Next up, another Rockstar agent has taken time out of his day. Come on up, guys. Has taken time out of his day, driven all the way here from Orange Beach, is it, Richie? Mm-hmm. Welcome, Ricky Grewth, and Neil. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Zero to Diamond podcast. I'm your host, Ricky Grewth. I'm on a mission to help reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry by helping you master your skills on the phone, conquer your fears, and change in your mindset. Now, let's get into the show. Started out my career about the transaction, and that's why I lost everything. And so when I reversed it and I said, that's the ticket, then it took me another six years to actually build that up to get to 100 deals a year, to hit number one in the state, and all that good stuff. But what I found out at the top was that there is no top. Once you get there, you realize that that was just a mirage. Now there's this whole other mountain. And so the next mountain for me is, I started writing books, because when you are trying so hard to be successful, you spend all your off time researching and learning and trying to figure it all out. So when I finally figured it out, and I got my business to where it was pretty automatic, now I have all this free time that I was researching, trying to figure out the business. What am I gonna do with all this time? And so I had to fill it up with something. So I started writing about my experiences of losing everything and what I had to go through to actually figure out how to build the business correctly. And so that's why I started writing. And I did a speech in Biloxi a couple years ago. It was my first speech, and my last name spelled wrong. And I had such a good response from the crowd, they really resonated with what I said. And that was my aha moment, that I needed to really press forward and finish the books and start trying to spread this message. So you believe in giving back? You know, I've been in real estate technology now for nearly a decade, and the best real estate agents, they build up communities and they give back. But he's not just trying to give back to the community, he's trying to give to people like you.  Like he actually wrote books to give you step by step by step instructions to how you get there, and then if there's a crash, he wrote another book, what do you do next? How many of you are a real estate agent during 2005 to 2008? And that pain. So he really does care about you guys, and he's not a broker. He actually doesn't even have a team. He doesn't even want one. I asked him, I said, why don't you want a team? You want a broker? So he doesn't have any ulterior motives here. He truly just wants to give. And so with that being said, how are you giving now? Who do you coach?  To see the new agents? Is it the top producers? Who do you choose to help? Is it everyone, or I mean, who's in your coaching group? So go back to your question about why I do this. After I started writing the books and going down this journey, because just so you guys know, I never did social media until January last year. I didn't build my business with social media. I did it all phone calls and emails and relationships. And when I started writing, that's when I decided I needed to try to dive into social media and figure it all out. So as I'm doing this and I'm writing and I'm doing these speeches and I'm talking to people and learning stuff, I realize what my bigger why is, with why I'm doing all this, and that is to reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry. When the market crashes, it's an incredible way to look at this. When the market crashes, what I learned through the market crashing is that when the prices fall, transaction fall, buyers wanna buy right now while the prices are down and sellers gotta sell, they're in trouble, the market crashed. There's all this urgency in the market and all the agents leave the business because they don't understand this, they're scared. And so what my strategy is to reduce the failure rate is that I wanna build up this message and get it into everyone's head that you don't have to be worried about a crash and how we're gonna handle it. And when the next crash happens, less agents will drop out because of the message and thus reduce the failure rate. But a side note is I'm already reducing the failure rate. I get emails and messages every day from agents saying that they found me or they were about to quit or something was going on and now they've got it. They've got some momentum. They have some sales, they have some listings. They're understanding that it's not about the deal. It's not about do you wanna buy or sell? Who do you know that wants to buy or sell? That stuff is out the window. Technology's gonna replace all that because people don't wanna feel awkward. They'll just go online and do it. It's about what can I do to help you? What do you want to do and why do you want to do it? And focus on that short and long term. Those are the agents that are gonna survive this technology boom that we're in at the end of the day. So you didn't use technology in the beginning and we've heard a lot about technology and I'm a technology guy. I love marketing. I love technology. I study engineering. I love this stuff. I spent my life dedicated to studying technology but you were able to, you talk about relationships. Like it's not about getting the deals. It's not about getting the commission. Like these are people, they're people. And so you said like you cracked that code. Give us a tip on how to maintain relationships the best way. Like what are some of your secret sauces like that one thing that if you do consistently you can maintain a relationship forever. Not a transaction, not a month, not a day, but forever. How do you do it? But what's the secret sauce? What's the one thing? I think the first thing you gotta realize is that business is unlimited. There's more business for each and every one of you than you can ever handle in your whole life. You could work 24-7, never sleep for the rest of your life and never scratch the surface for what is available to you regardless of market conditions and seasons. You know like right now we're going into a winter season. Things start to slow down a little bit. This is when I sell a lot because all the agents lay down because they're going to all these parties and they've already made enough sales. They don't need the money or they're just waiting to reset after the first of the year. That's when I'm closing the gap on the people ahead of me and getting away from the people that are still behind me because they're slacking off. When a top producer is on vacation, I love it because I'm gaining on him, right? And so business being unlimited and not being bound to the limitations that you set in your head about there's only so many leads, there's only so many transactions. This is why there's several hundred people in this room and thousands and thousands of agents in the area because it's unlimited. If one person could do all the deals and it were limited, I would have already figured it out and none of you guys would have a job. Seriously, so that's a big, big point I want to say and how you create the relationships. I don't care where you get your leads from. It can be online leads, Facebook, phone calls, expired for sell by owners, your mom. It doesn't matter to me, right?  Didn't know if there's something I could do for you today, right? Focus on the answer and go deeper, right? The next thing is if you don't want to do anything today, is there an agent that you would work with if you were to do something? In the future, okay? That's a really important question because you may have a really good conversation with a prospect and think I have this future client, we're gonna do all this business, but you don't realize they're moms and agent or brother or best friend from high school. I think it's a crucial question to figure out where you stand in the pecking order where then you can decide how you want to proceed, right? And then that is the basis and the foundation of the relationship in which from that point you need a system in place to stay in touch forever to stay relevant. Well, you get on some many, many points there, but you also have a major brand online. You know, at the end of the day, when he's talking about dig deep or go to sleep, you know, you can have one person and if they're in a good community, every year they may know five people, 10 people, 15 people that are buying or selling a home. Like it's not, you can crack that code quickly. So if you treat people like they're worth, not one transaction, I don't care if it's a $300,000 property, $9,000 commission, but what if they're really worth like $100,000 next year? What are you willing to spend on that relationship? What was your time? How much would you invest? You would look at them completely different if you thought that was the case, but you can't go in there with the expectation.  You're coaching online for free, by the way. He's coaching online for free. You also have a major Instagram. So you kind of like a media company, right?  So if you wanted, if someone here wanted to work with you, if they wanted to follow you, where would they go? Okay, so last year when I finally did start the social media thing, it was to build a brand in the coaching world. My goal is to reduce the failure rate and I'm gonna do it by bringing awareness to all the things I said today. It's really important to me. It's just why I'm doing this. I could be at the house right now making phone calls, trying to make another million dollars, but I'm here doing this for nothing. I created a complete course of all of my mindset, everything I do, I wrote two books. I do live training twice a month on YouTube. ZeroToDiamond.com is where you can find all of my stuff. And it's 100% free. The reason it's free is a couple of reasons. One, when it's free, I can give you everything I have and not have to worry about it. Am I holding something back that you'll have to come back and pay me for? Or give you half a video and say, now you have to pay me $80 to see the rest of it. I can just give it all to you, right? That's my personality is just to give. And on the back end, I'll get paid eventually on books and speeches. I'm not really worried about it. I don't need the money. I want to build a brand and I want to create a movement to reduce the failure rate. And so that's how I'm going to do it. So everyone give Ricky round of applause and it's Ricky Karuth, C-A-R-R-U-T-H. That's right. All right, thanks for your time guys. Good luck out there. Thank you.


