The exhibit We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball will be on display September 26 – December 19, 2010 and features original paintings by Kadir Nelson. It will be at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1040 Ridge Road in Munster. This exhibit is touring nationally and includes over 30 paintings as well as sketches.

It’s about the story of Negro League baseball—the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the twentieth century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation, hatred, terrible conditions, and low pay to do the one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball.

Kadir Nelson, "Diz and Satch", 2004, Oil on canvas, Collection of San Diego Padres

Kadir Nelson spent seven years creating paintings for a book which is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the Negro Baseball Leagues. Nelson interviewed former Negro League players, traveled to museums around the country, poured over old photographs, firsthand testimonies and documentaries, collected baseball memorabilia, sports equipment and uniforms, then posed and photographed himself in them, all with the intention of putting himself in the shoes of a former Negro Leaguer to recreate an authentic depiction of life in the Negro Baseball Leagues.

Nelson tells the story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through its decline after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947. In just a few years, the Negro National League grew into the third largest African-American owned business in the world. It reached its apex in the mid-1940s with its crown jewel, the East-West All-Star Classic that was held every summer at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

Kadir Nelson, "Safe at Home", 2005, Oil on canvas, Collection of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Nelson’s book, We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, was a New York Times best-seller and the New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2008. The book also received a Coretta Scott King Author Award, an Illustration Honor and the Robert F. Sibert Medal from the American Library Association.

The title of the book and the exhibit come from a quote by Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National League: “We are the ship; all else the sea.”

If you have seen the new Negro Leagues Baseball stamps at the Post Office, you have already seen Nelson’s work. The Rube Foster stamp features his paintings.

So don’t miss this one. Mark your calendars and get over there already!

South Shore Arts
We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
At the Center for Visual and Performing Arts
1040 Ridge Road, Munster
September 26 – December 19, 2010

 

What: Mystery Art Night

Where: The C.A.C. (Community Arts Center: 13300 133^rd Ave. Cedar Lake, IN 46303)

When: Thursday, September 9 at 7:00 pm

Why: Mingle, be creative, have fun…

What to bring: old magazines

Take a risk and step out of the everyday routine. It will be fun.

Questions? Email Kevin_bruinsma@yahoo.com. Don’t ask what we are doing because I won’t tell you. That sucks the adventure out of it.

 

Please read more here

 

Who: Everyone is welcome!

What: Bus trip to the Hamilton Factory

Where: Two Rivers Wisconsin.

When: October 2, 2010 (meet at Faith Church in Dyer, IN at 5:00 am)

Cost: $75 Per Person (Payment due Wednesday September 12! Checks made out to Faith Church and mailed to: Kevin Bruinsma 100 81^st Ave. Dyer, IN 46311) this cost includes a tour, instruction, and printing supplies. This does not include food.

Schedule:

5:00 am | Bus leaves Faith Church in Dyer

7:00 am | Stop somewhere for a quick breakfast

9:00 am | Arrive at Hamilton

9:00 am – 10:00 am | Tour of Museum & Press room

10:00 am – 11:00 am | Instruction Time

11:00 am – 5:00 pm | Play with the presses!

5:00 pm | Bus leaves for home

6:00 pm | Quick dinner stop

9:00 pm | Arrive back in Dyer

Contact Kevin_bruinsma@yahoo.com for more information.

 

Location:
Paul Henry’s Art Gallery
416 Sibley Street
Hammond, IN

Hello artists and art patrons!

Paul Henry’s Art Gallery is pleased to host an artist’s workshop on career development presented by Linda Dorman with special guest appearance by artist Tom Torluemke, Wednesday, August 25th, 7PM til 9PM. Socialize and snack hour is from 5:45PM til 6:45PM.

Practical methods for portfolio development, promoting and marketing artwork and setting career goals will be discussed on a professional an…d personal level.

