Climbing PoeTree presents HURRICANE SEASON: The hidden messages in water, a multimedia show and 30-city tour that obliterates the boundaries between performance and activism.  HURRICANE SEASON: the hidden messages in water interweaves spoken word poetry, sound collage, shadow art, dance, film and animation to explore critical issues facing humanity through the kaleidoscope Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

The tour bus will travel throughout the country using a vehicle converted to run on vegetable oil recycled from America’s fast food addiction.

DOPE SWAN’s own Sallome Hralima will serve as the tour’s post-show facilitator guiding solution ciphers in each city.

For more information about the tour and tour dates, visit www.hurricaneseasontour.com. To keep up with Sallome’s experiences on the tour visit her blog.

Coming soon.

Artist Statement

Coming Soon.

Press

Coming Soon.

Abbreviated Portfolio

Coming Soon.

Website
www.dopestylemaker.com

DOPE SWAN presents

Evolution to Revolution
Works by Sarah M. Kolker

March 31st – April 4, 2008

Sarah Lawrence College
Heimbold Atrium
1 Meadway Drive, Bronxville, NY 10708

Closing Reception

April 4, 2008
6:00PM-8:00PM

Press

• “The Stoop“, Shades Magazine, January 2008.

Video

Coming soon

Website

sallomehralima.com

A visual artist with a gypsy heart and revolutionary mind, DOPE SWAN visual arts curator Lichiban Szatmari talks with Sallomé Hralima about what she sees blooming around the world and how a soundtrack for her art would sound.

What are your most frequent “daydreams and nightvisions”?
I dream through the earlier part of the day, literally, and stay up drawing all night until my eyes hurt and I start to see colors vibrating in space. (She laughs.) But seriously, my most creative period of the day is between 10pm–5am, so I normally work until very late. Most of the city is asleep. While I’m working on some image, I often wonder who else is up doing something creative. I love the solitariness of the night. It is great for self-reflection and soul-searching. Painting is a form of meditation for me, a kind of spiritual exercise. So I would say my nightvisions are my drawings and paintings that I give birth to at night. They are visions that keep me sane. I daydream of a lifestyle where I can do art 24/7 and not have to work at a job that is not directly related to this.

What would be the best post an art critic could write in a major newspaper or magazine about your work?
“If you’ve become tired of pretentious art with its forced conceptual content or had enough of the rule of hi-brow postmodern art works whose value is determined by the interior decorators of hotels and banks, then you might take a closer look at Lichiban’s work. This lady is on a mission to penetrate your heart directly and massage your soul with her emotionally charged imagery. Her portraits tap into the deeper layers of the soul to unveil the beautiful, sensual, melancholy or transcendent realm of the senses.”

If you had to work with one musician, dead or alive, to put together a soundtrack for your art, who would it be?
That is so tough! If I really have to pick only one, well then it’d be Nina Simone. And I would have beats made to go with it by someone who comes from the school of J-Dilla, Hi-Tek, DJ Premier or Pete Rock.

Artists now take on the role of entrepreneur, community organizer, advocate and much more. What would you say is the most beneficial professional development artist take on?
Even though there are more art events that are affiliated with a humanitarian or political cause these days, I think that artists could use more of their influence and mobilizing power to raise awareness about today’s critical issues and to give back to the community. I dream of a day when my art will take me to a place where I can organize major art events that will benefit some kind of socially conscious project, which can range from free art classes for children who come from disadvantaged background to protesting human rights abuses, racism, war and other monsters.

What do you feel is the major link between a community and its artists?
The shared experience. The artists’ work has to be relevant to a community for it to be received and appreciated. It has to resonate. Take spoken word artists, for example. They are the mouthpiece of their people and their power of touching people’s soul come from that fact they draw from the experience they share with their communities. The experience of the beautiful struggle, you know? I also think that artists and the cultural products made by them are essential for a community’s existence. A community’s artistic heritage — the music, visual art and poetry — contributes to its sense of identity, pride and solidarity.

If you may, share with us some or all of your “bucket list”.
This is a VERY partial list: to keep on drawing until my heart stops. To produce some of the baddest art shows that will reconvert people who lost faith in art. Get to know my favorite artists and musicians personally. To continue exploring the world; I really want to check out Mali, go back to Kashmir and to the Himalayas once more, and visit Japan, and a thousand other places. And a road trip across the US is long overdue! I want to become a mother and see my kid(s) thrive. I want to get involved in developing a reform for secondary education on a major level. To learn Spanish and keep up my Arabic & Persian. And to get a driver’s license.

She’ll need one for that cross-country trip! See more of Lichiban’s work here or follow her daily dealings on her blog.

Sarah Kolker, currently completing the last year of her BA at Sarah Lawrence College, was born and raised in Philadelphia and has studied in Jamaica, Pennsylvania and New York. Sarah has worked with well-known mosaic tile artist Isaiah Zagar, the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, Groundswell Community Mural Projects and has completed a Create Change Artist in Residency with The Laundromat Project. Her work has been displayed at The Protest Space in New York’s Chelsea art district and at the Infusion Gallery in Philadelphia.

Artist Statement

Constructing art, I feel, is the only way I can comfortably express myself. One medium alone cannot express what I feel. Colors are music to my eyes; and music feeds my body. Since nothing is actually concrete and everything is in constant change, so must my work be as well. More layers added and textures created; a piece may only be considered done because of others opinions. I pay attention to the little things in the world and I force the viewer to conceptualize this. I take things out of context, which may make my art seem
surreal; however, it is the everyday realities and experiences that give meaning to my art.

Press

• “Harlem Youth’s Wisdom Captured on Bench“, Laundromat Project, January 8, 2008.