Listener Robert says, I wanted to send this tip over in case it hasn't been covered and it has not. If you are trading in an iPhone or Apple device that still has AppleCare Plus on it, you can get a prorated refund on the unused portion when trading it in to Apple. He says, I traded in my iPhone 12 Pro Max for 790 bucks, plus I called Apple and asked for a refund on the AppleCare Plus that wasn't about to expire until November of 22. I got another $118 for that, which made the trade-in even better. Normally, I would just sell the phone on eBay and include the AppleCare, which helps the selling price. But the Apple deal was pretty good this year. I hope this helps. Yeah, I've always erred toward the side of using eBay for devices that have AppleCare for exactly that reason because, you know, otherwise you're not getting it back if you just trade it in, you know, it's handing it off to the next person. But Apple, it seems, will take it back from you if you're trading it into them. To them. So, yeah. I like that. That's pretty good.


Next up we're gonna be hearing from Rackspace and they've got some really cool demos and news as well and so they're gonna start off with a quick video. One of the reasons that the Intel partnership is so powerful is that we are philosophically aligned on the idea that we want enterprises to adopt this technology faster and that we want everything that we do in this space to be fully open source and create nothing proprietary. I think one of the great things about the OpenStack Innovation Center is the commitment that leaders in the community and two companies with a great track record of innovation and maturity are making to strengthen the community. The OpenStack Innovation Center will have the largest OpenStack development team that is completely dedicated to make OpenStack you know available for everybody easy to use easy to deploy and very easy to manage. We both have domain expertise and we both have common goals and we have you know common vision and hey in a year from now how should people be able to use OpenStack? How should the cloud be open for people? One of the most impactful parts of the Intel Rackspace partnership is the creation of these two 1,000 node clusters. And this is just going to you know put development on steroids for people to actually use OpenStack at amazing scale. So these two hybrid clusters will allow developers to write code test code and validate that we're actually able to deliver that promise in a way that will generate much more credibility with the enterprises that we're trying to serve with this platform. Well to tell us all about what Rackspace has been up to in the OpenStack world we have Scott Crenshaw who's senior vice president of strategy and product for Rackspace and Adrian Otto who was actually with me on stage at the last summit in Vancouver distinguished architect with Rackspace. So come on out and let's hear from you. Thanks so much we're really excited to be joining Intel in delivering a thousand node cluster if we can get the advance of the slides. We're going to deliver a thousand nodes that are available to you today we need the slide advance. Well we have a thousand node cluster that's available for you the community use for free that's an amazing resource that you have that will enable testing and development at cloud scale and soon we'll have 2,000 nodes available for you and to use this it's free all you have to do is go to go.rackspace.com slash developer cloud and sign up so take advantage of this opportunity. Well what we're really here to talk about today is something a bit different about containers of course containers have the possibility to transform the economics of computing through superior consolidation ratios but there's another aspect to them that might be even more transformational and that's the promise of instant compute. VMs take minutes to spin up but when you have instantly available compute you have the possibility to change the way your applications interact and engage with your users. Imagine a world where infinite compute capacity was available to you instantly without any delay that would be so transformative and I'm excited to tell you that today that dreams a reality announcing Karina by Rackspace.  It allows you to run your applications on bare metal for performance or VMs if you prefer and it's all with zero infrastructure. You can focus on your applications and we handle the complexity of networking and scale. Now before we get into Karina further let's take a look at how one company transformed its engagement with its users with this technology. I'm Andrew Odeon I'm the CTO of O'Reilly Media and we're makers of technical media so we make books famously the ones with the animals on the cover. We identified a problem which is that people are learning new technologies in different ways than just a static book rather than just reading about it people want to use it directly in the browser and have an experience with it immediately. Rackspace has been helping us with a lot of the back end technology around Docker and around containers so that we can offer these environments in ways that people can easily access them. Karina by Rackspace gives us a way to offer containers really easily to the thousands of people who come to our website and where we would really like to take the technologies to be able to support hundreds of thousands or millions of people to come who want to learn Spark, who want to learn programming, who want to learn any kind of technology. One of the things I most appreciate about Karina is that it's got great APIs so that if we want to create a new cluster we can simply spin one up and have access to it within a minute and that flexibility gives us great power to be able to do a lot of different things that we might not have even considered before. So O'Reilly's made their pages come alive their readers can go to the web page change the sample code press the run button and instantly that application is up and running in a Karina container. The results are sent back to the web page and the container is destroyed. That's a whole new experience it takes education and learning to a whole new level and it's enabled by this technology. Now this same technology is available for you today for free. Just go to get Karina dot com get Karina dot com and sign up. All we ask is for your feedback. So we've transformed the experience and the availability of compute but yet a lot of people view containers as complex or little daunting and I wonder Adrian can Karina change the game to make containers simple? Yeah it can because a few weeks ago you asked me how much faster how much easier is this approach with Karina than doing it the old-fashioned way and in answering that question it got me to thinking that any developer can do this and I made this comment that I thought my 10-year-old son could do this and that gave me an idea. So we recorded Jackson my son using Karina for the first time and this is what we found out. My name is Jackson I'm in fifth grade I'm 10 years old and I'm going to start a cluster named Foo. All right let's do it. Jackson's named the cluster and he's waiting for it to build this takes about 45 seconds 45 seconds let's see what happens next. All your clusters up. Okay. Now what are you going to do? I'm going to download the cluster. Downloading your credentials? Okay. And now you're going to your terminal? All right. You're going to do an LS to see what's there? I mean no way. Oops. It's an LA. Good okay. You're going to see the end of that directory? And maybe an LS in there to see what's there? Okay. Oh you have a docker.in file you want to source that? Okay. Are you sure? Docker.in? Okay. All