View allAll Photos Tagged VisualArtist
A Glitch "Sosies (σόσια) ~ Ètude V”
This art piece were created for my PhD and based on a Digital and Analog Aesthetic Research on "Artistic Practices, Digital Art in Social Networks and Net Art", some digital techniques used of artistic diversity, such as the re-mixed appropriation of image or video, also work conceived as original data work called creative altered binary code, datamoshing, generative art and glitch art worked in all its forms and expressions; works of art with a strong focus decoding the i-frames of images and videos (also known as key frames and altered or distorted creative binary code) mixed with seductive techniques of Pixelsorting Art; making it seem extremely sensitive and abstract; created exclusively for the virtual gallery on-line.
by ™℗®© Louis M o n t i e l
~ FOLLOW ME & SUBSCRIBE ~
Instagram ~ louismontielt
Facebook ~ Louis Montiel
YouTube ~ Louis M o n t i e l
Vimeo ~ Louis M o n t i e l
#visualartists #glitchart #glitch #glitché #pixelsorting #glitchartistscollective #glitchvideo #datamosh #digitalglitch #videoglitch #hyperspektiv #minimalart #videoart #dfkt #pixelsorter #artistsvisual #glitchartoninstagram #glitchartscollective #glitcharts #glitchartistcommunity #glitchartwork #glitchartisdead #glitchartists #glitchartcommunity #glitchartistcollective #glitchartist #pixelsortingart #proceduralart #creativecodeart #glitchportrait
CICERO-Foyergespräch mit dem Künstler Markus Lüpertz und den CICERO-Redakteuren Christoph Schwennicke und Alexander Marguier;
Nikon D810, 70-200mm f/2,8
On Monday, December 19th, we partnered with Lenovo computers to build out the ultimate art-themed smackdown. Hosted at Villain in Williamsburg, guests stepped into a fully imagined warehouse art party. That night it was all about participation. We created a series of art activities to get guests making art and meeting each other. Guests captured the revelry of the night in Ventikoland’s projection photo booth. After some savory Espolón cocktails and tacos the art battle was ready to begin. 2 amazing artists competed head-to-head in a series of timed challenges and a head-to-head battle of creative awesomeness. Interludes were provided by a pop & lock round girl, battling breakdancers, and a duo of beatboxers.
Event Design by Adam Aleksander Presents
Photography by Lukas Maverick Greyson
On Monday, December 19th, we partnered with Lenovo computers to build out the ultimate art-themed smackdown. Hosted at Villain in Williamsburg, guests stepped into a fully imagined warehouse art party. That night it was all about participation. We created a series of art activities to get guests making art and meeting each other. Guests captured the revelry of the night in Ventikoland’s projection photo booth. After some savory Espolón cocktails and tacos the art battle was ready to begin. 2 amazing artists competed head-to-head in a series of timed challenges and a head-to-head battle of creative awesomeness. Interludes were provided by a pop & lock round girl, battling breakdancers, and a duo of beatboxers.
Event Design by Adam Aleksander Presents
Photography by Lukas Maverick Greyson
A Glitch "Burqa 2.0(برقع) ~ Ètude II“
by ™℗®© Louis M o n t i e l
~ FOLLOW ME & SUBSCRIBE ~
Instagram ~ louismontielt
Facebook ~ Louis Montiel
YouTube ~ Louis M o n t i e l
#visualartists #glitchart #glitch #glitché #pixelsorting #glitchartistscollective #glitchvideo #datamosh #digitalglitch #videoglitch #hyperspektiv #minimalart #videoart #dfkt #pixelsorter #artistsvisual #glitchartoninstagram #glitchartscollective #glitcharts #glitchartistcommunity #glitchartwork #datamoshing #glitchartists #glitchartcommunity #glitchartistcollective #glitchartist #pixelsortingart #proceduralart #creativecodeart #pixelsortingeffect
On Monday, December 19th, we partnered with Lenovo computers to build out the ultimate art-themed smackdown. Hosted at Villain in Williamsburg, guests stepped into a fully imagined warehouse art party. That night it was all about participation. We created a series of art activities to get guests making art and meeting each other. Guests captured the revelry of the night in Ventikoland’s projection photo booth. After some savory Espolón cocktails and tacos the art battle was ready to begin. 2 amazing artists competed head-to-head in a series of timed challenges and a head-to-head battle of creative awesomeness. Interludes were provided by a pop & lock round girl, battling breakdancers, and a duo of beatboxers.
