Curating is a weird sphere. If the art world is already a strange, rare sphere, I feel like curating is even moreso. It’s this weird sphere of power within the sphere of power that already is the art world. It’s hard to penetrate.”
— Gaby Cepeda
Gaby Cepeda is an independent curator and art writer in Mexico City. Her Girls of the Internet Museum (@gim-museum) is an expansive Tumblr gallery of women working in digital art. She spoke with The Creative Independent in front of a small audience in Parque España, Mexico City. Read more.
Bellos Jueves V - at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, 2014 > Débora Delmar Corp., Arabica y Robusta, 2014 hanging out with Manet’s Nymph Surprised
We recently made it even easier to discover the best Kickstarter Live streams. You can now check them out right on our homepage or on the Kickstarter app for iOS. Learn more here.
Today’s Happening is brought to you by John Watson, co-founder of the independent game developer Stoic and technical director of an RPG trilogy about Vikings that we bet you’ve heard of: The Banner Saga. Watson began programming at age six and has since delved into professional game development and science-related engineering. Banner Saga 3, the third and final chapter of the story-driven game, is live on Kickstarter through March 7.
From Banner Saga 3
Lately I’m really inspired by: High-quality television — this longform storytelling format has really come into its own. In particular, I like series that take a deliberate approach to creating story arcs, like Stranger Things, Fargo, and True Detective.
Right now I’m reading:The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Reading biographies and historical nonfiction creates new mental connections between myself and the past and stimulates speculative extrapolation into the future.
My dream creative collaboration would be with:Cartoon Saloon, on a Banner Saga animated series.
“Graffiti has inspired high fashion, it’s inspired music, it’s inspired graphic design. We’re all out there contributing. We’re all part of a great movement… So to everyone out there: go out, do your art, try to be respectful of other people’s art, and just try to push it forward. Be honest with it and try to learn a little bit about the history… If we don’t document it, tell the story or the history, this movement, which is the only art that’s been invented by youth in America, is gonna die.” —graffiti artist Wane One
Read Wane One’s conversation with The Creative Independenthere.
Welcome to Happening, where we feature a list of our favorite Kickstarter projects every week. Want to get it straight to your inbox? Sign up here.
Independent artists and arts organizations have used Kickstarter to make some of the most powerful art of our time. See how creators like The Royal Academy of Arts, Creative Time, Swoon, and Olafur Eliasson are breaking new ground — and get to know our arts community and mission — at Kickstarter.art.
Beauty blogger @kandeejohnson modeling a Lisa Frank-inspired lipstick look.
With their new makeup collaboration on Kickstarter, designer Lisa Frank and @glamourdollsmakeup want to put the power in the hands of their fans. Backers of the project — which aims to create colorful, cruelty-free lipstick, highlighter, and powder — will help pick the product shades and vote on product names.
Find out more about the collaboration here, and read an interview with Lisa Frank below:
Today’s Happening is brought to you by cartoonist, writer, and publisher C. Spike Trotman. In 2007, Spike foundedIron Circus Comics as way to publish her own comics. Since then, it’s grown into Chicago’s largest alternative comics publisher, focusing on the “strange and amazing.” Check out her eleven (!) previous projects on Kickstarter here.
Right now I’m working on: Multiple book projects! This year I plan on using Kickstarter to get three fantastic comics into print. With any luck, 2017 will be the year I finally start licensing and translating foreign work for the American market.
Lately I’m really inspired by: My friends and their acts of charity and resistance in a really difficult time. The work of younger cartoonists. The state of comics as a whole.
My go-to resources for creative motivation are: Documentaries, history, and true crime podcasts. As 2017 is proving, real life outdoes fiction for pure weirdness every time.
My dream creative collaboration would be with: Janelle Monae. I fell in love with her work through the Many Moons short film. I think it would make an amazing graphic novel — comics need more Afrofuturism.
Reparations365 JACK, a Brooklyn art space, is looking to start a national conversation about African-American reparations — which is still, somehow, and despite it all, a radical and unthinkable concept for most.
Prehistoric Enamel Pins Has anyone else noticed enamel pins are super popular lately? Anyway, I love these cute, colorful prehistoric critters.
The Toys that Time Forgot Now this is fun: a book cataloging prototypes for toys that were never made.
2017 NYC Queer Comic Fair In the coming years, marginalized communities will need more support and visibility than ever.
Lately, total strangers have been paying off indebted school lunch accounts, immediately improving the lives of untold numbers of local kids. Maybe you should give it a shot where you live?
As part of Make 100, the creators behind @phoblographer are putting together a limited-edition zine highlighting work from emerging analog photographers. See more stunning images — like this one by Daniel Zvereff — here.
Photo: Paul Sepuya, Study with Five Figures (3002), 2016
Paul Mpagi Sepuya is a photographer and artist currently based in Los Angeles. This is how he describes his creative practice: “I make photographs, books, and installations rooted in portraiture, homoerotic visual culture, and the function of the studio. Portraiture is the foundation of my practice. The subjects appearing in my work are a cast of friends, intimates and muses. They are founded in ongoing relationships mediated by the making and production of photographs.”
As our month-long Make 100 creative initiative wraps up, take a look at how over 470 creators interpreted the prompt here. Thank you to all the creators who rose to the occasion, and to the backers who helped bring these projects to life!
“I hate the conversations that frame art around the idea of there being ‘political art’ and ‘non-political art.’ That’s always been a false binary to me.”
Katie Alice Greer, singer for the D.C. punk band Priests and a solo artist under her initials, K.A.G., spoke with The Creative Independent about why all art is political.
In 2016, Swoon and The Heliotrope Foundation came to Kickstarter with a project to build a resilient and sustainable bamboo home for a local family in Cormier, Haiti, as part of a larger effort to create works of art and social architecture in the country. More than six hundred backers helped bring the project to life.
Preparations are now underway, and the Heliotrope team shared their progress in a recent Project Update. Below is an excerpt.
This edition of Happening is brought to you by Carol Benovic-Bradley, Senior Copywriter at Kickstarter. In addition to writing useful resources for creators, she likes to post Yelp reviews and tweet about wrestling. Carol, take it away!
The last book I read was: Eric Ripert’s 32 Yolks — I was really moved by his journey with food.
My go-to resource for inspiration is: My friends. And speaking of food (see above), I’m now realizing that most of them happen to be great cooks.
My dream creative collaboration would be with: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He seems like he’d be both a great friend and good at cooking (which apparently is a requirement for me).
Originally a designer’s pet project, this concrete-cast bird for Make 100 can be used to hold down a stack of papers, prop open a door, or keep you company at your desk.
This edition of Happening is brought to you by Jenn de la Vega (above), Community Manager at Flipboard, self-described geeky caterer, Casio keyboard player, and editor-at-large of Put A Egg On It. Sign up to get Happening in your inbox here.
Right now, I’m working on: A wacky Kickstarter project to cook 100 eggs in Brooklyn called the Egg-Centennial. Local backers get to pop eggs on camera and eat them for brunch with me.
My go-to resource for creative motivation is: Eating new foods with friends. I’ve been obsessed with hot pot and its unlimited sauce bars (tahini and extra garlic, please). Next, Sichuan dry pot!
My dream creative collaboration would be with: Alton Brown. He is the reason I became interested in cooking when I was sixteen. (Alton, if you are reading this, please teach me senpai.)