Art: Bombs by Vera Fonseka, @verafonsekaart
DON’T MESS (WITH A MAN)
About the author:
Bethany Saint-Smith comes to writing from a career in songwriting. The Supreme’s Susaye Greene has said, “Bethany has the instincts of an aged American blues singer. Though she’s young, there is a tug in the heart when you hear her sing that grabs you and makes you wonder what she’s lived through. She reminds me of the earthy Odetta of 60’s Folk-rock fame, or of Nina Simone’s scathingly sophisticated perceptions of life.”Bethany was born in Modesto, California. Her mother and her family came from Missouri and her father’s family came from Oklahoma, where Bethany’s Native American heritage comes through a pipeline of Black Seminole and Cherokee blood.Bethany challenged herself to break into a music scene as a woman of color after moving to San Francisco, then to New York. Writing Southern-Rock style songs with her band, she pursued aggressively in NYC, sharing stages from The Stone Pony to Webster Hall and finally at the infamous club, The Bitter End. Bethany’s music has thrived in California, recorded in Chicago, and New York, and now has relocated to Buenos Aires, Argentina to focus on her arts and Motherhood. In her time there, Bethany has written a memoir attributed to the escapism of her dark childhood to the devotion and survival of her now. She’s currently working on various writing projects with a focus on her history of brawling racism and the riots of womanhood, surviving abuse. Our Facebook page that has the bio and more info- https://www.facebook.com/saintsmithrexach
Word Press:
https://bethanysaintsmith.wordpress.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/saintsmithbethany
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/bsaintsmith
Instagram:
Bethany Saint-Smith (@bethanysaintsmith) • Instagram photos and videos
Art: Bombs by Vera Fonseka, @verafonsekaart
In the artist’s words:
I was born in the Ex Soviet Union, in Tallinn, in 1982. In 2003 I emigrated to Lisbon, Portugal, where I took the degree in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in Lisbon.
Currently my biggest production consists in 2-D work – drawing and painting. My works live in a paradoxical existence between the scrupulous delicacy of the details and the brutality of the iconography used simultaneously. Among the vivid colors that stand out in a first contact with the work and the dark side of death also present in it. All my cultural baggage is symbolically represented on canvas.
The collage of images depicting violence and despair is solidified with colorful embroidery, the presence of femininity, the solidity of feelings and colors in an optimistic view of life.
I give the clear preferences to the mixing of techniques on canvas, such as industrial adhesives, fabrics, acrylic and oil paint.
The use of weapons and bombs is represented as an inseparable symbolism of the present day. But they are joyful weapons and full of hope. Conflicts of war arise in the same way, almost unprecedented in violence that is covered in colors, in a clearly pop attitude. Pop is also a language that imbues itself in my work in the form of stencil and color.
The mandala for me is the compass which organize the elements and visual objects that I repeat and reproduce.
By this way I look for produce dynamism, movement and rotation in my pieces.
In my projects there is always the intention to represent the insatiable and boundless society, a fetish present in almost everything that we surround, addictions and chaos of the day-to-day.
I made a selection of some works I like more and which have a really special story.