words and photos by Shelby A Oates for SAO Writes
additional photos by Jahannes
DTM empowered another week where personal tracks were laid leading to several various stations of writing, photography, pedagogy and that art life thriving within deserving community. Taking pause to absorb the message, the concept of Panel 4, I arrived again at WonderRoot open to understanding Art and Activism.
Host & Curator: DTM, Delta Tango Mike, DandacreativeGenius Flores
Panel:
Host
DTM & Art is King
DTM:
Illustrator Graphic Design Painter Tattooist Deltatangomike.com
Art is King:
Non-Profit Artists’ Education, Community, Coaching Connections
artisking.org
Panel
Jennifer Lobsenz
WonderRoot Program Manager Photographer
Previously with Pace/MacGill Gallery, NY & Newspace Center for Photography, Portland
“Art is the most important tool used to unite the community.”
http://www.wonderroot.org/about/staff/
C Flux Sing
Visual Artist, painter, illustrator, Fine Art Graphic Design Print Media Branding
http://cfluxsing.com/
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
Graphic Artist Print Design Illustrator
Heavily inspired by music and is one of the architects of The Dungeon Family with projects including ,but not limited to creating The Dungeon Family logo.
www.mistersoul216.com
Amond Jackson
Originally from Massachusetts. Organizer, Distributor & Connector Studio Designer, Salem Psalms
14-year dancer turned producer & engineer.
Foundation included building a functional musicians guild in HS
WHY INVOLVE THE COMMUNITY?
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
I was born black & realized at 13 or 14 that the society didn’t want black men, so I awakened to the fraud resulting from the miseducation with school doctrine.
Graffiti was important as a youth and became the medium to “voice the voiceless” inspired by political graffiti pieces of the 70’s and 80’s.
Art is a tool to break down barriers, the barriers present when the global fraud on humanity are realized, a tool to combat what feeds us via propaganda.
Simply put, use art to understand why.
Amond Jackson
Artists are very emotional and can relate to withdrawing because we don’t take the easy road. This is a difficult life, but we remain so in touch that we “fix what is wrong” as creatives.
C Flux Sing
I grew up and still find myself struggling with, “Why can’t life be fair?”
Injustice & unfairness cause misunderstandings that can lead to violent results and growing up as a black man, injustice was prevalent.
Art is my way to express, to share perspective, to open communication and exhibit possibilities.
Art has helped me to build tolerance to misunderstanding.
Jennifer Lobsenz
With my personal experience as an Asian female and the child of an interracial couple, I felt ignored; I felt race.
I identified with the oppressed and felt as if I didn’t see myself. I began fighting angrily against the silencing of people.
Community needs art to effect social change and artists can tilt the lens in essence of intimate love.
I feel a need to bring artists to promote more equality.
DOES ART HELP SPREAD THE MESSAGE? IE?
C Flux Sing
Art is easier because it’s not so aggressive, it helps present without offensive tone or argument. It’s up to you how you receive it—especially with music in dealing with vibrations or colors with visual art.
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
Flux’s example of our collective installation is the perfect example of how art can spread the message for more than one person, more than one artist at a time as the piece mentioned above was personally completed related to Chicago’s statistics holding such incredibly high numbers of kids being killed and I see it our responsibility to protect them. So “Heaven Can Wait” was my way to inform that it most definitely can wait for all of these innocents being killed while Flux saw it as a collective of all beliefs and perspectives that could accept our vision of “Heaven” so that any person could relate.
Jennifer Lobsenz
I concur that art is less aggressive as “it’s the putting of something on the table and you can figure out how and if to pick it up”.
Amond Jackson
Art spreads the message so effectively that the art without the message is knowing that “music without the art is empty”.
The message of art became apparent personally when realizing the impact of losing artists. “When the center of a community disappears, you can tell” like when we lost Dilla and when we lost Jax.
So, it leaves me asking how can we create something to leave the children?
HOW DO YOU PICK THE MESSAGE OR DOES IT PICK YOU? HOW DO YOU PICK YOUR COLLABORATORS?
Jennifer Lobsenz
Mostly, the message picks you and then you choose where to take the message.
Amond Jackson
I don’t typically choose a “thing”, it just happens. It will “needle you” until you begin to express and create.
In reference to collaboration, “If you’re living in the energy you’re supposed to be living in, it will just happen”.
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
I believe that both occur per inspiration or specific political or belief statements.
C Flux Sing
Collaboration must rest on a genuine perspective.
In reflection of helping my husband to believe in his journey, in support of learning to manage his visual arts career and my artistic goals and community cadence, Art is King has lined up every hand I could ever want to take to help guide me to myself in the best reflection of concept so that society is changed, so that community is collected and so that seeds are planted to grow youth within the light of expression and creation. As a thoughtful creative, much more introverted than most understand, the last four weeks of panels have helped my hustle to find fortitude, my focus to sharpen while at the same time becoming all-inclusive of everything I know I can accomplish. The last four weeks have shown me that art is a weapon used to combat blockades that would otherwise keep us uninformed, out of tune, malnourished, segregated and silent. We are here to combat the gray scale and just like COREYOgraffi’s Doodlebug, we WILL ‘paint the world’!
Closing thought until we can meet again—moral, lesson, empowerment, proverb, call it what you will, but I will quote it as a ‘Salem Psalm’ provided by Amond Jackson because I couldn’t have said it better myself,
"Whether or not we carry guns to the front of the revolution,
artists fight.”
I’m not here just to listen. I’m enlisting for the front lines of this art life and I will activate the cadence to effect change and respect that
Art is King.
