Inspire - Bowl of Life

Bowl of Life

Pixflow Admin — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:46:48 +0000

A bowl is a silent observer, beholder and all-seeing eye to the experiences around it

It’s subject to beauty and anger while witnessing first love and heartbreak – a bowl will hold first hands, a new idea or a mistake, but it’ll never hold anything against you. It’s the witness to the emotional evolution of humanity that we’ve always carried with us.

Do you see what I see?

Pixflow Admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 14:24:40 +0000

From illustrating for Sesame Street to exposing the New World Order

this is the story of the controversial and recently departed David Dees, unofficial artist of conspiracy theory culture. What sent him down the rabbit hole, and is there a path out?

Around the Block

Pixflow Admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 08:49:11 +0000

‘Around the Block’ is a passion project of mine that focuses on street artist David Zinn

I began work on it through my own sense of creative frustration, with the loose idea being ‘I want to go and make a film about a street artist’.

But when it came to editing it, it felt more apt for it to become an analogy for what it’s like to be involved in the creative process that perhaps anyone in a creative industry can identify with.

Much like David finds inspiration in the cracks, streaks and specks on the pavement, I personally find that getting out and finding shots with a camera in my hand is far more fluid and inspiring than sitting at home and trying to come up with ideas.

The final piece is no longer a film specifically about street art, but a study of the process involved in making ideas come to life – told through a tour of David’s world alongside the characters that live within it.

If nothing else, hopefully it encourages someone else to go out and create something just… because.

The Big Cloth

Pixflow Admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 13:21:25 +0000

‘The Big Cloth’ is a short documentary about the Harris Tweed industry on the Island of Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland

The film gives an insight into the island and the different characters who make this beautiful cloth. With over 170 freelance weavers on the island who weave this famous tweed from their own homes, it is the only cloth to have its own act of parliament protecting the industry.

A Woman’s Place

Pixflow Admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 10:04:38 +0000

Directed by Academy Award-winner Rayka Zehtabchi, A Woman’s Place is a short documentary that captures the stories of three chefs, their careers

and their shared experience as women in the culinary industry facing and overcoming institutionalized sexism. As each address the bias and harassment they’ve had to endure, we see how each chef has carved out a place for themselves in the industry – not as a female chef, but as a restaurateur, a chef de cuisine, and a butcher respectively.

Produced by Ventureland in partnership with KitchenAid, Vox Creative, and Digitas North America

The Last Mambabatok

Pixflow Admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:14:22 +0000

Apo Whang-Od is considered the world’s last Mambabatok (hand-tap tattoo artist) from her generation

At the estimated age of 99, she is now passing the tattooing tradition to a new generation in her tribe including her grand-niece Grace.

The tradition of this style of tattoo started as a symbol of pride for warriors and a marking of beauty for females in the Butbut tribe and has now taken a unique turn in their village, Kalinga, situated remotely in the mountains of the Luzon province in The Philippines.

American Shokunin

Pixflow Admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 09:26:18 +0000

Shokunin (Sho-koo-neen) is a Japanese word used to describe an individual that aspires to become a master in their particular craft or art form

I think once you start practicing bonsai and once bonsai gets inside you, you’ll never look at trees the same again. Because you start realizing this magnificent microcosm that’s happening inside every tree.

And you see similarities to trees and people. If you think abstractly enough, you can draw a direct correlation between almost everything a human being does and everything a tree does. Trees are people, almost virtually identical. We need all but two essential elements, that’s all that differentiates a tree and a human being. Two essential elements, otherwise a tree and a human being need exactly the same thing.

“I think once you start practicing bonsai and once bonsai gets inside you, you’ll never look at trees the same again.”

You know, time plays a tremendous role in human beings in terms of our character and our personality. You know when we’re young, we’re very sharp, maybe we see in black and white, maybe we’re rambunctious, high-energy. As you get older, maybe you lose some of that energy, some of that pizzazz. Maybe you become a little bit more able to step back and think about things.

When you start to look at the way time impacts a tree its very similar. Scars that looked very artificial when they were first created start to look natural as they weather and they age and they become a part of the tree that naturally occurred as far as that tree’s concerned. You can’t duplicate that. You can’t add bark to a tree and have it look natural. You can’t take away the tool marks and have it look like it was never artificially done, that’s something only time can create.

“Life and death is a very real part of the creative process with bonsai.”