right. Now you're ready to run docker.in file. So Jackson's Foo cluster is up now. And what were those credentials he downloaded Adrian? So Jackson downloaded his TLS credentials from Karina and he ran a little script in in that download that set up his local shell so that he can interact with Karina using the docker client. No proprietary tools. No. So now do you want to run a container in that cluster? Okay. All right. So we can run docker run. Today's minus IT. Busy box. All one word. You're running a container. Awesome. Now I'm going to talk. Okay. So Jackson brought up a cluster and he ran a container on it in a couple seconds. And he's using the native docker client from this point to interact with Karina. So he doesn't use a tool that's specific to rack space. He doesn't use a spool that's specific to open stack. He's using just the same tool that you would use to run a docker container locally on your laptop except it runs in the cloud. A 10 year old did this. Well let's see what he thought. There it is. You did it Jackson. Very well done. High five. Yeah. So Jackson's actually here in the audience with us today. Thank you Jackson. Jackson do you have a question? Dad am I the only one that runs containers on rack space? Oh good question. Well Scott told you about a Riley media. They use Karina. But there's another customer who who is using our cloud in a very big way. And I'd like to tell you about Pantheon. What we built is one giant infrastructure one giant website platform with the only container based multi-tenant website platform on the markets. The way this works is we have one big Pantheon and we run and scale your website your Drupal WordPress application in containers which we can spin up in seconds and we can manage millions of these containers now in the wild keeping consistent 100% software and that's what lets us do smooth scaling because we can really easily horizontally scale you from one container to two containers to ten containers in seconds and software and know that it's going to work. And because everything is super standardized as in one Pantheon we can update Pantheon we actually deploy multiple updates a day and because of that as a company we're able to innovate much faster we're able to build better developer tools and better platform and because of that it's why developers really prefer to use our platform. So we saw yesterday the example of lithium running 122 simultaneous containers using open stack every day Pantheon runs 1.2 million containers that's just one customer running 1.2 million containers in the rack space cloud. I think this proves without any doubt that rack space can take containers to cloud scale but Adrienne can you explain how this all fits together with open stack. Yeah Scott I mean in 2014 the open stack containers team formed the Magnum project and Magnum is about combining the best of infrastructure technology with open stack with the best of container technology and making them work together. Now in Vancouver I explained that Magnum is now part of open stack and that you can create a resource called a bay and inside of a bay you can run a container orchestration engine there are three choices today in Magnum you can run Docker swarm Kubernetes or now Apache mesos and this is great because it gives you the opportunity to use a native API so like you saw Jackson using the native Docker client in order to interact with it or if you choose the Kubernetes Bay you can get the Kubernetes API as well. Now open stack also gives you the ability to choose what kind of compute instances you make so we could run compute it can run containers on top of virtual machines or on top of bare metal. We also can use Magnum to run this same experience on private cloud. You know just as we made containers simple we also made private cloud simple the rack space private cloud delivers cloud as a service the way clouds meant to be delivered not as a complicated outdated distribution that you have to spend months and millions trying to get installed and running it just works and with the operational experience and maturity we've gained as the largest user of open stack in the world we're able to deliver an unparalleled four nines availability on the rack space private cloud so you saw Karina running on our public cloud it'll soon be available on our private cloud so as you look to run your containers at cloud scale you really only have one decision to make do you want to run it in our place or in yours give it a try get karina.com thank you very much and thank you Jackson you were marvelous thank you so much that was wonderful well I just wanted to have one quick word of warning to all the recruiters out there please leave Jackson alone I know how you think


Hi you guys, welcome back to another first impression video. This is the series where I take a look at an entire sewing pattern collection and we look at all the patterns together and I kind of just like give my first impression thoughts on what I think about the overall design and the fabric, fabric choices, fit including pattern ease and all of those fun things. And this video is dedicated to the new look spring patterns. So these are all the patterns that new look has released for spring 2024. So yeah, if you like sitting around and gabbing about patterns with a girlfriend that you may or may not know from the internet, this is the video for you. And new look is the brand that has all the sizes all in one. So you're not going to see multiples here. You're just going to see a bunch of sizes, usually six of them all in one envelope. That also means they are just about as limited in extended sizing as Vogue is very limited in terms of the petite side as well as the plus side.  And they're always the same price at Joanne, they're $3.99 always. You never have to wait for a sale. It does look like they're putting them on sale at simplecity.com now so you can save a buck. So you'll probably end up just spending that again on shipping anyway. So however your sewing math works, however your girl math works to justify wherever you're shopping for them, that's how new look works right now in terms of pricing and size. All right. So this one is a Mrs. Dress with Sleeve Variations. We have a v-neck dress with a flared skirt, sleeveless or three quarter length sleeves and optional self belt dresses have invisible zipper and waist darts. Okay. Let's take a look. Wow. All right. So this is v-neck princess seam fitted through the upper bust and then a really, really long bodice. This is way too long for her. You can see where her body is naturally curving in here. So the waist seam should be way, way, way up here. There's also a lot of ease in the waist. You can kind of see how it's just like floating away from her body kind of. But we do have this really beautiful circle skirt that's attached. I love a circle skirt. This is one with seams as well.  