Many of you already know Linda and Tom through Uncle Freddy’s Gallery and the art network in Northwest Indiana and Chicago, and in fact throughout the Midwest. They have devoted their lives to establish their careers in the arts. We believe you will find their story compelling, a story that evolves each day, and how that progression relates to the subject matter at hand.

We hope that you consider taking advantage of this opportunity to listen to and learn from Linda and Tom. They have been through the wringer, the struggles and the war. They can help your career by giving you insights you would only find by going down the hard road.

Linda Dorman received her BA in Photography from Columbia College, Chicago. During the course of her art career, she has been a photographer and photo researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago; Director of Exhibits and Artists Services at the Northern Indiana Arts Association in Munster, Indiana; Curator for the CITY 2000 documentary photography project; and Co-Owner and Gallery Director of Uncle Freddy’s Gallery in Highland, Indiana. She is currently Studio Manager for Tom Torluemke Studio. During her 20 years of experience working with artists, she has organized and curated more than 150 exhibits.

Paul Henry’s Art Gallery asks a fee of $3.00 for the presentation. We will also open the event up to our Potluck approach which has been very successful during our Acoustic Jams through the year: Bring food and you get in free!! This can be appetizer, finger food or something for the grill. Get here early to grill, socialize and snack. Last call for food will be at 6:45. The food table will be reopened after the discussion. You are welcome to bring your food item as early as you wish. We will be open all day leading into the workshop.

Please RSVP to this email address or call 219-678-5015.

Please Forward this invitation to those you know who may be interested!

Sincerely,
Dave Mueller
Paul Henry’s Art Gallery
416 Sibley, Hammond, IN
219-678-5015

 

WordPress is being used as a content management solution by more and more web designers and developers everyday. I’ve been using it for quite sometime and I am always very happy with the standard installation and upgrades that the WordPress team continues to work hard on.

Over the years of using WordPress for a CMS and developing custom themes w/cms for clients, I’ve started to notice that there are a lot of plug-ins out there that are not really up to a high standard. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of GREAT plug-ins out there, but I feel like the number of bad or sloppy plug-ins are growing at an alarming rate. As well as plug-ins that get created with no support what-so-ever from the developer.

WordPress does have standards and a spec in place for their plug-in (read more here). They even have a great tool on their plug-in pages that will show you compatibility within different versions of WordPress.

The reason for this post is obviously that I personally feel that the WordPress development team needs to put a higher standard into place for plug-ins. Example? Apple has a very demanding criteria for their iPhone applications. Apple does this because it affects their brand and the iPhone name to the public. The higher criteria to get your app approved, the better results for everyone across the board.

I think that WordPress really needs to do the same. I have run into some horrible coding, bad compatibility, plug-ins that damage the basic installation of WordPress, all sorts of conflicting javascript, the list goes on.

As WordPress continues to be the leader in blogging software it will soon do the same with a content management system. I think that it’s crucial to their success that the start to consider a much stronger standard and criteria to the plug-ins that get submitted.

What are your thoughts? Are these the issues of Open Source Software and will never go away?

 

@atomgroom – Lol, all that info is available for free, online! Waste of money on conferences!

and thought hey that would make a good topic to talk about on NWI Creative, so now months later I’m finally getting it done. First, you have to take his tweet with a grain of salt being he helps run the Insight conference but I do believe there are a lot of people who do believe this though.

Why would anyone feel this way? That’s pretty simple, there are a lot of really bad ones out there. I’ve spoken at some (and yeah I was one of the horrible presenters and can admit that, but hey it was my first time) that were quite bad and have read about more that were of the same vein. It also really hard to know if a conference is going to be of value before you go to it. There is always the hype of those who run it or say how great it was after even though but unless you are familiar with the sources you won’t know whether what they say is the truth or not.

Most of the time, it is not. You will here presentations that are out of date or of little relevance to things that you will find value in. As well the conferences themselves will be structured in ways that you will have conflicting talks that you would like to see while at other times there is nothing. Or worse, it’s some paid talk by a sponsor that no one wants to hear.

