blueberries galore

My best friend Isabelle is here for the summer and its so so good. Heres some photos from our evening of blueberry picking. I like the way her hair is the same color as the blueberries.
old jam new mix:   Feist - I Feel It All (Britt From Spoon Remix) by soyabean

Roll Call Y'all

All of this summer heat is reminding me of my favorite summer movies. Especially Do the Right Thing, one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a classic Spike Lee Joint! What better way to honor this heat than a movie that centers around the hottest day in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. Below is a clip from the movie, one of my favorite scenes. When Samuel L Jackson the DJ for WLUV radio does a roll call of the influential African American musicians from different time periods. I love this scene because it's shows history. I remember at a Akwaaba ( meaning welcome in Ashanti a language from Ghana) dinner we would have at Drew. Professor Addo would take a moment before we ate to have students, professors, anyone shout out names of people they wanted to be remembered. He said this was often done in Ghana to remember and show respect to your ancestors and those who came before you. Which is shown in this video. My Pan African Studies degree is really showing itself here, but I love thinking about the African diaspora. Enjoy, but really see the whole movie if you haven't already!

Cut and Paste

I used to love doing collages when I was younger. I was inspired to start doing collages again after seeing Maya Villagers on her blog Turned Out. It's hard to see the whole collage because my scanner isn't wide enough. Most of the photos are from a recent issue of W magazine. Also great news I found out today that my photo and story on New York State Governor Cuomo signing the Distracted Drivers Law made the front page of the paper! Check it out here.

fun summer jam:   Body Language - Social Studies (Plastic Plates Remix) by PLASTiC PLATES

heat

via nasty gal

I love the peak of summer. I feel like it's about that time right now. When heat is unbearable during the day but the evenings are perfect temperature of humid yet cool. I wish I could go out and do graffiti art. Music from Mixtape///Mountain a drew collaboration, that is pretty fantastic.

Teen Daze- Splendid Isolation Mixtape by MixtapeMountain

ARVYBURN

Also here are some photos from my afrikaburn/burning man themed party from this past saturday. It was a huge success! Tons of food, flower crown making, body painting and tepee chillin! My friend Campbell aka Funner Future (he does the best rendition of Rebecca Black's Friday) performed making the party a stop on his tour! Along with DJ Ronnie Whaley who caused the epic rave in my backyard, electronic beatz so loud they echoed down the Housatonic River. AND I had a parade, because parades are awesome! Photos below :)

 

photos by Arvolyn Hill and whoever else got their hands on my camera saturday

tepee love

So for the past three weeks I have been preparing for my Afrikaburn/burning man themed graduation party.  In honor of burning man I had to build something and after seeing this DIY tepee on Honestly..WTF the seed was planted in my head. From that point on I was determined to build my own tepee. It was easier than I expected but still a lot of work building a 13 foot tepee. Since I couldn't afford canvas I built the tepee cover completely of scrap fabric: jeans, table cloth, my old Star Wars sheets, red velvet, dresses, and more! My dad and I went into the forest and cut down trees that soon became tepee poles. Then two hours of labor setting up the tepee with family the morning of my party and it was done! Here are some photos of the process of the tepee construction.

photo by Arvolyn Hill

Isn't it great! I am not gonna burn it through, which would be true burning man style if I did. I prefer to have it as my new summer chill spot. Also below was my inspiration for my homemade tepee.

Gee's Bend Quilts:
Gee's Bend is a poor tenant community in Alabama. Located on the edge of the Black Belt in Wilcox County, enclosed by three sides on the Alabama River. Many slaves who worked on the plantation in Gee's Bend never left the area and stayed in the isolated community. Gee's Bend has received world wide attention for their infamous quilts created by the women in the community. The quilts have been shown in exhibits in the Whitney Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia is where I saw their work and fell in love with the history of Gee's Bend and the quilts. For a college creative writing class I wrote a story that I made up about a girl who was from Gee's Bend and moved to DC, thats how obsessed I am with these quilts. Also my Uncle Vaughn makes quilts very similar to these  even more extreme that I grew up with on my bed. So maybe its just fate that I made a Gee's Bend inspired tepee.

photos from google

Of coarse the Native American tepees themselves were fascinating to me. I felt like having your own tepee would be like the ultimate fort. Yes I just graduated from college, and still love forts! I live across the river from the Schaghticoke reservation, and though its so close, the town and reservation are isolated from one another. I think a lot of Native American history has been static in how we remember it and there are gaps between the way it was in the photos below and today. Regardless I love these old photos of tepees because its a side of American history that is gone.

photos from google