We've seen these a thousand times, but if you're new to sewing or if your body size and the shape of your body has changed for not a bad idea to have some of these as just like go to staples, you can hack them in about a thousand different ways, especially when they have the sleeve piece included, that makes it super easy to make a ton of different variations of the same pattern. But yeah, so far I'm getting just really the length here in the bodice. Now keep in mind whenever you raise the bodice, the skirt's also going to get shorter. So I think this is supposed to be a knee length skirt. So again, showing that it's like below the knee barely also is indicative of the something being too long. And in this case, I do think it's the bodice. But other than that, the fit is pretty good. I mean, there's no gaping here at the neckline. Kind of hard to see the sleeve opening from here. It might be a little bit on the larger side, assuming that only one bodice is provided, no matter whether you're making the sleeved version or the sleeve less version. And inherently the sleeve less version should have a smaller circumference in the arm side, but easy enough to just pinch that out right here where that seam is already provided. Here's the back where again, we have an invisible zipper, some gaping in the back. But again, that could just be because this does feel a little bit too big on her. And I also think that you could probably, like whatever you remove from here on her, you could just remove all the way down this bodice and cinch it in all the way. But you can tell really well right about here is where her natural waist is. So this is a good two inches, maybe more, too long. And yeah, same thing with the, if the sleeve were to attach here, this would be great. All of this would be awesome whenever you have a sleeve less version.  And then nice pretty skirt again. All right, so I imagine we're going with light to midway woven on this one. Let's see. Cotton blends, crepeback satin, double knit, linen blends, PK, Ponty, poplin, satin. Yeah, all of those are, all of those are great. I'm trying to think. They did leave off like lightweight twills, which I guess could be a cotton blend. Chambray would be a natural option. You could really go, I mean, any of the woven fabrics on this, which is why it's such a classic silhouette because you just can make it just about out of just about anything. So, size range. What does 8 to 18 actually mean? That means a body measurement of 31 and a half to 40 inches in the bust, which for this pattern is the most important measurement. And then finish measurement wise, we have three inches in the bust of ease, which is a lot for a fitted dress. Probably want it to be around, maybe like I'd aim for two, give or take half an inch. One and a half to maybe somewhere around there. So three inches is just a little bit roomy, but that's okay. Easy enough to fix that probably just by sizing down. So for sure, sizing down and raising up that waist are going to be two things you're going to have to look at for that guy. All right, then we have this one here, Mrs. Dress with Sleeve Variations. Now correct me if I'm wrong, this looks a lot like the blue dress that I did for that sew along. Is it? I don't remember having that many buttons. I've seen this one. Somebody I know is sewing this because this is not a first impression. I've definitely seen this one before, but I haven't taken a good close look yet. Easy to sew, button front dress has short or long sleeves, fitted bodice with front midriff, back yoke and gathered skirt with side seam pockets. Okay, great. So deeper V on this one, forward shoulder with some gathers, and then you have this under bust seam also with gathers. This is the front yoke, very flattering on many, many, many different body types, and also I want to point out that if you are fuller-chested, like typically if you don't sew an AB cup, if you're C, double D, C, D, double D, and so on, this is easier to adjust for your cup size than a one-piece bodice, because you're only having to worry about the fullness of the actual cup, and then what happens above it. You don't have to worry about anything below it, which is nice. Then we have a, what's supposed to be a waist seam, again this one's really long, the length of the high point shoulder to the under bust is perfect. That's exactly what it's supposed to be, but this one's about an inch too long. Also the sleeve, did they say they were seven eighths, or did they say they were long sleeves, because they are falling a little bit short on her. Seven eighths length sleeves are so confusing to me, they don't look intentional, they just look too short, and they make her arms look so long. Look how long her arm looks. Oh my gosh, okay. And then, okay just a straight seam across the bottom, and these millions of zipper, or millions of what are they called buttons, going all the way up the top. So then we just have a couple of different sleeve variations. I don't even think there's length variations on this one. Really pretty for spring though, the length is perfect. And then okay, so we have a back yoke here with some gathers, and then your skirt attached also with gathers. Again, pretty simple silhouette, you might have something like this already. Pretty classic kind of take on a shirt, dress, colorless, but they're just really pretty, and you can wear them to lots of different occasions. It can be made for work, it can be made for brunch, a date, an event like Easter or wedding. You can really dress these up or dress them down. I think that's why they're so popular. But fabric wise, I think we're going with more lightweight fabrics on this one. So Charmous, cotton blends, crepe, lawn. Yeah, for sure you can go even lighter. You could do chalice, you could do again, chambrays a good option, satin, like a lighter weight satin. Lighter weight wovens of any kind I think would be great here on this one. All right, and then the size range was six to sixteen. So we've gained a size on the low end and lost one on the high end. So that means a bust of 30 and a half to 38 inches in the bust. That's going to give us four inches of ease, which for this one because it's kind of blousier that does make some sense. The waist here might be the more important measurement to take and ironically don't give us the finished waist, which that's like the closest fitting no-gathery type of thing. So that's interesting. Yeah, I would base this one off my waist. I can't tell you how much ease is there because they didn't provide it. So hopefully it's on the pattern pieces. Not ideal if you're shopping online, but you know we do what we can. All right, next up we have this little crossover wrap dress with this beautiful little flounce. Again, nothing new here if you've been sewing for a minute. We've seen patterns like this a thousand times. This one is described as a wrap dress in two lengths, features romantic ruffles and long sleeve or sleeveless options. Create the wrap dress that's perfect for you and the thing to look for in wrap dresses is the gaping. Okay, so obviously you can wrap this tighter to make the neck line higher, but you really have to make sure that the shape of this curve here fits that. So the right answer is actually to make this more of a curve than it is just to tie it tighter. But either way, you want to make sure that there's not a lot of gaping, which I personally think there is a lot here. I think if they untact whatever it is they did to to keep this closed, she'd be a little bit more exposed. So if it were me, I would be changing the shape of this no matter what, whether I wanted it a deep B or not, just to make it a little bit more like a contoured to the body. We also have something funky happening here, which again could be, well this is probably indicative of the shoulder length being too long, like it's trying to ride up on her neck and that's what's creating that little thing there, but kind of hard to tell too, because she is kind of tilting to that side. She's kind of got her hip popped, so maybe that's what's happening, but I don't know, I kind of see it happening over here too, so. And then again that weird sleeve length, but you do have this really pretty cascading.  