Event Design by Adam Aleksander Presents
Photography by Lukas Maverick Greyson
Cosmic revelations. Flight. Not the kind with peanuts and tray tables. I’m more about the kind where your soul leaves the ground and don’t ever look back. Take over the world!
And that brings me to a trumpet player from Chicago by way of Brooklyn a firestarter named Jaimie Branch.
Yeah, that’s right. Jaimie with an "ie." She wasn’t trying to be clever, she just was. A firebrand with copper lungs and a bell made of thunder. You might not find her on your dad’s jazz records — not yet — but put your ear to the rail, and you’ll hear her coming.
At first Branch studied piano but switched to trumpet and became excited with jazz’s improvisational possibilities. She played like she was building a new language, one phrase at a time, one scream, one whisper. Her horn didn’t just play music. It testified.
She called one of her records "Fly or Die." And yes, she meant it. Now that/those records is without doubt places you’ll never be able to find elsewhere. Take that one track Baba Louie or that other one Take Over the World. Oh me oh my. She flew. High. Loud. Furious. She made music for the folks in the back of the room, the ones who don’t clap unless it hurts a little. A fearless musician never afraid to enter the unknown. Jaimie wasn’t just blowing notes — she was conjuring storms. Political, personal, celestial. She’d throw down with a band like they were sparring partners, and her sound, oh yeeh, her sound had teeth. But there was joy in it too. Dirty, ragged joy. Like a busted trumpet found in a pawn shop that still remembered how to pray.
Jaimie Branch left this world too soon, a pity I never had the chance to see her live, at the age of 39 in 2022 from an accidental drug overdose. But I guess that’s the thing about flight, it don’t need to last forever to be eternal.
So here’s to Jaimie Branch —Trumpeter, composer, singer, conjurer. One hell of a flame that didn't just take the stage she took off.
You can still hear her flying.
ink, watercolor on paper
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
Obra: La Ultima Cena.
Autor: Dan Rosen.
Dirección: Sebastián Blanco Leiss.
Labor: Diseño de Escenografía y Vestuario.
(Junto a Florencia Del Gener).
Teatro: Diagonal. Mar del Plata.
Ganador Premio Estrella de Mar 2009: Mejor obra del Circuito Off.
Teatro: ElKafka Espacio Teatral. Buenos Aires.
Fotos: Mariana Del Gener.
On Monday, December 19th, we partnered with Lenovo computers to build out the ultimate art-themed smackdown. Hosted at Villain in Williamsburg, guests stepped into a fully imagined warehouse art party. That night it was all about participation. We created a series of art activities to get guests making art and meeting each other. Guests captured the revelry of the night in Ventikoland’s projection photo booth. After some savory Espolón cocktails and tacos the art battle was ready to begin. 2 amazing artists competed head-to-head in a series of timed challenges and a head-to-head battle of creative awesomeness. Interludes were provided by a pop & lock round girl, battling breakdancers, and a duo of beatboxers.
Event Design by Adam Aleksander Presents
Photography by Lukas Maverick Greyson
What does Katie see? Katie is my friend Amber's daughter who has Down's syndrome. When Amber and Katie came to visit my studio, Katie seemed to like this piece the best. Out of all of the paintings on display, she choose to stand mere inches away in front of this piece for about ten minutes, silently rocking backing and forth...
