Thoughts about art and community.
Guest post by Mrs. Velma Benson-Wilson of Jackson, Tennessee and Marks, Mississippi. Mrs. Benson-Wilson wrote this autobiographical essay in response to a 2013 visit back to her hometown of Marks, Mississippi. Author of What’s in the Water: Fannie, a Legacy of Love, Mrs. Benson-Wilson is currently the Director of the Quitman County Tourism and Economic Development, and was instrumental in the 50th Anniversary of Marks’ Mule Train and Poor People’s Campaign in 2018.
Read MoreIf you live in the Driftless region of the Midwest, you hopefully know about Inspire(d) Media, a magazine I have been a fan of for years for obvious reasons.
I was real, real excited to be included both as the cover artist for their Summer 2024 issue and in a feature article inside.
Read MoreThe gradual evolution of A Beauty We Didn’t Expect, acrylic and tempera on wood panel, 36” x 48”, 2021.
The later stages, the slower the progress. It took me several minutes to detect the differences between images eight and nine. (They’re there, I promise.)
Read MoreThis Charlie-Brown-looking-tree is What’s Good Today on my street. Read on.
Read MorePainting is hard - particularly at the end of the process. Two steps forward, nine steps back. A great deal more time staring at the easel than actively painting.
Read MoreBeing a Mississippian, I was raised among and around the best of the best storytellers, and didn’t appreciate it until I left. Looking back, my brother and I probably should have followed both our parents around with tape recorders to capture their offhanded bits and pieces.
So I made an informal poll and asked fellow ‘Sippians about the weird stuff we say. Their replies are below. I’ll try my best to translate for the rest of y’all. Here goes.
Read MoreI heart road trips times infinity. In the summer of ‘98, nineteen-year-old me drove from Mississippi to southwest Virginia. Hopping in a car for a dozen hours has been an impulse ever since. With road trips on my brain, I tapped my online community to see what sage wisdom they had. Gather round, folks.
Read MoreA big part of The What’s Good Project involves traveling around to different communities and convincing folks - many of whom have never met or heard of me - to tell me stories about inspiring aspects of where they live.
My mother is a journalist. My father is a trial lawyer. I majored in cultural anthropology. I’m also a Southerner. I come by asking strangers personal questions pretty naturally.
Read MoreI am cheap. I come from a long line of proud cheapskates. My mother had us bring home Ziploc bags from our lunchboxes so she could wash and reuse them. I am incapable of throwing cardboard boxes away and I make my own damn chicken broth. I try to trick myself into believing I’m some kind of misplaced pioneer or a diehard environmentalist, but really, I am cheap. So no surprise that when I absolutely must frame something, you better believe I am going to find a “vintage” option. Here’s a list of tips that I use to find perfectly good frames to upcycle.
Read MoreTrue confession: It took me 34 years to call myself an artist. I’m embarrassed to say that I associated that label with a whole mess of bad connotations that I mistakenly bought into and wanted to avoid. I also had major imposter syndrome, and being told by a former professor that I didn’t have any talent really didn’t help matters.
Read MoreCreatively, I've been mulling over patterns. Literal and physical patterns in our environment, such as architecture, wallpaper, row crops, as well as cultural patterns. How single motifs or behaviors add up in meaningful ways over the course of a lifetime of a person or a landscape or a community. How we repeat the same societal patterns over and over and over until they become calcified habits in our communities, no matter the cost or damage.
And how change happens in spite of all that.
(You know. Breezy stuff.)
Here's how that's starting to show up on the easel.
Read MoreIf I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that in the last 12 months, I could probably take a pretty nice weekend somewhere. It’s one of those questions that I never have a decent and coherent answer to, and in the spirit of self-betterment, I thought it was time to hold myself accountable.
All of the following are true. Some are true more days than others.
Read MoreI don’t know how to knit. That is significant for two reasons. First, as a community art specialists and an academic, I’m supposed to know how to do things. Second, and more surprisingly, in 2016, I organized Intertwine, a project involving 125 makers from across the country to yarn bomb ISU Design on Main, a storefront in downtown Ames that was a former satellite studio facility for Iowa State University’s College of Design and included a community gallery space.
Read More“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.” - Catherine Aird
Last week, I warned that I’d be sharing a laundry list of what I learned by participating in Iowa Pop Art, my very first pop-up-art-festival-type experience.
Without further ado….
A few weeks back, Paige Kappelman, Story County Conservation’s Outreach Assistant, reached out to me (did her job like a boss) for an informal interview after she saw some of my paintings of McFarland Park on Instagram. Naturally, I said yes and we invited Kyle Renell to join the party. Kyle’s not only my good friend and a terrific Ames-based artist, but she also was the person I interviewed for The What’s Good Project here in Ames. In other words, Kyle’s the reason I painted McFarland Park.
Read MoreIn 2007, I moved to Ames from Greenville, North Carolina. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t fall in love with Ames until 2012, when I met my husband, Aaron. PA (Pre-Aaron), I was more of a complainer (still one of my big flaws) and found fault with Ames like some people find buried treasure.
Read MoreGot 85 minutes to spare? Listen to me talking shop with friend and fellow artist, Earle Rock. I was delighted to be asked by Earle to participate in this artist interview series. We cover the gamut from my weirdo early life experiences, to painting practices, to the business of art, to asset-based community development.
Read MoreGuest post by Mrs. Velma Benson-Wilson of Jackson, Tennessee and Marks, Mississippi. Mrs. Benson-Wilson wrote this autobiographical essay in response to a 2013 visit back to her hometown of Marks, Mississippi. Author of What’s in the Water: Fannie, a Legacy of Love, Mrs. Benson-Wilson is currently the Director of the Quitman County Tourism and Economic Development, and was instrumental in the 50th Anniversary of Marks’ Mule Train and Poor People’s Campaign in 2018.
Read MoreIt’s present day and a child on a field trip walks into a gift store on Pennsylvania Avenue. Immediately, she confronts a wellspring of memorabilia adorned with the president’s name in bold letters and the year “2024” beside it. She is puzzled by the significance of the year. But … it’s only 2020? Bright-red hats embroidered with a popular slogan tower high. Bobbleheads depicting our nation’s leader, with emblematic wavy hair and carrot skin, sit in a row ten figurines deep.
Read MoreThe What’s Good Project has grown so much in 2020, thanks to your support. Thank you. I am beyond grateful.
Because of you, we’ve been able to support these organizations that are doing really great work in Mississippi, Michigan, and Iowa…
