Coolest Hurr up in Hurr

Everywhere I click on the internet I keep running into the same wall: the race wall. Is there a war about to start cuz I’m gonna need somewhere to hide. *Looks around* My white and asian friends can join me. *Hand gesture to come on in*. Grab some Fresh Prince, orange soda, salt and vinegar chips and those 90s white skittles. Sigh, when life was easy.

Its getting worse though, it really is. Everyday I seem to gasp and grasp my face with my left hand, starting at my eyes and stretching the pull all the way down til it holds the chin of my gaping mouth. This gives me enough time to process the latest *what the fuck did I just read* story.

(Disclaimer: The Trayvon story of course is absolutely sickening, and I’m not denying something seriously has to be done about this craziness)

But some things I’m like really? Really that upset you? Because its not that serious.

Personal take time. I grew up in a world of being the only black girl. Until 8th grade. When I was what? 13? I’m starting to recall things and thinking, hey maybe those were racist instances…but I never considered them as such and it never made me hate anyone and I moved on with my life. Like the hair thing, we’ve gotta relax.

I remember times where I’d watch all my white girlfriends braid their hair, unbraid their hair, flip it up in ponytails then down, then two pig tails, then ribbons all over, and my nine year old brain went “I wanna do that…”. So one day, I did. I grabbed one of my three fatty fat fat braids and started to unravel it. In the middle of boring ass science class (i started my biology hatred young). When I ended up with one side third of my head in this humungous poof, the teacher stopped her lecture.

“Kaye, would you like to go to the bathroom and get yourself together?”

Umm, no. No I would not. I would like to just throw it up in some ribbons or in a bouncy pigtail. But thanks for calling me out.

“Sure” I said and left. I was nine, not quite the revolutionary I’ve grown up to be yet. Worse, I didn’t know how to get myself together; mommy does my hair every morning. I don’t know how to handle this situation. So I sat in the tiny bathroom and stared.

I remember who came in the bathroom that day, but I won’t say her name. I haven’t talked to her in about ten years. She came in and reached out her hand “Can I touch it?”

She meant my hair. I wasn’t appalled or insulted. I didn’t feel like a chia pet or an animal. I didn’t care really, I was too bewildered myself about what to do with it. “Yea sure” I answered.

“Woah, its really cool. Your hairs really cool…I wish I had hair like yours”

I smiled. I got in this mess thinking the same thing about hers. “I cant braid it back.” I confessed.

“I can try, we can try” She answered. And we started braiding the big poof in about five other braids, secured them all together with my band. I looked a hot mess, but threw my head up high and back and walked into lab cheesin.

“So cool Kaye, your hair looks so cool!” My lab partner gushed. And I was cool, man. As the only black girl at school I was automatically the best dancer, the best singer, had the best taste in music and the coolest shoes and cough cough the best bubble letter draw-er by that given talent. I grew up with a sense of self-confidence STILL unmatched. Sure, you can dwell on the teachers view being racially insensitive, OR you can look at my peers’ reaction. I could look at myself as the token, or the coolest girl in school.

The race war is insane. Ask each other questions, awe in each others differences and we all can feel fourth grade cool. I needed something uplifting after all this mess going on in the world.

Lettering

Why do I have so many views today? What are you all even looking at? I know the anticipation is intense but let me do something first!

Right now, as I work on this project for you, and this project for you, and job search, and eat, and NIKE fitness workout, I’m squeezing in lettering. I thought I’d combine my past life painting skills with my new life typography skills and its going to become something I promise! I didn’t know what to letter so here’s step one of a book that was lying on the floor next to me in my mommy’s room. Now it’s time to perfect and edit in illustrator…I’ll be back son!

Bleeding Blue

If you can’t tell by my series of tweets and facebook posts I’m mad and riled up.

I know too much about societal issues and wish I was ignorant! As I’ve been saying, I really wish I could be Sarah Palin and just see Russia in my backyard.

I recently went to a dinner with wallstreeters and one commented they were “annoyed with the protesting that wouldn’t do anything because wall street doesn’t care about them” .