A Glitch "Maiko (舞妓) ~ Ètude V”
This art piece were created for my PhD and based on a Digital and Analog Aesthetic Research on "Artistic Practices, Digital Art in Social Networks and Net Art", some digital techniques used of artistic diversity, such as the re-mixed appropriation of image or video, also work conceived as original data work called creative altered binary code, datamoshing, generative art and glitch art worked in all its forms and expressions; works of art with a strong focus decoding the i-frames of images and videos (also known as key frames and altered or distorted creative binary code) mixed with seductive techniques of Pixelsorting Art; making it seem extremely sensitive and abstract; created exclusively for the virtual gallery on-line.
by ™℗®© Louis M o n t i e l
NFT Crypto Digital Art
Marketplace on qurable.co : Buy, Shell & Explore Digital Assets
app.qurable.co/c-louis-montiel
~ FOLLOW ME & SUBSCRIBE ~
Instagram ~ louismontielt
Facebook ~ Louis Montiel
YouTube ~ Louis M o n t i e l
Vimeo ~ Louis M o n t i e l
#visualartists #glitchart #glitch #glitché #pixelsorting #glitchartistscollective #glitchvideo #datamosh #digitalglitch #nfts #hyperspektiv #minimalart #videoart #dfkt #pixelsorter #artistsvisual #nftart #glitchartscollective #glitcharts #nftartist #glitchartwork #glitchartisdead #glitchartists #nftcommunity #nft #glitchartist #pixelsortingart #nftartists #creativecodeart #glitchportrait
Obra: La Ultima Cena.
Autor: Dan Rosen.
Dirección: Sebastián Blanco Leiss.
Labor: Diseño de Escenografía y Vestuario.
(Junto a Florencia Del Gener).
Teatro: Diagonal. Mar del Plata.
Ganador Premio Estrella de Mar 2009: Mejor obra del Circuito Off.
Teatro: ElKafka Espacio Teatral. Buenos Aires.
Temporada 2009.
Fotos: Mariana Del Gener.
Peter D. Gerakaris, "Splinternet/La Fantasia Tondo - Detail," Oil over polymer on canvas, 96 in. diameter (243.8 cm)
Permanent collection of US Dept of State Art in Embassies Program (Libreville, Gabon)
More info at:
Cities. Big ones, small ones, the kind that stay up all night and whisper strange ideas through the alleyways. And if you’re talking about cities that changed music forever sooner or later you’ll meet the fellow we celebrate today named John Cale.
John Cale was born in 1942 in a small mining village called Garnant. Not the sort of place where you expect wild avant-garde sounds drifting through the hills. Coal dust, chapel hymns, and the Welsh language, that’s the air he grew up breathing. But Cale had ears that wandered farther than the valley. He studied classical music and the viola, eventually finding his way across the ocean to New York City in the early 1960s. New York back then was buzzing like a loose amplifier—painters, poets, filmmakers, musicians all knocking on the same strange door.
Before long Cale fell in with a crowd of musical experimenters, including the drone-loving composer La Monte Young. They were stretching notes out so long you could practically hang laundry on them.
And somewhere in that swirl of noise and poetry, Cale crossed paths with a songwriter from Long Island named Lou Reed. Together they started a band called The Velvet Underground.
Most rock bands at the time were singing about holding hands and driving convertibles. The Velvet Underground… well, they were singing about the underside of the city—late-night streets, strange chemicals, lonely apartments where the lights never quite go out. Their 1967 debut record, “The Velvet Underground & Nico”, came wrapped in a banana courtesy of pop-art ringleader Andy Warhol. The music inside had Cale’s viola screeching and droning like subway brakes, pushing rock ’n’ roll somewhere it had never been before. Songs like “Heroin” didn’t behave like songs were supposed to. They rose slow, shook the room, then collapsed in a kind of beautiful wreckage.
Now Cale didn’t stay in the band long. By 1968 he’d drifted off on his own path, and that road led through some pretty wild territory. Sometimes he made delicate, haunted records like “Paris 1919”—full of orchestras and melodies that float like postcards from another century. Other times he produced records for artists like Patti Smith and The Stooges, helping ignite the sparks that would turn into punk rock.
See, John Cale always had one foot in the concert hall and the other in a basement club where the speakers were blown out and the kids were dancing anyway.