LET’S FIGHT! ART. ACTIVISM.
additional photos by Jahannes
DTM empowered another week where personal tracks were laid leading to several various stations of writing, photography, pedagogy and that art life thriving within deserving community. Taking pause to absorb the message, the concept of Panel 4, I arrived again at WonderRoot open to understanding Art and Activism.
Host & Curator: DTM, Delta Tango Mike, DandacreativeGenius Flores
Panel:
Host
DTM & Art is King
DTM:
Illustrator Graphic Design Painter Tattooist Deltatangomike.com
Art is King:
Non-Profit Artists’ Education, Community, Coaching Connections
artisking.org
Panel
Jennifer Lobsenz
WonderRoot Program Manager Photographer
Previously with Pace/MacGill Gallery, NY & Newspace Center for Photography, Portland
“Art is the most important tool used to unite the community.”
http://www.wonderroot.org/about/staff/
C Flux Sing
Visual Artist, painter, illustrator, Fine Art Graphic Design Print Media Branding
http://cfluxsing.com/
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
Graphic Artist Print Design Illustrator
Heavily inspired by music and is one of the architects of The Dungeon Family with projects including ,but not limited to creating The Dungeon Family logo.
www.mistersoul216.com
Amond Jackson
Originally from Massachusetts. Organizer, Distributor & Connector Studio Designer, Salem Psalms
14-year dancer turned producer & engineer.
Foundation included building a functional musicians guild in HS
WHY INVOLVE THE COMMUNITY?
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
I was born black & realized at 13 or 14 that the society didn’t want black men, so I awakened to the fraud resulting from the miseducation with school doctrine.
Graffiti was important as a youth and became the medium to “voice the voiceless” inspired by political graffiti pieces of the 70’s and 80’s.
Art is a tool to break down barriers, the barriers present when the global fraud on humanity are realized, a tool to combat what feeds us via propaganda.
Simply put, use art to understand why.
Amond Jackson
Artists are very emotional and can relate to withdrawing because we don’t take the easy road. This is a difficult life, but we remain so in touch that we “fix what is wrong” as creatives.
C Flux Sing
I grew up and still find myself struggling with, “Why can’t life be fair?”
Injustice & unfairness cause misunderstandings that can lead to violent results and growing up as a black man, injustice was prevalent.
Art is my way to express, to share perspective, to open communication and exhibit possibilities.
Art has helped me to build tolerance to misunderstanding.
Jennifer Lobsenz
With my personal experience as an Asian female and the child of an interracial couple, I felt ignored; I felt race.
I identified with the oppressed and felt as if I didn’t see myself. I began fighting angrily against the silencing of people.
Community needs art to effect social change and artists can tilt the lens in essence of intimate love.
I feel a need to bring artists to promote more equality.
DOES ART HELP SPREAD THE MESSAGE? IE?
C Flux Sing
Art is easier because it’s not so aggressive, it helps present without offensive tone or argument. It’s up to you how you receive it—especially with music in dealing with vibrations or colors with visual art.
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
Flux’s example of our collective installation is the perfect example of how art can spread the message for more than one person, more than one artist at a time as the piece mentioned above was personally completed related to Chicago’s statistics holding such incredibly high numbers of kids being killed and I see it our responsibility to protect them. So “Heaven Can Wait” was my way to inform that it most definitely can wait for all of these innocents being killed while Flux saw it as a collective of all beliefs and perspectives that could accept our vision of “Heaven” so that any person could relate.
Jennifer Lobsenz
I concur that art is less aggressive as “it’s the putting of something on the table and you can figure out how and if to pick it up”.
Amond Jackson
Art spreads the message so effectively that the art without the message is knowing that “music without the art is empty”.
The message of art became apparent personally when realizing the impact of losing artists. “When the center of a community disappears, you can tell” like when we lost Dilla and when we lost Jax.
So, it leaves me asking how can we create something to leave the children?
HOW DO YOU PICK THE MESSAGE OR DOES IT PICK YOU? HOW DO YOU PICK YOUR COLLABORATORS?
Jennifer Lobsenz
Mostly, the message picks you and then you choose where to take the message.
Amond Jackson
I don’t typically choose a “thing”, it just happens. It will “needle you” until you begin to express and create.
In reference to collaboration, “If you’re living in the energy you’re supposed to be living in, it will just happen”.
Kevin mistersoul216 Harp
I believe that both occur per inspiration or specific political or belief statements.
C Flux Sing
Collaboration must rest on a genuine perspective.
In reflection of helping my husband to believe in his journey, in support of learning to manage his visual arts career and my artistic goals and community cadence, Art is King has lined up every hand I could ever want to take to help guide me to myself in the best reflection of concept so that society is changed, so that community is collected and so that seeds are planted to grow youth within the light of expression and creation. As a thoughtful creative, much more introverted than most understand, the last four weeks of panels have helped my hustle to find fortitude, my focus to sharpen while at the same time becoming all-inclusive of everything I know I can accomplish. The last four weeks have shown me that art is a weapon used to combat blockades that would otherwise keep us uninformed, out of tune, malnourished, segregated and silent. We are here to combat the gray scale and just like COREYOgraffi’s Doodlebug, we WILL ‘paint the world’!
Closing thought until we can meet again—moral, lesson, empowerment, proverb, call it what you will, but I will quote it as a ‘Salem Psalm’ provided by Amond Jackson because I couldn’t have said it better myself,
"Whether or not we carry guns to the front of the revolution,
artists fight.”
I’m not here just to listen. I’m enlisting for the front lines of this art life and I will activate the cadence to effect change and respect that
Art is King.
LET’S FIGHT! ART. ACTIVISM.
Photos by Shelby A Oates
Photos by Jahannes
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