Making the Beads and One Painting

Here is a video on how I make the beads while I watch a Bollywood movie.




Also, here is the first piece I made with the beads describing my frustration. The frustration being that I have been fortunate enough to be born into a position in life where I can actually attempt to make a difference in developing nations. However, because I am a white, middle-class American I receive a lot of criticism and am constantly asked if I even have a right to delve into the issues that I care most about. Sewing the white beads for me represented my burden and my chains.

New Work in Progress

I am in the middle of creating little, white paper beads inspired by what I saw in The Congo, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I have decided (for the time being) to be obsessed with these beads as they symbolize a great deal to me, and some very serious issues in Africa. Something that I realized after a few months getting into this subject matter of art and philanthropy is that there is a great deal of push-back whenever anyone hears the words "philanthropy"or anything that relates to it. I have realized, on top of other more credible reasons, the reason for all this push back is because I am a white, middle class American who has never been able to relate to people who have undergone true suffering and that they fear that I will create biased work that will exploit those I'm trying to help.

So with that being said I am creating my own beads that are white and have no words on them. When I have created enough of them, I will make a piece that perhaps will convey my frustration that I feel that I am not allowed to do anything to help because of my whiteness and background. Its a scary endeavor because I've never been much of a craft-artist and this is thoroughly different than anything else I have done. So, fingers crossed, everything will go well.