Discover Top Posts Tagged with #jkstewart

PUTTING IN THE WORK (GRAFFITI WORKSHOP)

Subcultures have always fascinated me. Sometimes I stand on the periphery and dare not cross the borders. Like circuses or carnivals. I often satisfy myself with looking at those who work in these traveling caravans but seldom do I ask to visit the trailers behind them.

Yet this is not the case with tattoo artistry, musicians, graffiti and hip hop. While hip hop is more akin to my own internal social upbringing, it too often has borders that transcend what I know from what I assume. The various facets that compose HIP HOP (namely graffiti and rap) have grown exponentially beyond my limited comprehension of meaning and tastes. Yet wherever I go I seem to be able to break some of its meanings down for others.

As I prepare for an upcoming workshop on GRAFFITI (something I know more about from being up close and personal to so many writers yet have never sprayed a wall let alone held a can) I have marveled and photographed walls from Atlanta to Orlando. I also managed to penetrate the graffiti scene in Orlando and became trusted to not disclose some writers I have met. Nonetheless, Below you will see some of the books I hold and consult for this upcoming workshop. Graffiti aint graffiti alone. When it emerged as an outgrowth of a determined angst among inner city youths,it opened and formed fissures in communication art. It now has morphed into a world phenomenon to include STREET ART. Thus what I hope to accomplish in my workshop is do justice to its history

JKSTEWART

#finland #pop culture #graffiti #photography #jkstewart

America (the not so beautiful)

KEVIN STEWART·WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2016 I wonder how the vast American landscape is holding up? I have travel across America from Atlanta to Los Angeles and from Atlanta to Boston, Massachusetts. Once I drove from Atlanta to Chicago to participate in an outdoor art festival. The cites are impressive as we ride upon skylines. From our vast stretches of highways we can marvel at mankind's accomplishments, Ironically, the U.S. highway system is based in part on Hitler's Germany. During the height of the Nazi regime's designers not only fabricated a way to rid Germany of Jews, They created a highway system that moved their arsenals with speed. Check your history, Dwight D. Eisenhower returned from the European theater having marveled at Germany's ingenuity at making the entire landscape dedicated to war. Germany gave us our interstate system while America gave Germany Eugenics. It seems Germans and wealthy Anglo-Saxons have a shared sensibility when it comes to war and eliminating undesirables in mankind's bloodline. One sometimes can hear a problematic adage that war helps cleanse a nation. "God Bless American...land that I love"...From sea to shining sea the songs go. Recently America went to war in the Middle East (for the third time in my life time) Each time the grey hairs on my head stood up. Not to chime in at ball games and large gatherings when we stand and salute then scream for victory; no, my hairs rise due to the fear I felt because I did not posses the pleasure many of my fellow Americans have for war. I do not want to place my hand over my heart and often feel lost. In my immediate circles I have come to chime in when colleagues who (like me) abhor Americans feast for war. I call myself a pacifist and it feels odd. I wonder why that is a bad word. Still, while engaging in a conversation where I am more apt to feel my heart is among the unemployed and disenfranchised. In lines seeking assistance we gather to complain, One is apt to hear another start off..., "God Bless America and all others chime in..."AND NO ONE ELSE". I chime this to mock both the notion that if there is a God and he chooses sides why would he choose ours? I mock this because we remain a divided nation of people who have been duped into the belief that by binding ourselves to a common enemy, we prove our cherished myths to be true. That we are a kind loving democratic nation dedicated to spreading democracy for the betterment of mankind. Our current climate of Presidential Politics where the leading contenders speak for the silent majority, demonstrate just how divided we are. During our outgoing President’s terms, the cancer of inequality got a band aid to cover the uninsured. Yet the mindscapes of the wealthy wish to peel off that aid and allow the masses continue to bleed. The landscape of American itself stays fruitful if only for a few. It spurts oil from the ground swells in Texas and its river waters make children sick because of the very contents dumped into them by our stifled economic engines are not worth the dollars to protect them. The mighty Mississippi that I have crossed many a times reminds me of migrations of people who peddled their ways... traveling dirt roads that would later become highways made smooth by Eisenhower's vision they landed in Michigan and Ohio to work in factories now rusted. Shareholders who sing of the “land that I love” shipped out for greener pastures in foreign lands. Yet the brown muddled waters of the Mississippi matches my skin and I know someday my end will be touched by its splendor. I will not sit in their boardrooms. I too will return to that from which I came. The descendants of those who sonjured north have returned to small towns where they are despised still. The topsoil empty into the Gulf of Mexicio and cycle across the ocean. I wonder how this all fits in. As the policies that are sprouted from the mouths born with silver spoons continue to rule, I know I will remain among the fools trying to stop wars and asking to be loved just like others whose skin is lighter than mine; I know but I can’t seem to dismiss my concern for the vast American landscape. How is she doing from sea to shining sea? What will be the legacy left form the United States for other younger nations to follow? And who visit us during war one of our many wars and return to them building highways leading to shining cities where clean drinkable waters flow and they study war "no-mo"!