And really, why pay for something when all the info they are going to talk about is already online somewhere? Most of the time what is being talked about is something that is already known by those who really cared and isn’t bringing anything new to the table.

It’s pretty easy I think to see where a lot of people would get their feelings on conferences. Overall I’d have the same feeling if it wasn’t for a couple experiences I had through conferences.

But isn’t it right that all this info is online? It is but then it isn’t. There is lots of info out there on lots of topics. But can you trust what you find? There are tons of php tutorials out there that talk about mysql and give examples, BUT how many are out there don’t mention mysql_real_escape_string. I would say, in general, the more specific the conference the better it usually going to be. The people chosen are usually better known in the community for that specific topic. When you have a larger topic, like Web or Higher Ed, someone who might not be a real expert in field. They might be the person talking because they are the one who sounded like they know it better then the rest of the group, but that doesn’t mean they are really giving what is needed. When it comes to a more generic conference, the organizers don’t know enough usually about the smaller topics to pick who would be best to talk about it, or are even given a person who should talk about it counting on what the conference is.

The one thing you don’t really get online though is the ability to meet similar people and talk about a shared interest. People might lead you on to things that you never would have thought of or point you towards tech you weren’t aware of. You may have even seen it talked about before but never fully grasped that it was what you were looking for. While there are forums, mailing lists, and chat rooms that you can go to, talking in person can really help you learn about the things that you never knew to really ask.

As well, speakers may say things “off script” that are also of great value. One of the talks that I took the most home from was the APC @ Facebook talk at PHP|Tek 2k7 that opened my eyes to a lot of the possibilities of tech i had never really thought about. While I had read about caching online and got some of the points, it wasn’t until I saw it fully laid out by one of the engineers behind Facebook that I saw how it all came together in a grand symphony of pure awesome. As well, there were a ton of people in the crowd who questioned him on stuff that, while at the time I didn’t realize I cared, after I got back up into the hotel room and played more I realized that I would have had the same question and glad to have the answer. I’ve tried to pass out the slide deck from the talk and it really doesn’t do it justice at all and doesn’t give you that needed feedback to really understand what he’s saying.

And lastly I’d like to include another point made by Rahsaan

Rahsaan – “And some people learn better at [conferences] it all depends on the person.”

which is also very true. While for me overall I prefer to tinker myself, there are a lot of people who would rather have someone walk them through things and not just read it off a paper.

Well, that’s about all I had to spew on the subject. I hope I gave you some insight to both sides of conference debate and maybe swayed you a little. I hope that people from both sides (and the middle) come in and put in anything else they feel on the subject. For me, while I won’t be at a conference very often, hopefully I will catch you at one at some point so we can talk more in person.

 

I personally found the article pretty interesting!  I think that there are a good amount of positives and negatives to something similar happening in the United States.

Here’s the full article:

The Chartered Society of Designers has filed an application to the UK Government to approve a system of professional certification for designers. A much-needed step toward elevating design’s status? Or an expensive irrelevance?

As our sister title Design Week reported, the Chartered Society of Designers has applied to the UK’s Privy Council to allow it and other professional bodies to be entitled to assess and award designers with ‘CDes’ chartered status. Designers would then join the ranks of other ‘chartered’ professionals, such as accountants, surveyors and engineers.

How will it work? “To gain the CDes credential, designers would be assessed on their professionalism, skills, knowledge and creativity, the last of which would be gauged ‘much in the same way that degree courses manage to appraise creativity’, says CSD chief executive Frank Peters,” Design Week reports.

So, would the design profession in the UK benefit from such a scheme? Peters says that its aim is to raise the status of design as a profession. For graphic designers in particular this remains an issue – witness the recent furore over a Times article on the NHS 60th anniversary identity in which Tory MP Greg Hands stated “Surely adding two digits doesn’t need to be outsourced at all. Civil servants can do this themselves. Modern graphic design packages surely allow anyone with an average brain to design something as good as, or better than, what we see in front of us here.”