They're a lot of fun to sew onto the skirt, not a lot of fun to him. The hem lasts for miles and miles and miles, and you think you're never ever going to get to the end, but yeah, bodice starts, bust starts. Let's see if we can see the back. Here's the front again, and yeah we're still having this issue. Yeah, so I think it's a combination of this shape needing to be cut back from here and then filled in through here, right? The shape of this is just too straight. It needs to be more of like an S. Okay, here's the back on a completely different model. Yeah, all that fitting stuff looks okay. Did it say it had a gathered sleeve? I don't remember that. This one's also not mimicking that, so that's really interesting to see. And then the skirt, and here's the flounce added onto the skirt. Okay, yeah the back looks pretty good. I don't know what's up with that sleeve though. Yeah, for sure not a gathered sleeve. Let me make sure I'm not losing my mind. Oh no, it is gathered. Okay, hold on, I gotta see more of her. I mean that, I don't know. That could just be a construction thing. They could have been trying to fit it in, not realizing that it was gathered. It kind of looks intentional, it kind of looks like a mistake. It's hard to tell, and what's more confusing about the back is that it is so gathered here and then not at all here. So that's just throwing me off, but hopefully when you're at home and you're sewing it, you're going to do it a little bit more intentionally. Okay, so this is going to be their largest size range. I think, I don't think they have a 12 to 24. I think 10 to 22 is the largest that they go. So that does provide the most sizing on the larger end of their scale. So that's a 32 and a half up to 44 inch bust, 25 to 37 inch waist. For reference, I am like a 14 in stores, and I would be the 22 in both of these, and I would technically be at 24 in the hip if I didn't just use up the ease that they provided, which they don't give the hip ease. The bodice ease though is three inches, which again, for a blouseier kind of lighter weight fabric dress, three inches makes sense. So shally, charmeuse, cotton lawn, crepe, crepe machine, double georgette, gingham, silky types, wall. Yeah, I love all those. Oh, and then it's lined a little bit. I'm guessing the front facing is what they're talking about? The lining being because you only need, yeah, like a yard or less. So I don't, maybe it is the whole front bodice. That could be the case too, which if that's the case, that's really nice. That's a nice detail to add, and it makes finishing that neckline a little bit easier. That doesn't say partially lined or anything. So yeah, these are really pretty if you like to go out dancing, if you like to like, I don't know, twirl. Those scripts are a lot of fun to wear around. Okay, now we have a knit dress. I love a knit maxi. I don't know what it is. It feels like pajamas. It's easy to just throw on and you can go anywhere. You're comfortable the whole time. It doesn't matter what you eat. You know what I mean? Like you're ready for just whatever the day can throw at you in a knit maxi. This one is an easy to sew pullover dress with front inset elasticized waist and narrow hem.  So you really are getting two dresses in one here. 10 to 22 is the size range. So you're getting this crossover bodice with a grown-on sleeve or you're getting this tank top bodice. So I mean that's a lot of bang for the buck. I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but think about all the different ways that you can hack this. So you could have this surplus dress in all the different lengths, including a top, including long sleeve if you wanted to add to the grown-on sleeve here. And then same thing with the with the tank top one. You could omit the waistband and have you know a full on tank dress. You could have tank top. You could leave the waistband and have peplums. You could have tunic, knee length, nitty length, you know what I mean? So you probably have I don't know what could you make like 10, 20, maybe 20 different dresses out of the same pattern. Not bad. We've got the gathers at the neckline. This is a really beautifully laying neckline. See how it's much flatter on her body than the other one was. And then the grown-on sleeve here is pretty long. You could even shorten that to give yourself more of like a cap sleeve type of look. You would just shorten this and then maybe even raise this up by the same amount that you shortened so it's not showing too much. Nice thick waistband too. I love that. I love nice thick elastic, especially to me like as you're as the size gets bigger the elastic to me should also get bigger just more substantial. It's about proportions I think. Yeah this one's a real winner bang for the buck for sure. Yeah I also love how it's flat in the front the elastic and then gathered in the back one. See how they made it flat here and then put all the gathers in the back that just again to the eye is much more appealing than if this were all in the front highlighting all your lumps and bumps that you have in the front. This one's great. She's simple, she's basic, but she's got options and I love options and also easy to sew. So 10 to 22 on the size range that's a 32 and a half to 44 in the bust. The waist is kind of negligible because of the elastic. The hip here it's kind of flared so 34 and a half to 46 on the hip and then no finished garment measurements to tell what the ease is. The ease on the bodice is going to be misleading anyways unless they provide it for this tank top version. This on when they give the ease on these things it's confusing because they include the entire width not just where your body is supposed to go but on this one if they had the ease written down there that should be I'm sorry the finished garment measurements if they had the finished garment measurements written down for the tank top that would also apply to this one. If it's a knit dress though this one I don't know this one's kind of blousy so this one's going to be in the two to three inch range the tank top can be less the tank version can be like zero to one and if your fabric is like really stretchy like like rib knit it can be even in the negatives so just depends on how you want it to fit do you want it to be tight fitting or do you want it to have a little bit of a blousier blousier look but yeah based on their drawings and everything it's it's pretty loose good one to have just in your arsenal for sure. All right now we've got a bodysuit I'm very picky about my bodysuits whether I make them or buy them so we'll see if this one fits the bill. Long sleeve bodysuit has either a deep v-neck wrap front or a mock neck I do love a mock neck. Bodysuits are stable for every modern wardrobe size for stretch knits only and the size range is extra small to 1x okay just for knits okay great so we've got a this again will be considered a surplus bodice I'm assuming I'd love for it to be double layered where this goes through here and is also attached on the side seam over here I don't think that's what's happening I think this is top stitched down so not the best not the worst also the shape of the leg is super important to me because I don't wear thongs sorry not my 20s and never really was into that to begin with but I don't want panty lines so there's a fine line between how you achieve that in a bodysuit for sure I do like this design though and like I said I love a mock neck again the shoulder length might be a little bit long we're getting that weird pucker again on a whole different girl so but I do think that the negative ease is working well here this has been graded beautifully for the ease of this I guess I'm thinking it's a cotton jersey fabric probably and then oh here it is cute little outfit yeah bodysuits are just they just look so clean and like I don't know chic almost all right so this one oh it's not like a bathing suit see this is a beautiful bathing suit bottom