The Generosity of Artists is Powerful

I wanted to personally thank Eric Laffrogue and many artists I contact about using their images or highlighting their art.  And I want all the readers of the Rabbit Moon Studio Blog to know every effort is made to contact artists, if possible, when their images are used or they are honored in with a post.

Photography by Eric Laffrogue ,  permission of the artist for sharing  given

  Our effort here is art advocacy and art education.  I share my art with you and my processes and other art to help everyone gain an insight into the mind of an artists, to feel as if you are with us step by step.  I also want you to understand not all art is beautiful, realistic, or meant to be.  

Eric Laffrogue, Ethiopia 

Art has many purposes, and this is a journey to help everyone see and understand that very fact.  You can love classical music and not see the value of improvisational jazz or other forms of music. Whether you like jazz, classical or another form of music, the point is they all have value and I see it as part of my journey as an art educator to help everyone understand that.  

Again it is because of people like Eric Laffrogue and so many other generous artists I can share their work with you.
  
If you want to delve deeper into African politics may I  recommend a standard text written by my brother and sister in law,  Don and April Gordon  Understanding Contemporary Africa.

The Awesome Photography of Eric Lafforgue

When looking for ideas for my assemblage I notice one by line over and over on the best photos and it was Eric Laffrogue.

 His photography is stunning and he is a traveler visiting indigenous cultures and photographing these peoples before the disappear from this Earth or learn to shop at Target. 

So I wanted to share Eric's work with you and thought we should do him the honor of giving him his own post.  If you are as taken with his photos as I am, you can order prints of his photography on his website, click here for link.

Please visit Eric's site and tell him Rabbits Moon Studio sent you.  And if you love Africa and indigenous people then order one of these stunning photo's.  I am still in awe of how he gets these shots and expressions on peoples faces.

More on Eric's work from the Mail online.

WHERE DO ARTIST IDEAS COME FROM?

I wanted to share more of my thinking process with you for my new assemblage and most of this is visual.  My mind is like a magnet now attracting and storing the ideas I need.  Some just hit me in the gut and feel right and others intrigue my interest.  There is a wonderful blog/website out of Paris by a London young woman that is really informative and fun.  It is called Messy Nessy Chic.    She seems to find the most interesting, funky, odd, quirky yet totally cool things to peak ones interest and write about.  I believe I found the site originally on Facebook, but it may have been elsewhere.  This last post was fascinating to me for many reasons.  Firstly, I saw something that peaked my interest for my assemblage and secondly how art used to be so totally embed in a culture that is was not assigned a separate place and called art…it was part of everything and so intwined it could not be cut away.

Many early cultures lived their art.  In cultures that are still intact today we still can see that evidence of art that is lived.  This series of photos and text source comes from Messy Nessy Chic. 

The braids are called Eembuvi braids and they are worn by the women of the Mbalantu tribes from Namibia.  At 12 years old the girls start the preparation using ground bark and oils. 

African men with leg designs  photo by Eric Lafforgue  

Below are the painted leg designs of the Bashada warriors.

It is these photo below that caught my interest for my assemblage.  I had in mind a blend of tribal and modern…and this brings it together in found objects, making use of the refuse and thrown away, finding something precious in worn objects that have had a life before.  This young Dassenach woman is wearing a wig made up of cola and beer caps she has gathered.  Beads, watch bands and other metal finding seemed to have been added also.

Dassenach Tribal Girl with coca and beer cap wig, and other added items
from google image …..photo by Eric Lafforgue

from gouge for education only

In this photo of an elder Dassenach tribal member old watches seemed to make up the treasured parts of his wig and bottle caps.  I rather like the feather on the chin also. Nice touch.
And the one below of the little boy is so charming.  I love the little seed pod or objects in the bottle caps. They could be wooden beads as well, I can tell.  The added burlap top and wooden objects ads another texture and high relief to the wig.  My mind is now building up a mini library of ideas to incorporate in my work.  So far now this is what is leading me and gathering me in towards a working plan.  But I must leave my mind open for other possibilities as they come.  For I need to explore American Indian designs and ideas as well as South American and other cultures.  And then this idea of a video loop keeps coming to mind…how will I incorporate a repeated video image into the assemblage and what would be on that image?  Something is drawing me to consider that and to research it.