Classical discipline, rock ’n’ roll chaos. Two worlds humming the same strange tune. And that’s the thing about cities. They mash people together who might never meet anywhere else. Painters bump into songwriters. Classical musicians crash into garage bands. Suddenly a new sound is born somewhere between the subway and the symphony hall. John Cale was one of those travelers who carried a little bit of both worlds in his coat pocket.
So wherever you are today—big city, small town, or somewhere in between—remember this: Sometimes the most interesting music comes from the places where worlds collide.
watercolor ink on paper
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
CRISIS DEL CUARTO DE VIDA (Parte 2 - Pretensiones)
"Da pena verme vivir oculto detrás de mi cara. Decidir vivir es bello, estar obligado a vivir no".
"It's so sad to see me living hidden behind my face. Deciding to live is beautiful. Being forced to live is not"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDlhCmvi0og
"Crisis del cuarto de vida" Es una serie de vídeos experimentales. "Pretensiones" es la segunda parte de esta serie.
"Quarter-life crisis" is an experimental video series. "Pretence" is the second video of the series.
Parte 1/1st part: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ON9VtHpxQQ
Facebook page:
PESO PLUMA HAS ENTERED HIS OWN ERA
Today we're celebrating feathers, scales, and things that drift between worlds. And that brings us to a fellow called Peso Pluma.
Ok, so "Peso Pluma" means "featherweight," and that's a name that carries its own weather around with it. A feather is light enough to ride the wind, but it comes from a bird strong enough to cross a continent. Funny how that works. The lightest things sometimes travel the farthest.
He's part of a generation that doesn't seem interested in standing at the border between old and new. They just build a house right on top of it. The guitars come from one century, the rhythms from another, and the voices arrive carrying the static of a thousand phone screens glowing in the dark. Some people call that a contradiction. Other people call it music. A long time ago, songs traveled by horseback. Then they traveled by radio tower. Now they travel at the speed of a thumb sliding across a piece of glass. But they're still chasing the same thing: a listener sitting somewhere at midnight, looking for a reflection of their own life.
Peso Pluma’s traditional and lyrically-driven tracks with narratives inspired by the country’s socio-political state is in fact and after all not a new phenomenon. Mexican corridos have existed for centuries, many of the greatest and most known corridos were born under the Mexican Revolution, 1910.
The corrido is a Mexican musical genre. It’s a popular narrative conceived to be sung, recited or danced, which can be found in the form of a song, poetry or ballad. Corridos are also known as “tragedias” meaning tragedies. The corrido played an important role in the history of Mexico, since during times of social and political conjuncture these compositions were a source of information about the movements, victories, and losses that the revolution brought with it. Nowadays the corridos have continued being played and still have great popularity, mostly in the northeast part of Mexico and the southeast part of the U.S. Bands like Los Tigres Del Norte have been selling out stadiums in the U.S. for decades. The corrido tradition has evolved a lot and you can find different sub-genres such as the Narcocorrido which consists mainly of lyrics about loyalty, love, money, women, excesses, drugs, violence and drunkenness. Then we have the corridos tumbados, a unique fusion of the regional corrido music with modern trap.
Peso Pluma, technically, is not really Peso Pluma, his real name is Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija. Rather, he's one of three members of the group who make up Peso Pluma, including his cousin. The name has said described them all when they first got together "as a bunch of skinny guys." He has repeatedly said that he ain’t a good singer, but that he has something exceptional and different from the music made by his own generation. I agree on that.
Peso Pluma’s raspy voice and mix of corridos tumbados with Latin trap has glued my ears and eyes on him since the very beginning. I find him fun, different per say as cliche it may sound, passionate, warm towards his fans and indeed a great dance-step inventor. I heard him say that he is a huge jazz listener and I ain’t surprised, I hear it. Take my favorite song “BYE”, oh me oh my, that contrabass has become his musical identity, along with the very present trumpet.
Peso Pluma is still on fire and I love that flame since the first spark!
ink, watercolor on paper
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
On Monday, December 19th, we partnered with Lenovo computers to build out the ultimate art-themed smackdown. Hosted at Villain in Williamsburg, guests stepped into a fully imagined warehouse art party. That night it was all about participation. We created a series of art activities to get guests making art and meeting each other. Guests captured the revelry of the night in Ventikoland’s projection photo booth. After some savory Espolón cocktails and tacos the art battle was ready to begin. 2 amazing artists competed head-to-head in a series of timed challenges and a head-to-head battle of creative awesomeness. Interludes were provided by a pop & lock round girl, battling breakdancers, and a duo of beatboxers.
