The HighLife

{images | teamartastic}

The very first On Point post on THL was a feature on artist Fish McGill.  He's been doing his thing since then, but most recently is putting on a workshop that essentially asks the question.  What lies beneath?

Robot G.U.T.S.
2/1/10 - 2/3/10 6:00PM-10:00PM
Reception 2/4/10 6:00-10:00PM
Massachusetts College of Art & Design
Brant Gallery - 3rd Floor South Hall
621 Huntington Avenue Boston MA

"You are invited to join the installation & creation of a twelve foot Robot drawing on Monday-Thursday evenings in the Brant gallery in South Hall. Come help work on a giant drawing of a Robot's guts and gears on the a portion of the gallery walls through out the week.

Lessons on creating stencils and how to make wheat paste will be demonstrated on Thursday afternoon in the gallery followed by a Robot Birthday Party reception. Come and answer the age old question, "What is inside a Robot anyway?"; The collaborative drawing project will shine light on this subject. Computers, cell phones, weiner dogs, rocket parts, you name it and it is in there." ... No, seriously, "you name it and it is in there."

  



Sorry
I must apologize
If this pathetic attempt at a story-telling
Spoken word poem don’t rhyme
But
Sometimes metaphors hide behind similes
Leaving me leaning head first pressed against the bark of a tree
Blindfoldedly dreaming of words to describe
Every Nigerians frame of mind
The transformation of broken English into this Canadian disaster of an accent
Accentuated but the exaggerated pronunciation of every word
At the tip of my tongue
Has left me tongue-tied
De-hydratedly dried
Dying inside
Every time I try to tie ten dollars to my debt card
And deposit 9.5 litres of Blood-stained petroleum Gas
Into the gas chamber of my 2002 ford Taurus
You can call me
Komi-haurus
The Nigerian heliographical symbol
Exposing the horrors
The truth before us
Before us came Royal Dutch Shell workers in luxurious buses
Not bustling through the Niger Delta like a bunch of disoriented tourists
But touring the Ogoni Land in search of Natural resources
They took their drills
And their high-tech tricks of technology
And pumped our ancestors out the ground
This time around
They built refineries to refine ways to pass
Our fore-father through their pipelines
And we are Tired

Tired of constantly contemplating ways to promote peace
In a place where peace is just as hard to find
As a piece of land unaltered and polluted
From oil spillage
Spilling from broken pipelines
From broken promises of reparations
And when we broke those pipelines to liberate the spirits of our forefathers
They said we were trying to sabotage their money making business
They tried to desensitize and silence us
Like putting a silencer on an Uzi
They hung Saro Wiwa by his neck
And while he swung like strange fruit on our TV screens
They tried to muffle up our screams by pouring acid on his body
To make sure he was dead
I Read
In the New York Times
That they settled out of court
For roughly 15.5 million dollars
This is just a fraction of what they make in a day
The day has come for Royal Dutch Shell to pick up her shit technology
Take a shit in the Piss tank and get the fuck out of our system
Cuz we are TIRED!
-Komi Olafimihan {Poetic Speed}

komiolaf.com

Between the idea and the reality.
Between the motion and the act.
Falls the shadow.
- T.S. Eliot

{Lagos}
Perspective.  An artist without perspective is like a writer without content.  The more of it one has the fuller understanding they have of any subject, which in turn allows them to present truth as it is, unadulterated.  Whether it be art, humanity, philosophy, whatever.  This jet-setting London based artist is blessed as such, and it's evident in the scope of his work.  Like he says, "my friend, clear your mind of can't".  If the sum of our lives are in our experiences, his tally is soaring.  Pay close attention to MrMadeofCodes. In other words Tenne Fatona. 


{NYC}

{Tokyo}

{Jerusalem}

{Ghana}

{Lagos}

{Ibiza}

{California}

{somewhere in Africa}




Interplanetarians.com

Man versus the Machine.  Machine versus man.  Where does one end and the other begin.  Who serves what, what serves whom.  Atrophy and Rebirth. Light and Dark.  Finding beauty where the masses don't is where this artist operates.  This is the art of Andre Hester.


SUBmerSIBLE 

An artist with a penchant for attention to detail has a profound way of  producing thought provoking work.  This isn't the first time this artist has been featured on THL (+), but that was only just a preview.  Welcome to the Daniel Szymanowski show.



















dansz.com

Simplicity is simply not that simple.  It's one of the hardest things to acheive in the world; anyone can be complex.  The work of this New England-based North Carolina native, like the artist himself, is unassuming.  On the level it's quite direct, but deeper observation reveals a complexity that's only acheived through a high level of introspection and understanding of aesthetics.  Get to know Heyward Hart.

heywardhart.com