100cameras, the most creative way to share stories

When you go to 100camera's homepage, this is the first thing you read: 100cameras is a nonprofit organization that identifies children living in unjust conditions and gives them cameras to document their lives. Their photo narratives are used to raise awareness and capital to meet physical needs and empower sustainable growth within their community. When you purchase one of the children's photos, 100percent of that money is given back to the partner organization.
This group gives cameras to underprivelaged children. In hopes that by seeing the lives they live, the organization can better serve them.
Cameras to children to see their lives through their lenses.
Brilliant.
According to their website, this is how it works:
it's simple, really.

we give a camera to jackson.

jackson snaps a photo.

then you buy his photo.

your money goes back to jackson.

and jackson is empowered.



Watch the video. Get inspired. Visit the website (100cameras.org)

From Neoclassicism to Expressionism

Hello Hello My Little Artsies,
I found this wonderful article in the Arts section of the New York Times titled "Odd Faces, Strange in Their Day, but Familiar in Our Time" today. It starts of with Proust, calls on da Vinci and ends up in Vienna. The article is a wonderfully exploratory trip through the works of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an 18th-century German sculptor. Messerschmidt manifested his "artistic-disturbances" through a series of, what he called, character heads. This busts are crafted with bizarre, exaggerated expressions that intrigue even the least experienced art critic.

The article goes on to catalog the artists life from his youth in Germany to his final days in Vienna. 19 of Messerschmidt's character heads have been brought together for the show “Franz Xaver Messerschmidt 1736-1783: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism,” which has been organized in collaboration with the Louvre and travels to Paris from New York.
For the full article please visit NYTimes.com

Happy findings!

lost & FFFFOUND

Hello!
Today has been another manic one. How about some happy findings to distract you?


They say happiness is the changing of seasons...


So Happy.


Lovely, no?

All of these wonderful images were discovered on FFFFOUND.com; the fantastic web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also suggests other images that the user may like (based on what s/he has clicked on previously). MAGIC!

Please go visit.
You may very well get lost.

Muckraking for the Modern Man

Hello, hello.
I hope you are having a lovely Monday.
This week Collective wants to focus your attention to an insanely artistic approach to journalism. "News21 is a national project that encourages and supports new forms of investigative reporting and storytelling," reports NPR's Coburn Dukehart. "The venture — funded by a Carnegie and Knight initiative — includes eight “incubator” universities, where students hone their reporting and digital skills in the classroom, then follow up with hands-on reporting in the field"
This project has fused the art of film, audio, storytelling & reporting into one power-house of a hybrid. The full article (found at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/08/17/129258578/journalism-for-the-21st-century) highlights Syracuse University's News21 student and her story of Jerry Middleton, a former driver in the Vietnam war. The final product can be seen viewed on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/13764307). To see more of the students work check out News21.com.

Thirty things before 30

Living in Europe, having the experiences of a lifetime by the age of twenty, I have a lot of time to think about my life & how I would like to live it. This is what I have come up with...
1. See the Northern Lights
2. Go to Alaska
3. Hike the Swiss Alps
4. Go to an Elton John concert
5. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro
6. Have a pig for a pet
7. Write a book
8. Have a tree house
9. Learn how to play the mandolin
10. Read the Bible: cover to cover
11. Book a random flight
12. Visit all 50 states
13. Start an art collection
14. Have a library that is bigger then my bedroom
15. Go paragliding in Switzerland
16. Spend my paycheck on something completely selfish
17. Have at least five pair of boots (hopefully Frye) in my closet
18. Climb Mount Fuji
19. Read everything ever written by a favorite author
20. Go on a cross-country road trip
21. Have one of my paintings hung in my house
22. Write an article on traveling
23. Buy all of my friends fresh flowers; just because
24. Make my parents cry with joy
25. Make my own wine
26. Grow and eat my own vegetables
27. Visit Auschwitz
28. Own a 1967 Red Ford Mustang convertible
29. Be a substantial member of a community
30. Still write letters

Swan Song

this is my life right now.
blue skies and pink tutu's.


my days here in holland are filled with nothing but the purest joy.

walking past a tenth century church on my way to class
(which is held in a converted monastery),
conversation about the nature of good and evil had under a chestnut tree,
writing a note of thanks to a new friend met on a train to austria...
these are my days.

my weekends are helium filled balloons of elation.
paris one weekend
prague the next
off to austria on thursday
and planning germany.

this season is the most enchanting.

Shorts.

Every weekend I find myself, usually after church, at a bookstore of some kind.
This Sunday it was the Barns & Noble by my parents house in Chicago.
Taking books off their shelves,
opening to a random page,
reading a bit,
deciding to read on or replace by another random selection,
is the most perfect way to spend a Sunday.

The gem at random this week was:
'Wonderful Town'
the New Yorker's compilation of
various short stories they have featured over the years.
It is wonderful.

Here is one of my favorites:
"The Whore of Mensa" by Woody Allen
"I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense - don't you agree?" I let her go on. She was barely nineteen years old, but already she had developed the hardened facility of the pseudo-intellectual. She rattled off her ideas glibly, but it was all mechanical. Whenever I offered an insight, she faked a response: "Oh yes, Kaiser. Yes, baby, that's deep. A platonic comprehension of Christianity - why didn't I see it before?" We talked for about an hour and then she said she had to go. She stood up and I laid a C-note on her.

"Thanks, honey."

"There's plenty more where that came from."

"What are you trying to say?" I had piqued her curiosity. She sat down again.

"Suppose I wanted to have a party?" I said.

"Like, what kind of a party?"

"Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?"

"Oh, wow."

"If you'd rather forget it..."

"You'd have to speak with Flossie," she said. "It's cost you." Now was the time to tighten the screws. I flashed my private- investigator's badge and informed her it was a bust.