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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
Happening: Easy Viewing
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.
A few months ago we introduced you to Kickstarter Live (remember that?). Since then we’ve seen creators use it to connect with backers in all sorts of inventive ways — from a live ballet rehearsal to a call-in dream-drawing session.
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.
Last chance to back
Experimental comics telling extraordinary stories
Learn how to make incense, dye textiles, or start a record label
Nine poppin’ projects
Fairytale-inspired fantasy comics
The golden age of American dance, revisited
Turn your kitchen into a hydroponic vertical farm
A smart cuckoo clock that helps you build better habits
This magazine is a megaphone for underrepresented artists
Capturing the beauty of the cosmos with a 129-year-old telescope
Excellent tips from creative freelancers on balancing success, mindfulness, and travel
A political comedy series about gentrification, global warming… and gluten-free donuts
#Kickstarted
Building diverse dolls as role models for every girl (Forbes)
Let a sloth lead you to paradise through a guided meditation (Vice)
Coming to video games near you: depressed towns, dead-end characters (NYTimes)
Etc.
Happening: The saga continues
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.
Three projects I love
I’ve spent so many hours absorbed in the world of Sunless Sea
I’m immediately attracted to any game resembling a Southern Gothic story
Swans can be a musical experience of epic intensity, and their story is a fascinating one
Links I like
An homage to one of the best TV series of all time
Stephen Hawking provides a stark warning and a message of hope
A critically important part of the world seen from an amazing viewpoint:
As the Voyager spacecraft exited the fringes of our solar system, this is what it saw
Etc.
Want to get Happening straight to your inbox? Sign up here.
“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 Independent here.
Happening: For artists, by artists
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.
Five artistic projects worth your while
Connecting children across the globe through dance
Modern hieroglyphic carvings as storytelling pieces for South Central L.A.
Transforming public spaces into sites for collaborative discourse and discovery
Illuminating the relationships between Black artists and arts institutions in the U.S.
A hotel cleaning staff teams up with professional dancers for this one-of-a-kind performance
A few more projects to explore
Vincent van Gogh, the action figure
The neuroscience and mythology of love, explored via animation
A soulful visual album influenced by Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack
Seasoned journalists go “off assignment” to tell the stories behind their stories
Read/watch
Does college radio still matter? (Pitchfork)
Hand-drawn infographics by W.E.B. Du Bois (Public Domain Review)
Stream twenty-two films from Black cinema’s earliest pioneers (Slate)
Ten creators on the future of apparel, retail, and wearable tech (Kickstarter)
Etc.
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:
Handpicked Happening: You heard the lady.
Today’s Happening is brought to you by cartoonist, writer, and publisher C. Spike Trotman. In 2007, Spike founded Iron 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.
Six projects I love
Titanic VR
Like being James Cameron, only not!
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.
Make 100: “Do Something” Art Prints
You heard the lady.
Two ways to make a difference
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?
On a related note, now is an essential time to start supporting schools. Donors Choose lets you fund individual classrooms, teachers, and projects sorted by level of need, subject, and age group.
Recommended streaming
Linda Belcher, pre-Bob’s Burgers
This sci-fi podcast made me tear up in public
A game about managing survival on a floating island
Watch this animated anthology by Late Night Work Club (for grown-ups only!)
Etc.
Free art books — go get a little culture!
Sign up to receive Happening in your inbox here.
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.”
He spoke to The Creative Independent about finding your form and building a practice through persistence. Read the interview.
Self-portrait, 2006
Site of a Portrait, T.M. Davy, 2009
Happening: Beating creative blocks
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.
“…Start doodling. Once you actually start making things it sparks other ideas.”
—Seb Burnett, creator of the Make 100 project 100 Days of Mystery, on dealing with creative blocks
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!
Eight shiny new projects
A story of queerness, love, and motherhood in Brooklyn
Safeguard your bike with a lock made of high-tech textiles
Snap photos with this instant camera made from recycled cardboard
Victorian London meets outer space in this 2D game of celestial horror
Meet the 16-year-old environmental activist using hip hop as a tool for change
Help expand a hub of artistic expression and discourse in NYC’s Lower East Side
Comics and essays by African American creators celebrated in one powerhouse collection
Last chance saloon
Leaf through an 80-page tribute to David Bowie
Things to watch, read, and listen to
Escape into the best sci-fi podcasts of last year (Popular Science)
A Holocaust survivor changes the life of a student musician in Joe’s Violin (The New Yorker)
The Creative Independent’s Brandon Stosuy and Laurel Schwulst on the art of the interview (LA Review of Books)
Etc.
“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.
Working On It: Bamboo Renewal Breaks Ground in Haiti
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.
Measuring and selecting bamboo to harvest
Read more
Handpicked Happening: Friendship feeds the soul.
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!
Right now I’m working on: Making one hundred Winky Skull enamel pins. I’m also curating this list of internship gigs and stories. #InternedUp
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).
Five projects on my mind
A day without a sandwich is a day gone to waste.
I hope cat-loving artist John Kilduff becomes a Kickstarter Live celebrity.
Ayo the Clown and Marshmallow Run are two games I can’t wait to play.
This documentary follows a legally blind high school wrestler who defies the odds.
Eric Ripert, if you’re reading this — what would you make with this versatile condiment?
Links I recommend
A useful list of civic action tools and resources
How would you steer this self-driving car in a moral dilemma?
Writer David Wolinsky on what he’s learned while covering the gaming industry
How artist Sadie Barnette turned the FBI’s files on her Black Panther father into art
Etc.
Happy Lunar New Year!
Illustration by @drawings_for_my_grandchildren
Happening: Put a egg on it.
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.)
Three Make 100 projects I’m excited about
MOOTONE
I love staring at pretty colors.
Project circulum'C
I’m fantasizing about the backers of this project meeting up and assembling the work as originally intended:
Investing in Futures
Imagining future worlds will perhaps spark solutions for our current one.
Another fun project
Alter-Life: The Graphic Novel
My sci-fi senses are tingling.
Internet corners to explore
Four women who pioneered electronic music
A serial fiction podcast set in an alternate reality
Hemingway’s cocktail recipe for days when you’ve had enough of the world
Etc.