Kevin Stewart

#jkstewart #politics #essay writing #writing #comment #america #conspiracy

Welcome to Black History Month.

I mentioned the fact that February is Black History Month to a Finn and the Finn asked me, "what does that mean"? It was a fair question. Finns not do not make a big deal over Valentines Day either. But the question stunned me not so much because it was asked but because in trying to answer I had no easy lead in. I stumbled and muddled saying its when my country acknowledges the contributions of African-Americans to The United States. As the words came out my mouth they felt less true with each syllable because I know many do not celebrate the contributions. Many scoff at the very idea of such a time set aside. Yet when I think back over the many years I went to school studying the various migratory patterns of the Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and the Slavs, and the organizations they created for their efforts to establish footholds in the American landscape, I felt justified in urging my Finnish listener to hear our plea through my muddling,

While the Irish began to dominate the rank and file of policing along the east coast, African American's were serving US Army in cavalries as scouts and cooks. No African Americans could lay claim to the Farmstead monies given hundreds of thousands of European Immigrants but freedmen sought to establish schools fin the south. They did this for their fellow men to better themselves. Names like George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee College come to mind. I wish I had told my Finnish friend that while any American can recite the success of robber barons who built the railroads and American capitalism that would connect the continent, Madame C. J. Walker became the first female millionaire off beauty aid products and training. I did not think fast enough because ethic home taught memory does not work as fast as route education.

As I ventured toward college, my education would slowly change to include many of the engineering and tinkering that would have been patented were patents not withheld from African Americans. Yet the accomplishments of these and Doctors lawyers and more have inched their way into our social memories via Black History Month. I hope you do a better job than I did if someone asks you, what is Black History Month. Why not brush up now?

#Black and White #history #writing #essay writing #jkstewart

The Watchmaker’s Dream

The watchmaker's dream

Dawn had hardly broken the seal of the night before when I awoke. The sheets seemed cold and stretching out my arm I felt that indeed she was gone. The time it took was ages ago when I met her and we frolicked spun tales of what we would do and had yet to have a child. Then came one child two and a third, She grew tired and I absurd. My hair became more rough and my touch was less tender. Her food began to taste salty not sweet and the meat was always cold.

We tried to ignore it all while neighbors came to parties thrown. Finger foods and glasses of wine did nothing to console our passage of time. College tuitions and graduate all our children did gain. Yet what remained in the empty nest was memories of our best... gone bye bye and rocking chairs seemed close. I could have repaired the old furnace and kept the warmth coming but I got tired of her complaining. I shut my mind and she closed the door. I heard it shut as i felt the cold. With drawing my arm back to a warmer space underneath the sheets, I wondered who she might meet and I closed my eyes and returned to sleep.

J K Stewart

#poetry #short story #writing #jkstewart