Gavin DeGraw - Face the River

Gavin DeGraw – Face the River

Multi-platinum recording artist Gavin DeGraw has released his very personal new single “Face The River,” which is the title track from his forthcoming album out May 20 via RCA Records. On the track, written by DeGraw, his distinct intonation quivers above sparse piano before the organ-laden beat simmers. This slow-burn catches fire on a heavenly hook as he croons, “Try to face the river. I cannot…

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Happy Friday Folks! Check out these amazing illustrations of famous author’s lives with fun facts over on HuffPost Books.

If you happen to be both Italian and liberal, then you’ll probably like the new Italian edition of the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.it/

From first-ever partnerships with iconic retailers to internships with the Boston Herald, students from Academy of Art University’s School of Fashion are on their way to influencing the styles of tomorrow. We’ve compiled an article roundup of what’s been happening in the department!

The School of Fashion provides students with the access to tools and cutting-edge facilities needed to help them bring their passions and creativity to the next level. Offering degrees in Fashion, Costume Design, Product Development, Styling, Textile Design, and more, the School of Fashion is buzzing with updates from all angles of the industry.

Check out these five articles in case you missed them!

1.   GANT x Future: Iconic Retailer Partners with Design Students
By Vivien Moon, Fashion Journalist with an MFA from  Academy of Art University

This fall, in the heart of San Francisco, a Menswear Styling class worked on a project unlike any other in the industry: reinventing the classic white button-down. Except this isn’t an ordinary school project but a collaboration between the iconic US retailer GANT and the Academy’s School of Fashion. (Source:The Huffington Post)

2.   Academy Grad Helps People With Disabilities Find Stylish, Accessible Clothing
By Dorothy O’Donnell, Staff Reporter for Academy Art U News

In 2008, Stephanie Thomas realized she needed to come up with her own solutions for helping disabled people with their clothing challenges. Today, she is a stylist based in Los Angeles who specializes in working with disabled clients, including athletes and actors that she dresses for red carpet affairs. (Source:Academy Art U News)

3.   “Facts Are Essential’’: Online Fashion Journalism Graduate Student Kenlyn Jones’ Path to a Boston Herald Internship
By Tyler Drinnen, MA Fashion Journalism student and Fashion School Daily intern

On top of being an MA student in Fashion Journalism in the School of Fashion at Academy of Art University, Kenlyn Jones is currently is an adjunct faculty member at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For anyone else this would be a full plate, but not for Jones, who recently began a coveted internship with the Boston Herald, one of the two largest dailies in Massachusetts. (Source:Fashion School Daily)

4.   Alyssa Watson: When Fashion Meets Technology
By Academy of Art University

When School of Fashion BFA student Alyssa Watson heard about the 2016 Met Student Design Competition, she knew the challenge was meant for her. Watson had been exploring using 3D printing and fiber optics in her designs; she used cutting-edge technology to construct a garment which won the competition’s top prize. (Source: Academy of Art University)

5.   10 Basics For The Modern Fashion Journalist
By Faye Harris, MFA Fashion Journalism candidate, Academy of Art University

Fashion journalism is a highly sought-after career, and one that’s not necessarily understood in its entirety―and that’s because it’s so multi-faceted. Even though the digital world of online publication is dominating, a fashion journalist can convey news through a plethora of media channels including magazines, newspapers, websites and online publications, blogs, social media, television, books, and more. (Source:The Huffington Post)

thepowerofblackwomen:

1. “You can’t be hesitant about who you are.”

What’s not yo love about Viola Davis? She’s talented, beautiful, history-making actress. She stars on one of the most thrilling dramas on TV, “How To Get Away With Murder.” Her red carpet game is on point. She’s making moves in front of the camera and behind the scenes. She’s outspoken, consistently sharing nuggets of wisdom and speaking truth to power when it comes to sexism, racism, and ageism within the industry.

In celebration of her 51st birthday on Aug. 11 below are some of the wisest, realest things Viola Davis has ever said:

1. On what Hollywood doesn’t get about black women:
“The one thing I feel is lacking in Hollwyood today is an understanding of the beauty, the pwoer, the sexuality, the uniquesness, the humor of being a regular black woman.” – Essence

2. On criticism on her role as a maid un “The Help”:
“The black artist cannot live in a revisionist place. The black artist can only tell the truth about humanity. Humanity is messy. People are messy… We, as African American artists, are more concerned with image and message and not execution. Which is why every time you see our images they’ve been watered down to a point where they are not realistic at all. It’s like all of our humanity has been washes out. We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth tellers.” –  "The Tavis Smiley Show"