Abbreviated Portfolio

Website
www.36kolks.com

Growing up in Brooklyn, Akintola Hanif was no stranger to the fine arts scene. As a child, he and his father often frequented places like the National Black Theater and the legendary Studio Museum in Harlem, introducing him to some of the most prominent artists of the time.

Akintola was introduced to the graffiti and pop art movement, which dominated New York City’s gallery scene, at a young age. By his early teens, HYZE (an alias he was given at 19) had learned the art of airbrushing and spray painting and began painting murals on the walls and storefronts of New York City under the tag Dest (AOK,CWK). One of his murals is immortalized in Henry Chalfant’s 1985 book “Spraycan Art”.

Hyze started documenting the lives of the people of the Arcadian Gardens in 2000. It is an ongoing project that has also begun to take shape as a feature-length documentary film entitled The Bity.

Akintola’s first film, Freedom or Everybody Dies, a 5-minute mixed media short, has been showcased in the kick-off for the Museum of African American Music and the Black Harvest International Film Festival. His work has also been featured in shows at the Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery, Iandor Fine Arts Gallery, the Annual Lesbian Erotic Arts Fair at New York’s The Center, the H2O [Hip-Hop Odyssey] Film Festival and as part of the 3rd Wave group show sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Currently, Akintola works as the resident documentarian at New Jersey’s YouthBuild Newark program and has recently created several short films denouncing drug use and gang activity amongst young people for the Central Ward Boys and Girls Club and the Clinton Hill Weed and Seed Partnership.

Akintola Hanif is available for video and still photography projects.

Press

• “Urban Focas“, Village Voice, April 20, 2007.
• “Black Dice“, Head Magazine, July 2006. (*Contains explicit content.)
• “Questions. Answers.” Nat Creole, March 2006.

Abbreviated Portfolio

Website

www.akintolahanif.com

DOPE SWAN is proud to host an online sale of artwork from artists involved in the Younity Exhibit “Crossover”.

YOUNITY, founded by Alice Mizrachi and Toofly, is an artist collective that works to give women a forum through which to disseminate their ideas to contemporaries and showcase their work to the public at large.

All work will be on sale until December 25, 2007. Click here to purchase works from “Crossover” in the shop.

For more info on Younity visit www.theyounity.com.

Sunday, October 7 (1-6pm)
The Laundry Room
143 116th Street (btwn Lenox and Seventh Ave)

Combining text, tiles, glass, grout, and paint, Sarah will be installing two mosaic projects in Harlem this weekend. Join her. You can help Sarah finish both works– learning more about the mosaic process firsthand…or just stop by to see public art in action. Light refreshments served. FREE and open to all ages.

Each year The Laundromat Project, Inc. organizes Create Change, a program for artists of color to mount public art projects at their local laundry. Sarah Kolker, a 2007 Create Change artist, is installing two mosaic works in her Harlem neighborhood– one at The Laundry Room and another at Marcus Garvey Park. As part of the Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour, you can see her process in action. Sarah has already begun collaborating with her neighbors to produce both mosaics. Over the summer she enlisted the help of young people from the Association to Benefit Children and Pelham Fritz Rec Center. Together they created a series of tiles documenting what they want to see thirty years from now– not only for themselves, but also for Harlem as a community.

Sarah Kolker’s creative process focuses on healing, self-empowerment and social change. Believing that participatory projects can build community and improve the physical environment Sarah works as a muralist and mosaic artist.

The Laundromat Project is a non-profit arts organization committed to making visual art more accessible to communities of color living on low incomes. To learn more about who we are and what we do, visit www.laundromatproject.org or sign up for our mailing list by sending your name and contact information to info@laundromatproject.org

Create Change is an annual program where artists of color are commissioned to develop public art projects for their local laundromats. Create Change 2007 has been made possible by The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Puffin Foundation, Materials for the Arts, and the generosity of individual donors. Special thanks to Prince Hunt and George Michael at The Laundry Room; Hakeem Omolade and Tuwanda Ruffin at Pelham Fritz; and Rudy Shepherd.

artHARLEM is a community based not-for-profit organization that manages H.O.A.S.T. (Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour) and other curatorial events throughout New York City. Its events showcase the works of the artists of Harlem.

“Some poets release albums that are poems recited to music, I wanted to make music period,” says Amir Sulaiman about the creation of his full-length debut album ‘Like A Thief In The Night’ (Uprising Records). “I wrote most of the lyrics to the beats, so this is for the most part original material never heard before.”

Populated by dense sonic collages of hip-hop savvy drums, weighty guitar riffs and electronic ethereal-ness, ‘Like A Thief’ may well prove to be one of the most innovative and dynamic albums of 2007. With Amir’s flow placing him somewhere between street-wise emcee and socially conscious storyteller, he is able to effortlessly fuse together impassioned narratives of tragedy, redemption and revolution.

Boasting guest appearances from Mos Def, Goapele and The Last Poets, and production by Minnesota, the album creates a soundscape that could easily serve as the score for a classic Martin Scorcese film.

“Though I have a name and appear frequently in circles that co-exist within hip-hop culture, I also greatly admire rock music. A lot of what influenced my album was bands such as Radiohead and Portishead. In the forefront of my mind when creating this album was how to capture that vibe with what I do. I am pretty pleased with the result.”

Look for Amir on his upcoming “Cornerstone Folklore” tour.

XTRAS

+ Download ‘Like a Thief in the Night’ from iTunes.
+ Buy ‘BloomBeautiful’ by Liza Garza featuring Amir Sulaiman.
+ Watch Amir Sulaiman on HBO’s ‘Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry’.
+ Visit Amir Sulaiman on MySpace.