Well, because I didn’t answer that when I had the chance because I wanted some ammunition, LET me address that now. It’s not ABOUT wall streeters. We KNOW you don’t care that one in three kids in New York City are living in poverty while you received your finance degree to work 11 hours a day crunching numbers only to use the money to drop 700$ on tables at Butter. We KNOW your lifestyle.

Great.

Good.

Marvelous.

Its not ABOUT you. I wish your father told you that.

It’s about the country. In case you’ve had your head in a hole, there is this radical right thing: the tea party, making hayway on the floor. If you have a DROP of liberalism in you, you realize we need a radical left to balance this shit out. Yea, I didn’t know it would come to this either. I personally thought Obama was more on it. Nevertheless, I’d personally like to continue to fight for universal healthcare (makes no fuckin sense that we don’t have it), planned parenthood, social security. I’d kinda like to not have sick, poor, neglected children, and elders out on our streets. I’d kinda like America to be clean with great bridges and roads and doctors and ma and pa shops. I don’t waaanna buy everything at Wal-mart.

Maybe you don’t want to go down to wall street and stand with the hippies and grannies. Maybe you want to scoff at the unemployed from your couch. But DON’T degrade that fight, because it’s saving your ass too.

When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich- Rousseau 

 

Oh and if you’re looking for me, try wall street.

Excerpt

My hand hits the floor before my cheek. Thank God. I glanced down at my legs which should have been hurting from the tumble, I reasoned but they weren’t, detached by the amount of alcohol I’d consumed, I suppose.

“Charlie get up”

Max. I think that’s who I fell down these stairs to see. He stands as a friend-hook-up-not-quite-boyfriend sort of hybrid in my life and every Saturday night I find the most inventive ways to get to him. Tonight that meant falling down the stairs of his dorm.

“Get up Charlie”

The floor freezes my hand and cheek as the florescent lights hurt, even through my eyelids, but I’m not moving. Even cold, the floor is my favorite spot. When everything’s changing and moving so quickly I can always count on this buddy to stay still. You can always rely on a floor. I try to get up by pushing against it but fall right back. The Malibu and Gatorade in my stomach shakes up my head, spins up my stomach and I just can’t face life right now.

“Alright, fine”

My arm limps over his shoulder when Max scoops my long body off the tile. Long thick black hair mats in his face and he spits it away. He doesn’t mind, he’s determined to get me away from his bed. I wonder what I am to him, are we the girlfriend boyfriend thing? I start to ask but slump back instead. After climbing three flights to my dorm, he opens my room and rolls me onto my floor.

Rolls.

And we are not the girlfriend boyfriend thing.

—

“Charlie, sweetie, why are you on the floor”

The light reaches me just before Jennifer does. Fitting. My roommates like a literal ray of sunshine. Sometimes it’s sickening, most of the time it’s heart-warming. Never one to miss her 7 AM run, I know she can’t tell this is far to early to wake a drunk person. But I can never be upset at Jennifer, plus I’m blocking her closet.

“Yea, I just really like the floor,” I grunt probably incoherently.

She smiles, probably finally realizing I’m crazy and opens the Anthropologie-filled closet. Color-coded.

“You’re welcome to run with James and I in the morning, it may be a quick cure for you!”

There is no cure for me, I say under my breath, and grab a blanket across me that fell on the floor. From my position I watch Jennifer’s feet leave. So small and delicate, they fit her well and I start to wonder how she gets along in the world without floating away with balloons and butterflies. I start running my legs up and down our prickly cheap carpet appreciating the scratchy feel. By this point my skirt rode up and it tickles my super prickly legs. Maybe if I shaved he’d fall for me more…Maybe if I sleep this off he’d….

“Bitch get the fuck up”

Danielle bursts through my always open door. I roll over.

“Seriously???” She yells, I grunt. Many confuse us as the same person. We look absolutely nothing alike to those who actually know us but I’m pretty sure we are only best friends because of our high-yellow skin and hair length. Shame how these things work out.