right I almost want them to like eat up my entire butt cheek I just wanted to hold all that in um I probably need to look into creating my own like short version like with a little bit of a short I'd have to get in and out of it every time which for the mock neck you couldn't do because you have to put the mock neck on and off through the crotch but this deep b1 you could probably slip on and off so you can maybe do like a bit of a short situation happening I don't know I just it's like maybe if I took a pair of my favorite underwear I could mimic the shape of that how much coverage that one has I don't know like I said I'm really really picky about body about body suits and in the stores it seems like every single one of them is a thong which it's like no what's the point just give me a top at that point you know what I mean like no thank you but that's just me um so extra small to two x so that's technically going to take us through their entire numerical size range even though the letters combined to those sizes together so six to 24 technically um that's a 30 and a half up to 46 inch bust finished garment measurements are going to be negative four inches of ease which I know sounds whack a doodle crazy but when you look at these fabrics and also when you look at the pick a knit rule I wouldn't be surprised if the stretch percentage was in the 50 to 75 percent range but you could even go as high as 100 percent stretch with like a rib knit so jersey spandex stretch lame ok stretch velvet two-way stretch and then across lining in a tree coat so so yeah you could do all your super stretchy knit so you're not going to get away with like a cotton even a cotton jersey I'm not sure would cover it you'd have to probably size up if you were doing a cotton jersey so four inches of negative ease sounds like a lot I know it sounds like whoa but if your fabric is really stretchy that's exactly what you want out of a knit top and I feel like I saw Brittany j jones make one of these um and it looked great on her I think it was her I can't remember exactly who I'm pretty sure it was pretty though and it looked really really good on her okay here is a top with sleeve variations easy to sew peplum top with front and back inverted pleats have three-quarter or short all-in-one sleeves and invisible back zipper okay so this is giving like simplicity vibes this might even be like a rework of an old simplicity pattern why do I feel like I've seen this before with this little pin tucky peplum thing recently last fall maybe did we not have something like this last fall I don't know but this has the dolman sleeve right so it's grown on sleeve high neckline and then you can shorten that sleeve if you want to bring it up to a short sleeve obviously you could lengthen it as well you could also make this whole thing a dress if we're talking about pattern hacking it's pretty I feel like I've seen this though again let's see the back yeah and the fit feels like it's pretty good to me I mean a grown on sleeve is always going to produce some extra wrinkles just because there is inherently more fabric there but the waist seam seems to be in the right place I mean it is drooping down a little bit but that and that's probably because the length of her back is shorter than this center back seam and when you put a zipper there there's really the zipper almost stabilizes this whole seam and so it really does show the length of it where it's not going to give you those a lot of those ruffles and and puckers in the center back of you normally would see that's probably what's happening here it's just about it I don't know half an inch or so too long on her the front a little bit harder to see this seam here a little bit of a droopy droop but not too bad not noticeable I don't think it's cute little top it reminds me of like um maybe banana republic or cost plus world market no not that um remember when it used to be called that um what am I thinking of white house black market it reminds me of something that they would have in like a silk or something or what looks like silk what's really called yester um 6 to 16 on the size range again it's 30 and a half to 38 and we have three and a half inches of ease in the bust again it's a little bit hard to judge ease on a grown-on sleeve because they factor in the grown-on-ness of the sleeve so it's it's a little bit less than that but not too much less than that shally charmeuse crepe de sheen double georgette matte jersey knit so you can even make it out of jersey if you did that I'd probably size down just one though and then silky types yep pretty though simple but and and been done right nothing again none of these have been like revolutionary in terms of design um but they're wearable okay this one is missus top with sleeve variations easy to sew pull-on tops have featured pleated bodice and square neckline with elastic gathers at shoulder short sleeves are either flutter or gathered I love tops like this they just I don't know they just feel so like they're they're equal parts like hippie dippy and also like little girl doll vibes I don't know I just really love them and I also love them as dresses like if you extended them to to dress link it does give a kind of a different take on a fit and flare it's not as fitted as a fit and flare is which may be why I like it so much I don't know I just think it's really flattering on a lot of different body types and because you have all these seams all these seams going all the way across you can play around with that in terms of adjusting for your bust cup size um so there's some wiggle room that you have there that you wouldn't normally be afforded if they didn't have all these seams but it is a fabric hog because all of these you know are laid out flat and then you pull them in to become darts nope pleats and um so there's a lot of fabric through here but didn't the elastic shoulder I feel like that was like having a real moment and then they kind of all went away but here's another one I do like how it's thicker than what we saw before beautiful puff sleeve in oh which sew along was it shoot I can't remember now I think it was the denim dress we made a sleeve head remember and I had never done that before it makes such a big difference so you want to add a little sleeve head into here they're so so so easy to do no so easy it would be best on this little gathered one not so much on the splutter one doesn't really matter but but yeah cute little top and again about a thousand different fabrics are going to be suitable for this one this the fit on this one looks really good these pleats are all letting out at the right place on her body right at her natural waist again the sleeve looks really great the neckline it's not puckering it would be doing a lot of weird stuff through here if it were too big but that all looks really good I also just like how wide the neckline is on these kinds of tops there's the back so cute all right 8 to 18 that's 31 and a half inch to 40 inch bust and so they're saying there's five and a half inches of ease in the bust again are they factoring in when the pleats are closed because five and a half is a lot I don't think she's got five and a half no she definitely doesn't know for sure there's not five and a half inches of ease so I think it's a little bit misleading however they're taking their measurements whether it's automated I don't know what's happening but that that feels not correct um but what you're looking for is in that two to three range again boutique shally cotton blends crepe dishing dotted swiss oh that would be so cute especially if you underlined it and then let the sleeves sheer adorable lightweight linens silky types yeah