I am right handed. My left hand is neglected, I can barley make a straight line w/ it.Even when I bit my nails I would rarely bite the ones on my left hand. About every 5 years or so i do a sketch book/journal only using my left hand. I started doing these “left” books kind of as a meditation. To give value to things & parts of myself that I normally don’t use. It’s uncomfortable for me to use my left but it forces me to create & not focus on something being “perfect.” Sharing this & other things on the internet forces me to create more instead of making everything so precious & then never having it see the light of day…it has become a lesson in letting go. Right now I’m in a place where I’m trying work outside of my comfort zone.This book has been filled with a bunch of fables for some reason. Here is one i thought you might like. -pierre bennu

side note:
I only do this every so many years cause I really don’t want my left hand to get too familiar. I kind of like the fact some things feel foreign & new & perhaps that says something about me also : ) anyway back to “work” **poof**

This mock commercial for a Black Moses Barbie toy celebrating the legacy of Harriet Tubman is part of Pierre Bennu’s larger series of paintings and films deconstructing and re-envisioning images of people of color in commercial and pop culture.

Two more commercials for this hypothetical toy will be posted throughout Black History Month 2011

Enjoy!

The following article deals with one of the many elephants in the room, mental illness. The words are provided by a brilliant artist whose first hand experience gives us a unique insight into a world most of us know exists but choose not to address. Millions every year go undiagnosed particularly in the black & latino communities due the stigma attached. I thank Bassey Ikpi for sharing her story & I hope her piece helps provide a greater perspective.
-pierre bennu

here is the link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bassey-ikpi/a-little-sympathy-for-the_b_809843.html

The following is A FLY ON THE WALL perspective in the Think Tank room at “New South,” the publishing house that will be replacing the “N word” in a new edition of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” We find the Think Tank meeting already in progress…

FRED – ok lets stay focused. What do we have people

ED – what about “N-word”
FRED – No, thats cheating
ED – well F-word this is not easy
FRED – don’t be a B-word.

TED – What about “jar jar jim”
FRED – copyright problems.

(long pause)

SARAH – jigga boo?
ED – Ooooh nice I like it I like it BUT its almost too…
FRED No, that cant work Jay-Z had that song “Jigga my nigga”
SARAH – so he’s already done some of the work for us what’s the problem?
FRED – he’s now a “cultural icon” in the past few years he went from Ice Berg Slim to Langston Hughes
SARAH – but come on Jigga is perfect!
FRED – I said NO! the man was on Oprah for Christ sake
TED – but its one letter as apposed to an entire…
FRED – I SAID OPRAH!!! (pointing to the heavens) Im sorry but as much as I’d like to, jigga is O-U-T
What else do we have people??

ED – What about Green Milers
FRED – Too many syllables

[Read more]

I love kickstarter.com for stuff like this. A brilliant social experiment from the mind of Tahir Hemphill.

Some of our readers may remember Nyree Emory from her guest post here a few months back, and a privileged few might have been privy to her 2009 multi-post quest to find the Meaning of Kwanzaa. Well it’s that time of year again and she’s taken up the quest anew – read a teaser below, and visit her blog to read more! Click here to skip straight to Umoja, the first day of the holiday and of Nyree’s series.

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Now…I’m sure I can use that table runner from Thanksgiving as a mat, I know I’ve got plenty of funky cups (thanks to one too many trips to Pier One) and now, all I need is the produce! Off to the supermarket I go and since I’ve got to get food to get me through Snowpocolypse 2010 anyway…this is perfect!

A few honey crisp apples, navel oranges, green bananas & corn ears later… I had my produce!

HABARI GANI BITCHES!!!

It’s later…and the storm is showing it’s ass, but I don’t care. I am now running home with new vigor and a bag full of Kwanzaa! Museum?! Ha! We don’t need no stinkin’ Museum!! I have a real live Kwanzaa display…in MY home! TA-DOW!

So, I hook up the display, (BEAUTIFUL! I even added that statue of a slave I got in Brazil to give the display a little more “don’t forget you came from a slave” guilt), take pictures, light that first candle, say the word “UMJOA” out loud…then “UNITY”… and wait as the spirit of Kwanzaa washed over me!

“Umm…how long can that corn stay out? Just a question”

Yup. It’s coming.

Any second now, UMJOA is going RAIN DOWN in this piece! I’ll have an epiphany and the lesson I learned about Unity will just spill forth like POW!

…yup. Any second now. It’s coming. I could feel it.

Fifteen minutes later…

I peeled an orange from the harvest and ate it.

visit Nyree’s blog to read more!

black nerds unite iphone and ipad cases!

aunt jemima revolution iphone and ipad cases!

plus, other exittheaple/nerd/art gear! at our cafepress shop. (click images for direct links) )

I just finished this painting/collage a day ago. In an effort to keep my promise to myself that I wouldn’t talk about new exittheapple productions before they are done I wont tell you about the project this is attached to as its several months from even being done. I’ve been waiting over a decade to finally have the time to work on it so I’m excited to say the least. I felt like this was a stand alone image from the project that was worthy to share. Anyway, back to lab **poof**
-pierre bennu

A couple of months ago an old friend of mine put together an art show show casing his conceptual fashion design & his partners paintings. Every time I find myself looking at images from the show I can’t help but feel as though there is a story that has yet to be written that match those clothes.

you can find out more here: http://www.blacksnowconversions.com/

I hope this awesome mantra of a song and its accompanying animation are as inspirational to you as they were to me while i worked on this piece to the exclusion of almost all else in my life for the past 3 months. (lol) For more info on the musician/songwriter, visit http://stevenwesleyguiles.com

I Will Not Be Defeated from pierre bennu on Vimeo.