Aaaahhhh I feel so full and powerful and so confident and I am radiating love and naturally people latch on to that... But I’m finding that in addition to attracting people who are equally as full and radiant, I am attracting people who are missing something and then looking to me to fill them and provide what they can’t find within themselves. I’ve spent so much of my life being really unkind as a defense mechanism to keep people out, and I feel like now I am on the other end of the spectrum... Inviting too many people into my space, trying to love to everybody, and people are misinterpreting my intentions and attaching themselves to my energy because they haven’t felt authenticity like that before. Where is the balance?
“Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.”
Thanks to Rachel Dolezal actual mixed race Black people out here have to pull out birth certificates, high school yearbook photos, witness accounts, and documented journal entries just to keep from being excluded from their own community. That’s one of the many reasons why I said that what that woman did would have serious consequences for all of us who *are* Black.
Looking at the painting above, it’s easy to imagine the artist spent days, weeks maybe, observing the rain forest to get the details right. Off to the right, a large bird perches on a branch. Turtles and fish swim in the river. Several species of trees reach upward, vying for light through the forest canopy.
The artist painted it all by memory.
These paintings by Abel Rodriguez are on display at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C., as part of the Waterweavers exhibition, a celebration of Colombian culture. And his work has captured the attention of art dealers and curators, both in Colombia and here in the U.S.
Adriana Ospina, the collections curator, tells Rodriguez’s story as she leads me through the exhibition. He’s a member of the Nonuya indigenous people, from the Caqueta River region of Colombia, close to the rain forest, who have been farmers for centuries. “His role in the community is to know the plants,” she says. “He’s like a teacher.” Rodriguez’s knowledge, she says, comes from a combination of observation and wisdom passed down from generation to generation.
A Self-Taught Artist Paints The Rain Forest By Memory
Top photo: This is one of 12 rain forest landscapes by Abel Rodriguez, part of his ink-and-watercolor series Ciclo anual del bosque de la vega (Seasonal changes in the flooded rain forest). Credit: Abel Rodriguez/Courtesy of Tropenbos International, Colombia
Bottom photo: Abel Rodriguez showed off his basket-weaving skills at the 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Credit: Courtesy of Victoria Pickering/Flickr
being shy and having resting bitch face is the worst combination because i look like a disinterested bitch but in reality i really want to socialize but i just dont know how to initiate conversation with strangers and also this is just my face
24-year-old Sarah Lee Circle Bear ... alive The ugly American secret has been exposed. All across the country, women and men are dying in police custody and have been by the thousands every year. ...
WED JUL 29, 2015 AT 06:09 AM PDT by Shaun King
The ugly American secret has been exposed. All across the country, women and men are dying in police custody and have been by the thousands every year.
Four days before Sandra Bland was arrested in Waller County, Texas, a 24-year-old American Indian woman of the Lakota tribe, Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota, was arrested on a simple bond violation.
Witnesses stated that before being transferred to a holding cell, Circle Bear pleaded to jailers that she was in excruciating pain. Jail staff responded by dismissing her cries for help, telling her to “knock it off,” and “quit faking.” Inmates cried out for the jail staff to help Circle Bear, to which they eventually responded by picking her up off of the floor, dragging her out of the cell, and transferring her to a holding cell. Circle Bear was later found unresponsive in the holding cell.
This is completely despicable. It’s worse than that—the actions (or inaction) of the jail directly caused Sarah’s death. The American justice system is full of so many egregious human rights violations that it truly needs to be shut down and rebooted from scratch.
Sarah was a mother of two babies. The entire trajectory and quality of their lives will be forever changed by this. Ralkina Jones, another beloved mother of young children, died in police custody in Cleveland under very similar circumstances.
What we now know is that American Indians, relative to their size of the population, actually make up three of the five most likely demographics to be killed by police in America. In other words, while many of us think of the deep injustices faced by our indigenous sisters and brothers as historic, they are actually very present and current.
As we have done for Sandra Bland, we must now demand answers and evidence in the death of Sarah Lee Circle Bear.
“You Look Like Something Blooming” A charged, potent, highly transformative book of charms by India Ame’ye–Available on Amazon (Don’t miss out on the 2nd edition) xooooh, India
Father Figure: Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood
By photographer Zun Lee
http://www.zunlee.com/
https://twitter.com/zunleephoto
https://instagram.com/zunleephoto/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rogueinterventionist
https://www.facebook.com/zunleephoto?_rdr=p
Support this project and Zun Lee:
http://www.ceibafoto.com/goodies/father-figure-the-book/
Acquire prints at [email protected]
