by Montgomery Jones Every month, the SPARK Action Squad reads and discusses a book together as part of our monthly #SPARKreads book club. Last month, we read If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan, a page turner of a novel about an Iranian high school girl, Sahar, who is in love with her best…
by Montgomery Jones If there’s anything Issa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl taught me, it’s that awkwardness is colorblind. But for some reason, black women are only ever shown as one way in the media. Words like “awkward,” “shy,” nerdy,” “self aware,” “multi dimensional,”….well those words are never used to describe us. I myself am a…
by Montgomery Jones I don’t have a lick of artistic blood in my body, so I am entranced with my SPARK sister Jazmin Martinez’s art exhibit “The Body Collage Project,” which incorporates heavy topics, cultural celebration, and beautiful creations. She talks about self- love, feminism, self esteem, Day of the Dead, and community. Jazmin is…
by Brenda Guesnet For this month’s SPARKArtists we talked to Patricia Alvarado, a 22-year old visual artist from Chicago finishing up art school at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Although Patricia is mainly a performance artist, she uses a variety of mediums, including video and photography. Her work draws on personal experience as…
by Annemarie McDaniel This interview is part of our ongoing SPARK Artists series. Dianne Lake is a current college student at Yale University, involved with consent and sexual respect education and a campus a capella group Shades, which sings music of the African diaspora. I have known Dianne for years, but I first learned about…
by Montgomery Jones Issa Rae is something of a legend in the YouTube/webseries community. Her successful show The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl has garnered positive feedback from The New York Times, Forbes, and viewers around the world. With masterminds like Shonda Rhimes and Pharrell reaching out to Ms. Rae, it’s safe to say this…
by Elisabed Gedevanishvili I am sure you have never heard of an inspiring artist, Diana Fathi. Diana was born on the first night of fall into a family of doctors. As a teenager she was quite shy, and her English accent always got in the way of proudly speaking in her native language, Farsi. After finishing…
by Alice Wilder We’re all pretty big fans of filmmaker Therese Shechter, who you might know from her film I Was a Teenage Feminist. Her 2013 documentary How To Lose Your Virginity, which is available for streaming in July, explores the ways we think about sexuality and how it changes the way we feel about ourselves…