Event Design by Adam Aleksander Presents
Photography by Lukas Maverick Greyson
Khaled A. Beydoun the American Attorney and author has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘The business of remaking Arab-American identity’ in which he provides an overview of racial categorization within the USA. Beydoun states “Since its inception, the United States government has had a fixation with race. The judiciary was the government's arbiter of making and molding racial designations, and subsequently, classifying new immigrant communities into the fluidly shifting and arbitrary American racial taxonomy. Racial categories were shaped, and reshaped, according to shifting demographics. Initially, three primary categories, White, Black, and the catch-all “Mongoloid” group were created to distinguish between Americans, and segregate the latter groups from full-fledged citizenship. These categories were incessantly morphed, by American courts, and new titles such as “Caucasian” and “Hispanic”, for instance, were introduced. …The first major wave of Arab-Americans, who arrived in America circa the turn of the 20th century, was largely Christian natives of the Ottoman-colonised Levant. Religion, and the physical appearance of this wave, facilitated racial passing, and American courts ruled that (this pioneering) influx of Arabs were "part of the white race". …Arab-Americans would ultimately be racialised differently, creating a divided landscape where American courts facilitated the early wave's pursuit of whiteness and white privilege, and established jurisprudential baselines that denied the subsequent wave of largely Muslim, "ethnic" Arabs that same path. Caucasian was a legal term imposed on Arabs-Americans, while whiteness as an on-the-ground status was only enjoyed by those Arabs the courts - and the court of public opinion - deemed worthy of inclusion.” Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/cbFmF image source America.gov ow.ly/cbF2T
Obra: La Ultima Cena.
Autor: Dan Rosen.
Dirección: Sebastián Blanco Leiss.
Labor: Diseño de Escenografía y Vestuario.
(Junto a Florencia Del Gener).
Teatro: Diagonal. Mar del Plata.
Ganador Premio Estrella de Mar 2009: Mejor obra del Circuito Off.
Teatro: ElKafka Espacio Teatral. Buenos Aires.
Temporada 2009.
Fotos: Mariana Del Gener.
A Glitch “Backlum Chaam (बैकलुम चाम) ~ Ètude I”
by ™℗®© Louis M o n t i e l
~ FOLLOW ME & SUBSCRIBE ~
Instagram ~ louismontielt
Facebook ~ Louis Montiel
YouTube ~ Louis M o n t i e l
Vimeo ~ Louis M o n t i e l
#visualartists #glitchart #glitch #glitché #pixelsorting #glitchartistscollective #glitchvideo #datamosh #digitalglitch #videoglitch #hyperspektiv #minimalart #videoart #dfkt #pixelsorter #artistsvisual #glitchartoninstagram #glitchartscollective #glitcharts #glitchartistcommunity #glitchartwork #error #glitchartists #glitchartcommunity #glitchartistcollective #glitchartist #pixelsortingart #proceduralart #creativecodeart #glitchportrait
I’m back honeybees and today we’re looking at a peculiar kind of picture, not the ones painted with oils, or drawn with charcoal but the kind captured by the blinking eye of a camera, in the echo-filled halls of museums, where ghosts of artists float like dust motes in a sunbeam.
I’m talking about group portraits in front of art, snapshots of people gathered together, faces grinning or grim, trying to act casual in front of a heavily moneyed masterpiece. You’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve been in one. Maybe you blinked.
Click.
There’s always that one guy in the back who didn’t know the photo was being taken. Someone’s crouching. Someone's holding their breath. Someone’s blocking the art entirely — standing right in front of the painting like they painted it themselves.
They say a museum is where time goes to take a nap. But these group portraits they wake it up. It’s the collision of the ancient and the now. A 15th-century Madonna and Child gazing down at a tour group, all dressed in matching t-shirts. Raphael meets retail.