Graphic design is not accorded the respect that its practitioners believe it deserves, but would adding the letters CDes after your name solve this?

Some points for:

*Other professions are accorded status at least in part through a commitment to providing a level of service that is guaranteed by their chartered status. Graphic design could benefit similarly

*By acting now, designers can take responsibility into their own hands before the UK government does it for them. In a lengthy reply on Davidthedesigner’s blog, Peters raises this, pointing out that the Government has recently sought to licence estate agents and landlords: could designers be next?

*It will enhance the sense of community, bringing together a disparate occupation

*It will distance ‘proper’ designers from cut-price, ‘knock out a logo for £50’ merchants – graphic design will no longer be something that ‘anyone’ can do.

Some points against:

*Designers may not trust the assessment criteria and process

*Clients won’t care about it

*It will load extra cost onto already stretched businesses

*It will make design too exclusive. Some of the most interesting designers did not originally take formal design qualifications – Erik Spiekermann, for example, studied art history as his first degree, Michael Wolff was an architect, Adrian Shaughnessy describes himself as a ‘self-taught’ graphic designer. If CDes status insists on a graphic design degree will it exclude some of our more original thinkers?

*Being ‘certified’ is just not very cool. This latter point may sound frivolous but there are very many small design practices who will look on the idea of ‘certification’ with horror. Designers are not natural ‘joiners’ and may prefer to try to raise the status of what they do through a less prescriptive, formal approach.

UPDATE: In a lengthy contribution in the comments section, CSD chief executive Frank Peters has clarified some points. CDes would not be exclusive to CSD members, he says. Therefore it is not, as some have suggested, just a means of recruiting more members for the organisation. CDes will accredit a range of competencies, creativity being just one. Assessment would be done by “peer review of designers qualified in their field.” There will be no insistence on any degree in any discipline: “a set of competencies need to be demonstrated – how designers come about those competencies is up to them.”

Peters says in the Design Week piece that the Privy Council should reach a decision within three months.

What we want to know is what you think of the idea? Do you see the benefit of being a CDes?

I believe that associations, certifications, etc. all bring industry professionals into a private sector that separates them from the individuals in any industry that “claim” to be a professional. In that, other business owners could potentially hold a higher value for individuals and businesses that are part of such an association or certified in an industry specific skill. While it may cost me money out of my pocket to become certified, in the end it may be worth it.

In the end, I truly believe that client education is the most important factor of helping a potential client understand why your education, certifications and experience are what separates you from “the other guy”. In the end, it all comes down to one thing: your portfolio. To me it’s what separates the pro’s from the hack’s. That said, I could vote either way on this subject matter. If our industry as whole when “for” it, then I would more than likely go with the flow and the same for the opposite situation.

There have been a few questions asked on Facebook and Twitter after I posted this link, I encourage you to post your own here and discuss. Some of the questions were:

• Who would decides on the criteria for certifications?
• Who decides if that criteria is “fair”?
• How does this affect real industry professionals who simply choose not to participate?

What are your thoughts on this subject? Please voice your opinion!

 

For most of us, it’s a challenge to get your work done and focus with all of these other distractions in front of us on a daily, hourly, and even down to the minute basis.

I am writing this article to hopefully help some of you (and myself) to realize that More, is Not Really More. For about 6 years straight I worked two full time jobs. A day job as a designer / front end developer and at night at home doing the same with my own clients. (Now, don’t get me wrong, I truly feel that if I did not put in and earn my own, through much hard work, that I would not be where I am today.)

As progressions moved forward in my career I started to find out that being “plugged-in” 12-14 hours a day was not only killing the creative inspiration engine inside of me, but also making me dislike the career that I love so much. When you realize thoughts like that in your head, it makes you realize that you need to do something about it. That you need to change your process and figure things out. So, that’s what I did. Since then things are much better.

