TED Talk Thursday – eL Seed: A project of peace, painted across 50 buildings

According to TED.com: “eL Seed fuses Arabic calligraphy with graffiti to paint colorful, swirling messages of hope and peace on buildings from Tunisia to Paris. The artist and TED Fellow shares the story of his most ambitious project yet: a mural painted across 50 buildings in Manshiyat Naser, a district of Cairo, Egypt, that can only be fully seen from a nearby mountain.”

“Born in Paris to Tunisian parents, eL Seed travels the world, making art in Paris, New York, Jeddah, Melbourne, Gabes, Doha and beyond. His goal: to create dialogue and promote tolerance as well as change global perceptions of what Arabic means. In 2012, for instance, he painted a message of unity on a 47-meter-high minaret on the Jara mosque in Gabes, Tunisia. This piece and others can be found in his book, Lost Walls: Graffiti Road Trip through Tunisia”

“Most recently he created a sprawling mural in the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood of Cairo that spans 50 buildings and can only be viewed from a local mountaintop. Intending to honor the historic garbage collectors of the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood, the piece reads, “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.”

Enjoy.

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

Mandala Monday – How to Make a Mandala in Nature with Natural Materials by mandalanomadess

Making a Mandala in Nature is the topic of today’s video. Many of us have seen pictures on Facebook or other online sources of beautiful mandalas made out of natural materials in nature settings. Today, with this short, but thorough video mandalanomadess shows us step by step how to create these mandalas. Here is what mandalanomadess says about the video:

“Learn how to make a nature mandala with this 5 step process. Get inspired, get outside and get creative making your own mandalas out of natural materials. Requirements needed: a love for nature, a resourceful mindset, creative spontaneity and a desire to let go into the present moment with the flexibility to endure many hours of squatting and kneeling over the earth.”

Enjoy!

How to Make a Mandala in Nature with Natural Materials

mandala in nature by mandalanomadness

To see more of Mandalanomadness work go to:

http://www.mandalanomadess.com/

Other videos by Mandalanomadness include:

Mandala Beach Art Creations

Acorn Mandala Design Near Rock Outcropping

How to Make a Mandala Using Seeds and Buckeye

Summer Art Mandala

Heart Art Mandalas on the Earth

See all of Mandalanomadness’s videos at:

mandalanomadess

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

TED Talk Thursday – Lidia Yuknavitch: The beauty of being a misfit

According to TED.com: “To those who feel like they don’t belong: there is beauty in being a misfit. Author Lidia Yuknavitch shares her own wayward journey in an intimate recollection of patchwork stories about loss, shame and the slow process of self-acceptance. “Even at the moment of your failure, you are beautiful,” she says. “You don’t know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly. That’s your beauty.”

“Writer Lidia Yuknavitch discovered her calling after an interrupted journey as a would­-be Olympic swimmer. Her prose erases the boundaries between memoir and fiction, explodes gender binaries and focuses on the visceral minutiae of the body.”

“She was inspired by Ken Kesey (with whom she collaborated on a collective novel project at Oregon University); her latest book, The Small Backs of Children, stands as a fictional counterpoint to her memoir The Chronology of Water, which has garnered her a cult following for its honesty and intensity.”

Enjoy this thought provoking talk.

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!