3. On being a role model:
“A 25-year-old white actress who is training at Yale and Juilliard or SUNY Purchase or NYU today can look at a dozen white actresses who are working over age 40 in terrific roles. You can’t say that for a lot of young black girls. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.” – New York Times

4. On dealing with haters:
“I don’t have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn’t love me has to say about me.” – Oprah’s Oscar Special

5. On the key to true diversity in film:
“You can’t shine if you have two lines in the background as a bus driver. You can only shine if you’re included in the narrative, and narratives start when you put pen to paper and you use your imagination. You just tell a story. That’s all you do. You tell a story. You don’t put any boundaries on it. It’s infinite and that’s the only way we can do what we do is that people use their imaginations so that we can be included in it.” – Essence

6. On honoring your individual womanhood:
“Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.” – BuzzFeed

7. On serving others:
“They say to serve is to love. I think to serve is to heal, too” – Variety’s Power od Women Luncheon

8. On being yourself:
“You can’t be hesitant about who you are.” – Playbill

9. On #OscarSoWhite controversy:

“You can change the Academy, but if there are no black films being produced, what is there to vote for?” – Viola Davis on the Academy Award’s diversity issue

10. On the obstacles for women of color in Hollywood:
“The only thing that separates women of color from else is opportunity.” – 67th Emmy Awards speech

11. On learning to find pride in who you are
“I believe that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, truly being who you are. And I’ve spent far too long apologizing for that-my age, my color, my lack of classical beauty-that now at the age of, well, at the age of 46, I’m very proud to be Viola, for whatever it’s worth.” – 2012 Crystal Award speech

12. On embracing her natural hair:
“I took my wig off because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am.” – Essence

13. On the importance of complex representation:
“It’s time for people to see us-people of color-for what we really are: complicated.” – New York Times

14. On becoming a leading lady:
“I will be bold enough to say, I have gotten so many wonderful film roles, but I’ve gotten even more film roles where I haven’t been the show. It’s like I’ve been invited to a really fabulous party, only to hold up the wall. I wanted to be the show. I wanted to have a character that kind of took me out of my comfort zone, and that character happened to be in a Shonda Rhime show. So I did the only smart thing any sensible actress would do: I took it.“ – Television Critics Association Press Tour

15. On the power of black women:
"As black women, we’re always given these seemingly devasting experiences-experiences that could absolutely break us. But what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master cals the butterfly. What we do as Black women is take the worst situations and create from that point.” – Essence

Source: Huffington Post

The Huffington Post, April 28, 2015:

In traditional, Western culture, gender identity is often considered a binary concept: You are either male or you are female.

This restrictive and defining construct makes it difficult for our society to understand people like Bruce Jenner, who recently came out as transgender, because they don’t always fit neatly into a box. While some transgender people move from one end of the gender spectrum to the other when they transition, other transgender people exist somewhere in between, embracing both genders, neither genders or a multiplicity of genders.

Ultimately, by changing and broadening our definition of gender identity, we can not only better understand it, we can truly embrace it.

In Native Hawaiian culture, for instance, the idea of someone who embodies both the male and female spirit is a familiar and even revered concept. Gender identity is considered fluid and amorphous, allowing room for māhū, who would fall under the transgender umbrella in Western society.

“Māhū is the expression of the third self,“ Kaumakaiwa Kanaka‘ole, a Native Hawaiian activist and performer told Mana magazine. "It is not a gender, it’s not an orientation, it’s not a sect, it’s not a particular demographic and it’s definitely not a race. It is simply an expression of the third person as it involves the individual. When you find that place in yourself to acknowledge both male and female aspects within and accept the capacity to embrace both … that is where the māhū exists and true liberation happens.”  

As an upcoming PBS/Independent Lens documentary "Kumu Hina,” about a transgender woman and teacher, shows, māhū are thought to inhabit “a place in the middle.”

Māhū are valued and respected in traditional Hawaiian culture because their gender fluidity is seen as an asset; the ability to embrace both male and female qualities is thought to empower them as healers, teachers and caregivers.

That ability also helps when it comes to navigating life’s challenges.

“I didn’t take to life as my family’s son,” Hina Wong-Kalu, the subject of Kumu Hina, says in Mana. “I wanted to be their daughter. However, for me to expand my own personal journey and the challenges in my life, I’ve had to embrace the side of me that is the more aggressive, the more Western-associated masculine when I need to. But that’s the beauty of being māhū, that’s the blessing. We have all aspects to embrace.”

Kumu Hina premieres on PBS on Monday, May 4 at 10pm EST (9pm CST).