all of your lightweight woven but still have some stability shally is probably the most straightly one that they have here but um stable and lightweight I think are your best bet in terms of making it easy to sew to I mean these pleats are not for the faint of heart if your fabric is super shifty okay now we have a skirt easy to sew short or midi length pleated skirt has side zipper openings and optional ribbon trim well this is cute that's super cute why do I also feel like I've seen this one if I gotten into the fall patterns yes I think so because I remember this I remember her definitely remember these people yeah they just made it really hard to tell what's what oh my lanta I don't know which of these I've done which I haven't these are supposedly all spring but some I have done already I know for sure so I'll just do the ones that are familiar to me and or that are not familiar to me and skip the ones that are and you guys just do your best to follow along does this one look familiar yes yes yes I'll remember loving this one if I've done this whole collection and just didn't remember any of those other patterns please forgive me please forgive me it's been a weird time bias asymmetrical skirts now this I don't think I've seen before handkerchief hem starts below the knee ends at mid cap and can be made in one or contrast fabric shorter view has straight hem and falls above the knee tie can be self or contrast now you guys know I love bias cut anything bias cut anything the more curves you have the better it looks I promise I know that you guys see these dresses and you're like I could never pull that off yes you can in bias you can the other beauty about bias is that you can buy a striped fabric and then inherently you cut it on its diagonal so now you have a diagonal stripe so it just creates this really pretty design with your fabric that you don't normally you wouldn't be able to buy it like that other than that though she's pretty simple pretty straightforward not a lot going on which means you can use really fun fabrics or fabrics you probably wouldn't normally use but they even did little belt loops proportions are all off with this like try not to judge based on this outfit with between the ankle tie and the blousey shirt and the but there's a lot happening so we're just going to go with the styling on that but cotton's crate linen type silky types and rayons yeah I was definitely thinking more along the lines of like a silk like some of those really fun special occasion fabrics I could see those being really great out of a out of a bias cut and again something with stripes or directions are really fun too so 10 to 22 on the size range that gives us a bust of 32 and a half to 44 and no finished garment measurements this also looks like an older design I wonder if this is just a re print of an older pattern so maybe you guys are so good at recognizing those I am not so much this top I've seen this top I've seen and this is the unisex shirt I do remember that one as well yep okay so kind of a chaotic new look but I do think that there were some new things in here that I have not seen before pretty basic in terms of design but pretty you know if you're looking to add more pretty to your collection if you need some basics these are all great this is probably the only one that I would add just because well I probably check my stash first to see if I have anything similar but I just love how versatile this one is if you only have one knit dress pattern it could be this one and you would be good to go but let me know what you guys think about this spring collection from new look that is going to do it for me today I will see you all very soon with the new vogue


Well, we'd like to invite our special guest, the panel to come up, I think, is going to introduce that in a few years. First, we have Cheryl McAkins, who is a managing curator of exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, where she has coordinated numerous special exhibitions since 2009. Of special note, she organized GO, a community curator of an studio project in 2012 with Chevron Burn State, and currently has organized two important exhibitions that have opened this month at the museum, including the Brooklyn presentation of Highwayway according to Wax, and, of course, Cheryl organized Swoon to Merge Model X. Keith Schweitzer is the co-founder, director of many projects, murals around New York, and the co-founder and director of the Lodge Gallery in Manhattan. He's also the director of Open Art for Fourth Art Law, the nonprofit leadership organization from Manhattan's officially-designated cultural district in the East Village. Keith was also a founding member of No Longer Empty, serving as director of exhibitions and curator from 2009 to 2011. Katharine Lorimer, a UNAPART, is a Brooklyn-based materialistic art enthusiast, photographer, curator, and live writer. As co-founder and regular contributor to the Street Spot Lodge, she is a passionate about urban art and her photographs have appeared in leading street art books and magazines, and have been in New York, exhibited in New York, LA, and Chicago. An occasional lecturer, she has recently presented her observations on street art at the New York Public Library and the Long Island University. Soon, Caledonia Currie, a street artist living in Brooklyn for the last 17 years, is coming to study at the Grand East Village. Since 1999, her point-pasting of linoleum and woodcuts in the industrial sections of Brooklyn Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx have made her work her favorite and inspiration to fans and to other street artists. Her art is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern among others. And, of course, she is currently at the Brooklyn Museum with Suley, so merrily she might have met. Yeah! Please welcome our panelist. So, Kelly, first, last year we saw this piece on the street, and it's a bit of a departure from your typical style, and that you're combining your figures with children's drawings, and wondering if you can tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you've worked with, and a bit of the story behind it. Yeah, okay. Do I have this on right here? You have one of these funny menonin-like little linoleums on the case. We'll do that later. Okay, so, yeah, this piece is an interesting one for me because I actually translated directly the drawings of some kids that I've worked with. They're my discovering the total genius of child artists in a way that I've never really seen before. You can kind of feel like the weight of the weight, and the expression is really kind of perfect when you start kind of translating the drawings. And what's going on with this piece is I was lucky enough to work with a group about two years ago called The Equality Effect, and they are a group of lawyers, actually, who work on sort of human rights issues around the world, specifically around the rights of women and children, and they were, at the time, teaming up with this woman in Kenya, the famous mercy city, and she is like... I've never met a person like this. Literally, she's a warrior queen. She's like over six feet tall, and she is a person who started this organization to protect women and girls in Kenya, and she started a safe house because there's actually a rape event going on, kind of a social situation happening in Kenya that she decided to try to tackle her multiple friends, and so she's a person who's like one minute dealing with international politics, and the next minute she's standing in front of this giant bell gate going, if the police come to take one of my girls, they're going to take her over my dead body, and she needs it, you know? Yeah, and really incredible person. So I was really, and admired the work that they did, and a friend of mine, Mike Snell, who's done a lot of sort of interesting projects over the years at a gallery, sort of we, like, together dreamed up this idea of going there to actually work at their safe house to create a workshop with the girls that would be kind of a therapeutic experience and then also to create a piece from that that they would be able to use for their work. So at the time that we went there, they were just actually in a major lawsuit against, they were suing the Kenyan police to uphold the constitution of Kenya. They were trying to get them just to enforce the laws that were already in the books.  