to fire individuals, without due process, clearing the way to fire anyone whose gender, orientation, or political views offend the political party in power.
Great. So now we are putting people on lists, and history has not been kind to people put on lists by authoritarian leaders.
We knew it was coming, but this week department chairs received the request to provide the names, email addresses, and “notes” on all members of departmental diversity and inclusion committees. This opens up the possibility of names (and notes) being submitted without our knowledge. Most of the people who serve on these committees are marginalized in some way and don’t have the protections tenure provides; committee service is always disproportionately assigned to junior faculty, and diversity work is nearly always assigned to the “diversity” members of the unit. We are afraid. What if that guidance on how to draft job announcements to broaden our search pools, or that statement my department chair asked me to write acknowledging the murder of George Floyd, offends the wrong person? Will I lose my job, or something more sinister? What is DeSantis going to do with this information? We do not trust him.
So, what can we do about it? Several groups of faculty are taking action by providing guidance in how to respond to surveys and other data gathering activities by the state, organizing responses to public comment periods, and building an understanding of academic freedom issues and how they impact ALL departments and programs. But these efforts won’t stop the governor and legislature from demanding lists and firings, nor the university administrators from complying. For those outside Florida’s education system who are concerned, please consider donating to Equality Florida or the Florida ACLU. Please also consider joining the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and please VOTE (and get all of your friends to vote).
DeSantis’s actions and this thinking are a disease, and it is spreading. Other states are watching what is happening and emulating Florida’s efforts to crack down on open discourse and inclusivity in universities. Education in the US is already faltering in international rankings. We need to figure out how to protect our faculty and students, and our academic institutions, before it’s too late.
The post History Repeats Itself: A Guest Post About The Crisis in Florida appeared first on The Professor Is In.
Working with the theme of “Colour Vibes,” color and design phenom Tekla Evelina Severin transformed a 250-square-meter (almost 2,700 square feet) empty space for the FORMEX interior fair last month. The project involved exhibition design, curation, and styling a series of rooms, which resemble either a beautifully staged set for a magazine photo shoot or a perfectly executed interior of a home. Taking inspiration from a labyrinth, hide-and-seek games, and a Rubik’s cube, Dimensions of Colour consists of multiple spaces placed in a zigzag formation, allowing for changes in perspective from every view. No matter the angle, new framed vignettes appear, as do ever-changing color palettes, making the space feel like it’s bouncing back and forth between realism and surrealism.
Immersed in Severin’s color-blocked world are a curated roster of 200 products sourced from 400 exhibitors, resulting in a broad mix of objects that feel like they belong.
Each space features black and white checkered floors with layers of rich, saturated wall colors. Topped off with furnishings – some that match and some that contrast – that give each room a purpose, whether it’s a living room, kitchen, bedroom, kid’s space, atrium, or living room.
Despite the use of so many colors, none of them feel out of place, as each works with the color beside it, across the room, or in the next space.
Concept illustration
Concept illustration
Concept illustration
Photos by Fredrik Bengtsson and Tekla Evelina Severin.
In recent books, Adolph L. Reed Jr. and Imani Perry offer divergent explanations of Southern inequality.
Artworks can provide an immediate rush of joy on first impression, or slowly build in appreciation over multiple visits. Charles Gaines’ current exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York does both: it is breathtaking from the moment you walk in, and offers new discoveries and deeper fulfillment with every subsequent visit. The artworks are individually brilliant while they also connect to each other in a series that invites you to get closer while extending your peripheral vision.
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
The exhibition’s title “Southern Trees” references the 150-year-old pecan trees shown in the 17 new works – all photographed on a visit to Boone Hall Plantation in Charleston County, South Carolina, not far from where the artist was born.
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
On the 2nd floor, 8 new works contain 3 elements: a black-and-white photograph of a pecan tree, a black silhouette of that tree on gridded paper, and a pixelated watercolor translated from the silhouette.
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
The exhibition crescendos as each work builds on the last. For example, the first watercolor seen in the gallery is a single tree from start to finish (in blue), followed by the second work in the exhibition that adds a tree (red) to that equation. A new tree is presented in the photograph and silhouette alone, but is added to the first tree in the watercolor. The third work introduces a third tree, and so on. By the time you walk to the 7th and 8th work in the room, the forms and colors fuse together in an abstraction that celebrates difference as a whole.
Pecan Trees: Set 3, 2022
Even when the layered colors are the exact same within a single square, the final color within each square (a brown or green, etc.) is always different due to the variance of pigment saturation in every application.
Pecan Trees: Set 5, 2022
Pecan Trees: Set 5, 2022 (detail)
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
A great 10-minute video is linked below, produced by Art21. In it, Gaines talks about a relationship between his artistic system and larger social/political systems:
In a way, I’m trying to suggest that the kind of visual difference that happens in the system [within the artworks] operates the same way that other concepts of difference happen in other domains: politics, gender difference, race difference, class difference. In the drawings we can see that those differences are constructed by the system, and in the social and political domain, the differences that we see are also constructed by a system.
– Charles Gaines
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
The series of work on the 5th floor adds complexity, scale, transparency, and sunlight, resulting in some of the most uplifting and captivating works on view now. Each of the 9 works throughout the skylit room follow a similar logic of “adding a tree” as you walk around the room, but now the photographic images are printed on clear Plexiglass boxes that encapsulate each large painting.
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #1, Old Towne Road, 2022
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #1, Old Towne Road, 2022 (detail)
Exploring the colorful, painted grid requires a viewer to look through a photographic detail of the branches of the newest tree. And due to the distance between the Plexiglass and painting (almost 6 inches), the images shift as you move, offering a sense of discovery similar to the feeling of peering through real branches to see a distant landscape.
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #5, Tranquil Drive, 2022
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #5, Tranquil Drive, 2022 (detail)
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #8, Sage Way, 2022
Numbers and Trees: Charleston Series 1, Tree #8, Sage Way, 2022 (detail)
Each painting is a satisfying story, and though you don’t need to connect the dots between them, this is a rare opportunity to see complete sets together and experience those relationships in a single room.
The above 10-minute video features works from the exhibition along with larger, recent musical and interactive works. Well worth watching.
Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Southern Trees,’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street
Charles Gaines, © Charles Gaines, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth \\\ Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
What: Charles Gaines: Southern Trees
Where: Hauser & Wirth New York, 542 W 22nd St, New York, NY
When: January 26 – April 1, 2023
Images: Installation Images © Charles Gaines, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photographed by Sarah Muehlbauer
Artwork Images © Charles Gaines, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photographed by Fredrik Nilsen
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