You got newlyweds in front of a Klimt, their love still warm. High school kids clustered in front of a war painting, half-listening, half-texting. A family reunion posing in front of Goya’s nightmares. That’s the poetry of the modern age.
And you know, museums they’re cathedrals of culture. Halls of quiet thunder. And when people huddle together for a picture, they’re not just saying cheese, they’re saying we were here. We stood before the art. We stood before history. We saw the brushstrokes and felt the hush of a thousand years.
Sometimes the art looks back.
So gather close, try not to block the painting, and smile like you mean it. Every picture tells a story, and every group photo tells a bit more.
//stay tight. Your always click on top Loana Ibarra
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
D798_011
04/07/2015 : Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, Château La Coste : exposition Different Places (Sean Scully)
In April 2011 Joan Hus showed some of her experimental work in the public library of Nevele, a small town in East Flanders.
Today we celebrate an Aquarius comrade, a man who knew a thing or two about storms inside the house, inside the head, inside the heart. Yeah, today we celebrate Trouble, or Fire, or maybe just Marriage. And sitting at the kitchen table with a match and a stack of papers is our man, August Strindberg.
Strindberg came from Sweden, a place with long nights and longer memories. You don’t grow up under skies like that without learning how to talk to shadows. Born in 1849, which is a good year for ghosts, he wore a lot of hats: playwright, novelist, chemist, painter, alchemist, fighter, lover, and professional arguer with God. Some folks write to understand the world. Strindberg wrote because the world wouldn’t leave him alone. He believed marriage was a battleground, not a ballroom. You read Miss Julie or The Father, and you can hear the furniture moving around by itself. These aren’t polite plays you sip tea to. These are plays where the tea gets thrown against the wall. Men and women circling each other like boxers, like wolves, like planets about to collide. Love, for Strindberg, was never just love - it was power, fear, desire, revenge, and maybe a little prayer slipped in when no one was listening.
He had a mind that ran hot. Burned bridges, burned friendships, nearly burned himself to ash. Had what they used to call a “nervous breakdown” and what we might now call the price of seeing too much. He went looking for God in science, went looking for science in mysticism, and wound up finding mostly himself, staring back, unblinking. That can be a dangerous thing.
But here’s the thing: Strindberg told the truth the way broken mirrors tell the truth. Jagged. Sharp. You don’t look without bleeding a little. And later on, when the pain softened into something like wisdom, he wrote A Dream Play, where time melts, doors open into other doors, and life starts acting like, well, a dream. Suffering becomes universal, almost gentle. Like he finally stopped fighting the storm and learned how to listen to the rain.
Now, my personal favorite Strindberg novel is his most personal and disturbing book he ever wrote. Inferno, not a novel in the usual sense, it’s closer to a confessional diary. Invisible forces are controlling his life, people are spying on him, ordinary events carry secret, supernatural meanings, science, religion, and magic are secretly connected. Strindberg becomes obsessed with chemistry and alchemy, believing he is on the verge of discovering hidden laws of the universe. He conducts experiments in his rooms, interprets random marks and coincidences as signs, and sees himself as chosen or cursed. The walls speak and the best part is how he manages to involve you in this paranoia. I just love it.
Some people want writers to be nice. Strindberg wasn’t nice. He was necessary. He kicked open doors so other folks like Ibsen, O’Neill, Beckett, just to name a few, could walk through and rearrange the air. If modern drama’s got a cracked voice and a nervous laugh, you can trace that sound back to him.
So today, if you’re sitting alone, thinking about love gone wrong, faith gone quiet, or words that won’t let you sleep, remember old August up there, wrestling angels and demons with a pen that wouldn’t behave. He didn’t find peace easy. But he left us something honest. And sometimes, friends, that’s the best you can do.
ink, watercolor on paper
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
Let this day’s light signal hum like a moth against the screen door, because today we’re celebrating the dial to a frequency that comes in hot, holy, and a little bit haunted. We’re talking about the High Priestess of Soul herself, Miss Nina Simone.
