Creative Review, Suli Breaks' American't Dream (The Purse Suit of Happyness)

In my last blog post, I ended with a link to a video of a young poet and spoken word artist from London, his name is Suli Breaks.
This young man has lit an inspirational fire beneath me.
His opinions and views are relevant, well informed and easy to listen to.

He does not lose the listener in a rising tide of deliberate linguistic showboating,
yet does enough for the listener to not only appreciate his point but also the manner in which he delivers them.
His accent is one of a young man from a urban working class back ground, that may be a slight stereotype on my part, but its my opinion and what I got from listening to him, the fact he sounds the way he does, lends itself to the surprise aspect of his poetry's nature, intelligence level and content, in a sense that it makes me feel, that if was Stephen Fry for example, reading Suli Breaks poetry, I feel it would lose a vital component and not have half of the impact it does when he reads it himself.

below is a link to the video on youtube,.. take a short break and listen to him speak.
Here is The American't Dream (The Purse Suit of Happyness)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzcxOl4b7IA

The way Suli Breaks uses language to get his point across is another impressive trait, a trait that would not have the same effect if you was to read the poem as opposed to listening to it.
when he says 'its not how much change you make, but how much change, you, make' is a perfect example of what I mean.
The words accompanied by his tone and gestures makes the quote more powerful than when the same words are read, after watching the video, I'm confident you will know what I mean.

The formative and matter of fact manner in which Suli Breaks delivers his scripture gives his work an essay feel, as he makes a point and in most cases backs it up with fact often enough, quotes.
Quotes from people such as Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) through to Confucius, showing a degree of intelligence and a research level of impressive standard.
I felt connected as he signed off using a favourite quote of mine, from the ancient  chinese philosopher, teacher and politician, Confucius, who said...
'if you find a job you love, you will never do a days work in your life'.

Not only his work but his calm and matter of fact demeanour are both enviable traits, as well as his informed subject matter, making him a very appealing creative mind and thinker, leaving me quite giddy in anticipation of his upcoming EP.

I hope you enjoyed his work and found him as inspirational as I did, after finding truths in what he is saying.
The American't dream left me with re-newed vigour and a little extra fire in my belly to go forward, try a bit harder and achieve what I set out to achieve when I signed on for my higher education course.

1,2,3 Advice

Another post at the request of the course gods at Stockport ,... 3 pearls of wisdom that I have heard since I started my course, besides, Mark...put the pencil down!

Well the first pearl is somewhere along those lines, Experiment and embrace accidents instead of screwing up yr page and binning it in a sulky rage.

Thats exactly what I would have usually done, instead of using the mistake as a learning curve,

that advice has to be accredited it to my course leader, Joanne Spicer, and probably one of the most important lessons that I have learned in my two years, and one Im glad i learned so early on.

The second pearl of Illustration wisdom, comes from Ben Wachenje (I know I sound like a fan boy, but so what, sue me), after asking him how he balances life between his work and family, something that I had spent so much time sweating over for the first 14-18 months of the course, he told me, he does not balance at all. 

This gave me so much relief and confidence that I began to work freely of the shackles that the predicament had caused me since I started the course. 

If a very established Illustrator cant find a balance and still produce work to the level he does then its most certainly not something that I should be sweating over.

And since my post up to now has been a lot of reading my third pearl comes in the form of a video, 

and I'll leave you to decide wether you agree or not, but personally I think its brilliant.

Its a young poet from London Named Suli Breaks,... Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-eVF_G_p-Y

I Wish I'd Done That

When asked to blog about an artwork I felt 'I wish I'd done', initially I felt quite over awed,
how could I possibly choose one piece of art from the many thousands I have seen and felt that small pang of creative jealousy over!?
The feeling of 'wow, why did I not think of that'.
After toiling over it for a while, I remembered a quote from my interview with Benjamin Wachenje.
The quote was regarding a piece he had done of his son.
He told me...'I had just turned down a job with the US army worth over $100,000. Since I had decided not to help them create recruitment posters I thought I had better make some pro-peace images. It really helped take my mind off the $100,000 I had kissed good bye too and made me consider how powerful art can be'.

The Image above is the one Ben referred to in his quote.

Now, my 'wish I'd done that' is more of a 'hope I could do that', meaning that if the chance arose that I could also be as true to my beliefs and uphold my integrity in such a way.

Considering the current financial climate around the world, to be upstanding and strong enough to turn down such a sum of money for doing something you love to do is a feat not found in many humans, and those that can do it, are of a moral fibre that is rarer than the proverbial rocking horse droppings.

In a point in history where I feel money is the main motivator of people and the thing that really does make the world go round, to be able to make such a choice would make me the a very proud man.

Without a doubt, money IS a motivator, after all its one of the main reasons people get out of bed in a morning, wether it be to go to work, or to 'sign on' at the job centre, making money is at the forefront of 90% the populations life long 'to do' list.

A person in the other 5% is a very rare find, so to feel like you belong within that small percentage would be an achievement in itself.

If I'm honest, and ask myself would I be able to turn down such an offer, I'm not sure I could, but I like to think I would.

Now if I refer to an actual piece of work 'I wish I'd done' im going to cite an image I came across last  night on facebook of all places.

Its a political piece which in itself is not something I would consider, but this is to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the awful Murder of Stephen Lawrence in London, in April 1993.

The creator of the piece is Mr Jon Daniel, working out of London.

http://www.jon-daniel.com/home.html 

Not only is the Image relevant, its important. 

Done in such a simple way, but carries such an important message to not just those who remember the heinous nature of this racially motivated murder of a young man who did nothing to deserve having his life cut short but its done in such a minimal and simplistic way.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then here is the evidence.

This definantly gave me that creative 'jealousy pang' I mentioned earlier in my post.

The image has undertones of Noma Bar's work, one of the first Illustrators my tutor, Joanne Spicer, introduced me to on first joining the course, this is probably another reason it stood out to me.

Before I began my course, my choice for such a topic would probably have been an image of a transformer or Spiderman fighting with The Incredible Hulk, or a graffiti piece (not Banksy, thats a whole new blog post!) but since I started the course I have had my eyes opened to eclectic world of illustration and what Illustration actually is.

So there it is, not only what 'I wish I'd done, but what 'I hope I could do'.