She pulls my hair.

“What happened last night?” I grudgingly asked.

“Besides you drinking all my shit and getting what you deserve?” she asks.

“Yea, besides that.” I roll my eyes and lean back on my elbows. The drama.

“You were a hot ass mess!” she breaks into a fit of cackles. “But in that state we told you, you can’t be in our crew just messing around with just anybody. Confront him and tell him to be your boyfriend!”

I looked at her horrified. I knew I never should have trusted her. This deep pressing feeling kept telling me she has your worst interests at heart–

“And it worked!” she cut off my thoughts, “Ya’ll are together!”

I pulled her into a hug and we hopped around like the 18-year-old girls we are.

“So I have a boyfriend?!” I squealed. She screamed. I screamed. We jumped.

I need some Details

Shut the front door and stop it.

Details stop being so gorgeous!

I admit, I never check my mail, but when I do theres a gorgeous man smiling or scowling back at me on top of those magical words DETAILS (or GQ). Anyway, I’m looking through this one and these type layouts make me go “shut up not fair I wanna”. I can’t even read the articles. I can’t get passed the type flowing with the images.

If you can’t handle this passion get out the kitchen!

So lets go delve deeper into this genius shall we, TOO THE MASTHEAD:

ok the design director is Nathalile Kirsheh, a designer whos page I always seem to end up on while internet surfing. I can’t lie and said I became partial to the landscape portfolio design all on my ownsome. Anyway look at her site nathalie kirsheh its like syntax world! So beautiful. In the least creepy way possible: I want to BE her. By the way, it pays to stalk your favorite designers on SPD and AIGOA cuz you find things like THIS:

I want this now.

Book Design–some deep shit.

I have an amazing teacher.

I hated him at first.

As with any of my amazing teachers in the beginning of the semester he pushed me to that point. I did not understand his methods which only further frustrated me and stunted my growth in design. But as with any teacher that’s made me grow I pushed back until I gave in, and when I gave in I got it. I feel like these teachers are put in my life by a secret art god (Athena) who sits there and laughs while I die. Die and rise again though. Die and rise again.

Anyway, dude’s the shit. Strange, but he knows that.

He took the class to his office at Knoff this week, up in Random House. Of course its an amazing building, anyone who tells you publishing is dying is lying. With view over looking some NY body of water that’s just breathtaking-ugh, whatever. No but really his designs were all set up and we were devoured by books standing in his office. He went into depth about the commitment and *non-lazy-ness* it takes to do book design. The small budget, the deeply conceptual ideas, the pushing, the rejection, the READING. Anyways he explains how he gets to his conclusions, his “awkward” conclusions (his words). Below are his coolest ones, I think. His ideas are so complex but typography is always so simple, which is interesting but I’d like more contrast in the type…but I am really inspired by his imagery and formal relationships between that and the title (his words). Jason Booher:

Walk into Barnes and Noble and you’re guaranteed to see at least one of them. Rollin like a big shot. Oh, and his wife, Helen Yentus (also a book cover designer), is so badass she needs her own post.

Switch.

It’s time. Time to make this blog a design commentary. I’m back on the bandwagon folks. I’m back in love with design. After weeks of frustration I’m starting to appreciate the creativity allowed when you take it back to the basics. I’m experimenting with hands, and scissors, and paper rather than sticking on a computer for hours upon end only to resort to something close to what everyone else made. Buuuut it’s the end of the semester so we can start doing more than usual.

As I said, for the past couple weeks I’ve been experimenting with doing designs out of more materials than computer. I’ve cut, pasted, sewed, bought a fish, destroyed it, popped some bottle tops, destroyed my room (surprise, oh I know) and worked hours until I’ve created something I’m proud of. I constantly look at mastheads of magazines and google everyone in their art departments (I know, a bit creepy but I’m obsessed). Recently I’ve been extremely inspired by Kristin Eddington’s work for Nylon. It’s fun, playful, close to actual ART with the materials she uses. Check how beautiful she uses ink blots she made, not computer generated, to create this layout:

I mean after all the military droning of grids (yes I know this contains a grid on top) it makes design FLUID and artistic again. Also, her take on typography is just fun an inventive. I haven’t been given a type project to make my own type but this one inspires me to create my own.

