Sculptacular

sculptacular @ foxglove gallery in milwaukee

Legendary

Jay-Z and Kanye perform "Otis" at the VMAS #watchthethrone

Get More: 2011 VMA, Music, JAY Z and Kanye West

Holy Hood

Van Der Neer Fashion Show 8/25/11 @ District 30 in Sac

Fly Phoenix Gives You Wings

Chicago band Fly Phoenix is a melting pot of musical styles—hip hop, rock, funk, jazz and R&B. They bring their many styles to the stage with a guitar, a bass, drums, keys and vocals.

The musically eclectic and culturally diverse group has been melding their sounds since 2007 when they met at Columbia college in Chicago and formed the band. Since then they have performed at notable venues and events across Chicago including Millennium Park and performing at Rhymefest.

Their music and their attitude exudes positivity and unity. These guys are out there trying to spread their uplifting soulful rock to the masses and right now they need your help! Currently they are trying to raise money for their first studio album. The fundraiser ends on the 31st, but you still have three days to help these guys reach their goal!

Listen to their plea and pledge here!

Corkage

(photo from Scott Gundersen, "Grace")

Scott Gundersen's amazing cork portrait of "Grace" took 9,217 recycled corks, and 200 hours to complete. Check out a video below depicting the process of the last 50 hours of the project!

For more info on Scott's work check out his website!

Nuffins Da Same

tight beat, dope samples. rufio - nuffins da same (ft. yae of fly high)

Boomboxed

Boom boxes are back in style! Only this time you can't carry it on your shoulder and bump music, but you might bump into one of them on the street.

Got The Power is a public art series that places sculptures of vintage stereos and boom boxes in urban cities. The intent is to create a mix tape of sounds, stories, memories, and music of cities played directly from the structure. As a collaborative project, passers by can even play their own music in the tape deck and add their own anecdotes.

Started by Bayeté Ross Smith during his residency with The Laundromat Project, a public art non-profit based in Brooklyn, Got The Power installed several boom box sculptures in New York and on the east coast as an homage to the urban culture surrounding the boombox. Or in their words—"boom boxes as community soundtracks."

Now he's trying to bring the power to the Midwest in Shafer, Minnesota (just outside of Minneapolis). This will be the first outdoor installation which could possibly reach great heights if enough boom boxes are donated and if the project gets funded.

Got the Power is featured on Kickstarter and has 2 days left to reach its goal. Check the project out right here— and the video down below!

and in looking at vintage boom boxes I came across this dope vintage suitcase converted to a boom box! dope. check out The BoomCase.

Milwaukee's Best MCs

(KLASSIK)

Twenty-something Milwaukee MCs Klassik and Oye! are a MUST-SEE. These dudes are dope and are climbing up the ladder to stardom fast.

(OYE!)

I had the privilege to be in Milwaukee last week and check out some true talent at G Daddy's BBC on North Avenue, and I must say, their show was AMAZING. They were backed by a full band— bass, keyboards, drums, synthesizer and a DJ.

Klassik is a trained jazz saxist. For the final song of their set he came out and wowed the crowd by breaking it down on the sax adding a completely different element and vibe to the room. They definitely know how to party too as they get hyphy in Oye!'s song "Party Hard" featuring Klassik.

They kept the crowd pumped and engaged, and you could tell that making good music and performing is what they love doing. Especially with songs like "Chasing the Fame," and "We Up/Everybody Down."

These guys talk about putting in the work to get where you want to be and the daily struggle. "The best part of life are the times when you struggle," Oye! raps in his remix of Phantogram's "When I'm Small."

They have shared the stage with The Cool Kids, Wale and Ludacris, the list goes on, and will continue to go on the more they open their mouths and spit fire.

Not only are they talented MCs but they are also fresh to death. They exude youth and mad skills. They are really representing Milwaukee roots to the finest.

Check out Klassik's website for a free download of his most recent EP "Death of a Beatmaker," and Oye's website for his newest EP "Brown Bomber" —also free.

And check out their videos below, #swag!

The Art of Words

Cat Glennon’s piece in Western Exhibitions' exhibit “People Don’t Like to Read Art” says it all. “You don’t need to read into it, you just need to read it,” and that is precisely what Scott Speh, Owner and Director of the Chicago gallery wants you to do.

You are encouraged to examine, and page through the pieces featured.

“I think people in general when they go to galleries and museums only spend three to five seconds in front of a piece,” Speh said.

“Reading especially slows that process down,” he added.

It took five minutes just to read one-half of Simon Evans' four-sided three-dimensional pyramid made out of paper from a legal pad.

Speh said he wanted to put together an exhibit that shows that there are strains of art that deal with time and narrative in a textual manner.

He said he sought out similar artists working with text from around the nation, some local, and some even as far as Berlin.

The show features text in many forms of media: braille, to-do lists written on vinyl directly applied to the gallery walls, video, a hand-painted book, and even framed book pages from a fictional biography of the artwork of Nicholas Frank written by himself.

Frank said he began as a writer. “It’s always been a huge component of my curating, and I’ve read a lot about art, so I tend to see a pretty close relationship between the way people talk about art and the art itself,” Frank said.

“[I see] those things as complementary rather than outside of each other. Even as an artist making work that doesn’t directly deal with language, I would still process what I’m doing in terms of language on some level,” he added.

In the exhibit words are ubiquitous. The pieces appear tedious and intricate, like the repeated swirls of the word bliss done by Meg Hitchcock using individual letters cut from the Koran.

Some include drafts with erasure marks and crossed out words. The revisions become part of the piece, like the diagrams of de Kooning’s Bell System done by Deb Sokolow.

It could take hours, a day even, to read everything in the exhibit. You become enthralled like you would curled up with a good book.

The exhibit did feature a good book—Jack Kerouac’s classic, “On The Road.” You think it’s just a book, an homage to great literature in an exhibit about words, but when I asked Speh what the significance of it was he responded, “did you look through it?”

Placed throughout the book were Post-Its written by Rebecca Blakley illustrating her thoughts while reading and documenting her own journey on the road inspired by Kerouac’s words.

All of the works featured in the exhibit speak volumes. You can’t help but read it whether you’d like to or not.

“I like art to be about something,” Speh said. “I’m very interested in artists who comment on their world and talk about their place in it and what’s going on in a contemporary society.”

The exhibit is now over, but check out more pictures of the pieces featured in "People Don't Like to Read Art" on the amfm facebook page!

*(all photos taken by Ciera Mckissick)