When you engage in something where you are pushing the limit of a living thing’s ability to survive for the purpose of creating something even more beautiful than what existed prior to that engagement, the relationship and the bond that forms and that creative process walking the line of life and death – it is something that, I don’t know if you can duplicate.

And then, to see the tree survive and to see the tree respond—for it to get more healthy for it to grow into that design for it to communicate back to you what it liked and didn’t like and then to respond to that again and this back and forth collaboration until the conversation becomes so similar, the tree has taken on what you were hoping for and you’ve taken on what the tree is hoping for. You know, you’ve closed the gap in that collaboration. That process, it’s like a drug.

Respect is probably at the most fundamental level of being able to do bonsai well. And doing bonsai well doesn’t mean being able to make a beautiful tree, it means being able to cultivate a healthy tree through all of the different processes that bonsai involves.

If you don’t respect the fact that life and death is a very real part of the creative process with bonsai, and maybe the one thing that really separates it and differentiates it from any other media that art can be created from – if you don’t respect that line than you don’t have anything in the end except for a big dead tree. And what if that tree is 1000 years old? You know, we might be here for 80 years, 90 if we’re lucky, 100 if we’re really out of the ordinary—that tree has been here for 1000 years, do you have the right to not respect that? I don’t think so.

I think there are ways to create a bonsai well. But I don’t know if there are ways to create a bonsai right. You always still have to fall back on the fundamental concepts of horticulture, are you giving the tree what it needs? And then from the design perspective, are you respecting the visual boundaries of design? Are you creating something that is going to be beautiful? Are the lines beautiful? Is the form beautiful? Is the balance what it needs to be for that tree to be visually appealing? That’s creating bonsai well. Creating bonsai right, I don’t think it exists.

“A master is somebody who, every single day, tries to pursue perfection at their chosen endeavor.”

When I went and I started my apprenticeship, there isn’t anybody that can explain to you what that means. An apprentice is somebody who’s going to not only learn a craft but also grow as a person and observe the humility necessary to not only learn but continue to grow after their apprenticeship.

The one thing that I realized when I was apprenticing is that to become a master you know six years is the very beginning. A master is somebody who, every single day, tries to pursue perfection at their chosen endeavor. It sounds beautiful and it sounds simple when you think about being a master, ‘okay every day I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna try to do it my best.’ Well, there’s a lot of days that you don’t wanna go do it. And there’s a lot of days that you would rather take the short cut than do it as well as it could be done and better than the day before. And know that tomorrow you’re gonna do it better than you did that day.

So, I think a master is somebody that has the work ethic, that has the discipline, that has the passion and has the talent you know, to do what they do every day incrementally better until the day they die. A master doesn’t retire. A master doesn’t stop. They do it until they are dead. It’s a part of them, it’s who they are.

Music By:

C418 – Tracks used: “Taswell” and “Intro”

InFrame – Jessica Lehrman

Pixflow Admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 11:21:38 +0000

Jessica Lehrman is a Brooklyn-based photographer best known for her raw visual documentation of contemporary underground movements

from protests and social revolutions to the belly of hip hop’s underground community and its emerging artists. Her work has been featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Billboard, VICE, and more.

Special Thanks:

The Lehrman family, Flatbush ZOMBiES, Tyrone Walker

Documentary Le Cadratin (The Em Space)

Pixflow Admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 08:13:26 +0000

he documentary Le Cadratin (The Em Space) directed by Arthur Choupin and produced by ARI Pictures is about an association comprising all the trades related to the hand-crafted and traditional creation of books

typographers, lithographers, engravers, bookbinders, printers

Dante’s Inferno, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and The Golden Legend figure among the wonderful pieces of work made by these craftsmen.We would like the general public to discover these passionate craftsmen who have been working with discretion and humility on the creation of masterpieces for forty years. The association Le Cadratin (The Em Space) encounters a major difficulty today: time. They need to transmit their knowledge to make this heritage last. We hope this movie will immortalize their work and show their priceless talent.

Source by short film

Withdraw

Pixflow Admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 11:24:30 +0000

This is not a story about war, or poppy cultivation, or even the ongoing governmental issues that have been so prevalent in Afghanistan’s more recent history

This piece offers up an intimate description of a country that is just coming out of a thirteen year period of foreign military occupation. With the vast amount of negative coverage Afghanistan has seen over the last decade, reportage illustrator George Butler aims to portray a first-hand impression of how things are developing and how life continues despite the uncertainty of the countries situation.