SVAs got some amazing people, I would know my Brooklyn bff went there and shes crazy good son. Anyway, check out kristin eddingtons portfolio cuz she kills it. Her student work is crazy conceptual and genius and now when I’m working, I keep thinking about it. If you know me, I tend not to like people just because of where they work always find a loophole, but this one, this one I respect.

Work it out

I have so much going on in my mind right now its insane. I wish I could turn it off cause this shit is hard to keep up with. I just went to a symposium at my school on the topic of Black Artist, Designers and Education. So many topics were brought up, touched upon, and thoroughly discussed and I felt something I haven’t felt since undergrad. Passion.

Graphic Design for me is devoid of such passion. This Swiss style Parsons relies upon to create everything from book design to advertisements infuriates me. Graphic Design is boiled down to a scientific, mathematical, computer generated inhumane structure behind a body of text. It is not art because it evokes no emotion, it jus serves the purpose of presentation. We are creating frames, moving around frames, changing the colors of frames, and this disconnection to my work exhaust me.

I was so obsessed with art history because we studied the social connections these artists created whether as a reaction or a call to stand. With graphic design, I am creating nothing but a means to propagate the information given to me either by a client, teacher, or organization. I have no say! I have no voice! And it angers me!

So then, as my ex says, be an artist.

Like it’s that easy.

I have this view in my mind of art as a hobby, not a career. I thought I could sneak it into making it a career through graphic design but I’m failing miserable and its fuckin up my soul. As discussed in the symposium today, I was one of those kids who was never exposed to any type of art career as a child. This is not a complaint or an excuse. It is what it is. If you never met a doctor when you were little, it’s probably really hard to image your life as a doctor. If the only lawyer you’d ever heard of growing up was Johnny Cochran, you would probably have a hard time seeing yourself in a courtroom. If the only book on art you had in your house was Van Gogh, its hard to imagine yourself cutting your ear off after spending a day consumed in your latest crazy painting fury.

I’m confused. There’s so much I want to talk about with my art work, so much I’ve been working on. I am upset about the polarization of the social classes I am constantly challenged by, I hate America’s failure to LIVE and their dependency on simply surviving from day to day, and the false sense of “blackness” we as a race have tried to depend on without fully observing and embracing our entire roots, including European.

This may make no sense, but to me it does and I’m gonna work it out. Shiiit.

Castles Made of Sand Fall in the Sea Eventually

Im in this state of limbo right now. What should men be used for?

There was this guy in my life thats always been there, for the worse. We always have one like that don’t we? That one that made us upset, question ourselves, question who we are and what we want to be. Question what a relationship is, what love is, what heart break is. We need that one to learn. We will call him Marc–no I love Marcs. Frank, we’ll call him Frank.

Well mines been in my life too long. We went passed the expiration point, his feelings sizzled, then mine slowly went out, then we tried to be friends. But we slowly realize we were never friends to begin with. And Frank slowly, painfully reveals himself to who he always was, the epitome of what I avoid.

I’m not saying this to be spiteful, even though he took it that way. I still care about him, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried to tell him about mistakes I think he’s making. But he has the syndrome. The ‘I know all syndrome’ that makes me fight my teacher, my friends boyfriend, and all the other men who fail to just STOP and listen.

So heres what this post is really about. I have this one friend, this male friend we’ll call Mike–no I hate most Mikes–Jordan, we will call him Jordan, Jordans are usually sweet–who surprisingly listens. I came to the the conclusion that my episodes with Frank had made me feel all men are simply mindless objects useful for only one thing for one night and a conversation simply cannot be beneficial, a relationship just annoying. But Jordans remember these random things only girlfriends remember. Don’t worry Jordan I will never fall for you again, I’m in love with this platonic relationship far too much.