Here’s what I’ve noticed over the past year or so. These are just a general observations watching from emails, twitter, facebook, instant message, etc. Most designers, techy’s, or just in general “computer” people:

• begin tweeting, facebook status updates, blogging, instant messaging and emails as early as 5am and continue, literally, all day long!
• stop tweeting, facebook status updates, blogging,instant messaging and emails as late as 3am

On top of that, most of these same people are in meetings, phone calls or simply just performing what they do for a living. Where it gets interesting is that most of these people will also admit that they feel something is “wrong” if they are not “plugged-in” to their feeds and the internet throughout the day. Which is where you see people standing at the gas pump reading their streams!

So, where does that leave us? What does that say about our society and us as individuals in general? What does that say about the quality of our work and our focus?

In my opinion those are some serious questions! What would your clients or boss say if he/she knew that throughout the day you’re clicking on twitter/facebook and RSS feed links, reading posts, then talking to people online all day long? Do you think they would feel comfortable and confident in your work? My first instinct is, probably not!

The overall point that I am trying to make is that over the past five years or so there has been and increasing rate of the need to be plugged-in constantly. People tweet, facebook,instant message and blog literally all day long over a 12-15 hour time span. I think that we’re missing out on life, friends, family, hobbies and all the “real” important aspects. We’re becoming less human and more digital and I truly believe that it’s making our work, creative process and habits worse and worse. It disturbs me.

After all, it’s a lot easier to grab a copy of Helvetica Nueue, grab condensed, do some bold and ultra bold and call it day. Rather than going out and buying a font, or heck, even taking the time to creat your own. Now, that’s just one example, this type of example could relate to all sorts of people and idustries.

Here’s what I have tried for a few months to try and change my daily process:

• checking emails only 3-4 times per day, closing my mail application inbetween sessions so that I can’t see that wonderful little red star indicating I have MORE mail to read and respond to.
• marking my instant messenging programs as away, when I am working, or simply signing out of them
• closing / minimizing social apps like tweet deck and checking once an hour or so. Or simply closing it down all the way.
• opening interesting links in tabs or bookmarking to read later (blogs, forums, etc)

In almost all cases, I have failed. Why? Because it’s literally addicting. It’s like smoking or something! I have found now, that the only way to improve, is to stick to a process and be strong about it. It takes a lot of discipline, especially if you’ve worked this way for quite some time. To date, I continue to work at this new schedule and struggle with it daily. Nonetheless, it’s a daily battle.

What’s funny is that I typically end up working 1-2 hours more, per day, to complete my tasks because of all the time wasted on the social networks and internet. Right now, it’s the only way that I can compensate my time and meet deadlines. I imagine, the more and more that I “look” at my days being 1-2 hours shorter, by eliminating these distractions (because, that’s all they really are), the more appealing that change will become, in my head.

In the end, my opinion is that More is Not Really More. You’re not gaining anything by tweeting all day, or updating your facebook status, or commenting on a blog. Some may argue, “I am gaining traffic to my website” or this or that, but seriously, I doubt it’s enough to make an impact. For some, there’s probably hard evidence, but for the vast majority of us, it’s a gain that is only in our heads of some type of virtual social acceptance. (please make no mistake, I am a victim of these “gains” too)

I think the bigger picture of what I am trying to say here is: If you want more traffic to your site, or you want to build your business, or a reputation: DO GREAT WORK, FOCUS ON QUALITY, OVER DELIVER. Don’t sit and spend all your time online, tweeting about useless information that nobody even cares about. Or smacking the #nwindiana hash tag on everything so that your the “king” of some list that means absolutely nothing.

Now if that’s not good advice, then I don’t know what is, seriously. In fact, I’ll take some of that advice myself, because we all need it in my opinion.

So, I challenge you to ask yourself, is More, Really More? Can you make it through half of a day without being online, or starring at your cell phone? Have you tried? Please, let us know your thoughts!