Nina Simone wasn’t born Nina Simone. No. She came into the world as Eunice Kathleen Waymon down in Tryon, North Carolina, where air hangs thick with hymnals and red clay. A piano prodigy before most kids could hold their spoons. She wanted to be the first great Black classical concert pianist, another Johann Sebastian Bach whispering through the American South. But the gates of the conservatory don’t always swing open just because you can play every note better than the rest. So she built her own conservatory out of nightclubs and cigarette smoke.
She took the name Nina — “little girl.” Simone — after the French actress Simone Signoret. And once she sat down at that piano, the piano didn’t stand a chance. She played it like it had insulted her mother. Voice like midnight velvet dragged across gravel. Could sing you a lullaby or an indictment.
Songs like “Mississippi Goddam”, “Sinnerman”, “See-Line Woman”, “Baltimore” weren’t just songs, they were telegrams from the front lines of the American soul. When the world shook, Birmingham, Medgar, the long hot summers, Nina didn’t whisper. She thundered. She turned concerts into courtrooms. She turned melody into a raised fist.
Nina Simone famously rejected the label "jazz" saying it was a term coined by white people to define and restrict Black artistry. She believed her music, which blended classical, jazz, blues, and gospel, deserved the same prestige as European classical music.
So yes, Nina had fire. The kind you don’t bottle up. The kind that sometimes jumps the fence. And I always did have a soft spot for that kind of blaze. Hot, sure. Real, absolutely. The kind of heat that doesn’t ask permission to exist. Especially when it rises up out of a woman who knows the weight of her own footsteps. No porcelain figurines here, no trembling sparrows chirping, “Oh save me, I’m just a little fragile bird who forgot how to fly.” So irksome. None of that paper-wing routine. No victims waiting around for a hero with a cape and a bad haircut. This was a woman who could light her own cigarette and look you straight in the eye while the match burned down to her fingertips.
And me? I would’ve given just about anything to sit across from her in some dim corner booth, coffee going lukewarm between us, smoke curling up like a question neither one of us felt obliged to answer. Just to watch that fire flicker. Just to feel the heat of it, steady and unafraid.
There’s a story, and like all good stories it’s got a little smoke around the edges, about a day when a neighbor was practicing trumpet. Practicing is a generous word. The man was butchering it. Notes flying around like pigeons in a hurricane. And Nina, who had perfect pitch and very little patience for sonic vandalism, reached the end of her rope. She stepped outside with a gun and shot him in the leg. Didn’t kill him. Just punctuated the arrangement.
Now I’m not here to tell you to settle your noise complaints that way. But if you’ve ever heard somebody mangle a melody you love, you understand the crime. Nina lived in a world where music was sacred text. You don’t scribble on sacred text.
She was brilliance and contradiction in the same breath. Tender one minute, volcanic the next. A woman who could sing “I Love You Porgy”, “Be my husband”, “Mood Indigo”, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” (oh me oh my) and make time stop, and then tell you exactly what was wrong with the country before dessert was served.
She left the US for a spell, found herself in Liberia, in France, places where she could breathe without somebody measuring the air. But wherever she went, she carried that same storm cloud harmony.
Nina Simone didn’t just sing songs. She made you sit with yourself. Made you reckon. Made you feel taller and smaller all at once. Cry, make you smile and fill you up with strength. Some artists entertain you. Some artists comfort you. Nina demanded something from you.
And if you played the trumpet badly outside her window… well, you might’ve gotten a sharp review.
ink, watercolor on paper
contact ibarraloana@gmail.com
New Orleans bodypainter sat down with us for an interview in issue 13 of A Distinctive Style Magazine.
See the interview here: www.adistinctivestyle.com/issue/22468/9
A charity project through Bridge Communities; 'A Chair Affair' was an event where artists were sponsored to create a work of art using chairs as the vehicle, which were then showcased in retail shops in the Western Suburbs of Chicago. These works then went up to auction where 100% of the proceeds went to families and individuals in need. Bridge Communities strives to help those in need and aim to help people get their lives back on track. This was my second 'A Chair Affair', my first one taking place in Naperville in 2014.