They just don't enforce them.  And so, you know, she was like, I started a safe house, I started this clinic, I started this hospital, but I'm tired of mopping the floor while the faucet is still running. It wasn't crazy, she was like, I want to take this right to the stores. And so she started working with the government and I just sort of created this piece as a way to contribute to there. You also worked there. Yeah. You worked with a number of the kids to create art projects. Exactly. Seeing the photographs of that. Yeah. So we spent about a week in the compound with the girls and we did the school, like, these drawings and we sort of talked about the things about home and safety and strength and all different kinds of words and lots of associations and then we created a performance and they performed it for the families. And I photographed all the notebooks before I went home and then these drawings were the ones that came out of my books. All right. And did they then see the final work? Yeah. What was there?  Sadly, I haven't been back yet. But yeah. And actually, one of the girls was a girl, usually the girls were there for a short period of time, but one of the girls that I took a lot of the drawings from ended up being adopted by one of the main lawyers and she lives in Canada now. So I was able to see her about six months ago. Oh, it was so nice. Yeah, it was really great. So nice. It was quite sentimental and she remembered me from Kenya and it just was really memorable. It's great that you made that connection. Yeah. So anyone interested, look up The Equality Effect. They're totally sentimental. And Luna, you've been documenting graffiti and street art for more than a decade? Yeah. Almost 10 years at this point. Can you talk a little bit about your experience finding one of the early swimming pieces on the street? Yeah, sure. I can actually remember the very first piece of Callie's that I saw for the very simple reason that it was my introduction to street art. It was about 2005. Not this piece. Not another one. I don't actually have a good photo of the first piece because the camera I had on at the time was like the first point of shoot I bought that was so low-rated that I think I'm really at that point where you're thinking about it. Yeah, at that point I had no idea that I might, 10 years later, be interested in having a better copy of the picture. So I was walking down the way that I knew sort of knew where the White Hotel is today in Winsburg and all of a sudden this female face popped out of me from the door and because I hadn't really given street art or completing any job until this point I really had no way of putting this into any kind of context.  Yeah, I mean once you're sensitized I mean those of us who pay attention to tags and stickers and weed pastes are really you know know that once you've become sensitized you can't really understand it anymore. No, it's like once that male has been here to street art is everywhere and everything is possible street art. Just because you've seen it on the street it might be a solution. So I was actually really pleased to be invited to participate this evening in a way I feel I've come full circle and to be able to sit here with the woman who inspires me to take this journey is a great opportunity. So this actually the other last piece the mermaid piece I shot I think about a year after that in 2006 and I remember being on my way to work and being late and on the bus a flash of something white and I popped off the bus even though it wasn't my stop and ran down and ran down the street and was confronted with this beautiful mermaid piece which is one of my favorite street art pieces to this day not only because of the content of the piece but because of the memory of the joy and excitement of the discovery this was really at the beginning but looking for a street art and these early pieces really inspired me in a way that led me to where we are today. Can you talk about this piece? This is a wall on Worthington Street on the Lower East Side that Callie had maintained for a couple of years in 2003 to 2007 I think and had painted a couple of times as someone who was just getting into the scene at this point this was a really great place to kind of watch her craft evolve from early stencil pieces to increasingly elaborate line-up cuts and portraits of friends and then sort of finding the introduction of Callie to the server work and I've really come to realize that in all the years I've been doing this it's a scene that sees a lot of fluctuations but it's been a remarkable investment in all these years. Now Keith, you've been very tied to the Lower East Side community in organizing murals creating opportunities really creating opportunities for street artists and I know you did some work with a very few female street artists in cake on project and I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about how the community responded to this work and just tell us a little bit more about it. This is a this organization is called Truth and Fies Together and it's three portraits two of which are portraits of her host friends and one is self portrait and it's part of a public art program that I direct in the cultural district through its non-profit leadership organization and we program areas New York House and Long Valley East Earth Street, Central Street, East Earth Street so on. This is on East Earth Street and this block in particular in the neighborhood is somewhat neglected in a sense meaning it's stimulated at night right directly across from this wall is a men's homeless shelter and a men's health services center and this particular location was used to be a school house that had a fire along the car and it was shuttered, it's now the mom theater. So it really was a beautiful triple art way and when I invited Kate to participate in the program we immediately responded with a few of these even to the keg over time I haven't something to paraphrase and we talked about things like stained glass or things that actually belong in this thing that hadn't been seen or really looked like it's been hiding inside this entire town. So she went back to the studio and she created and observed all of that and made these in-studio on paper over the course of a month and a half and then we came back out and we retasted them onto the wall and I expected that this would take a lot of maintenance that there would be a lot of people trying to add to this mural and call it a parade. Yeah, it's like by a durian's log graffiti snack graffiti block but it was pristine, no one no one I was there was like a one point line not the other one point line but it wasn't still the third one I know there's one little yellow graffiti tag and I went to the office and I got a little pink bucket and a roller and I started to come back down and these two guys stopped and they asked me what I was doing this is getting to the effect of what this mural had in the community they said, I think in the next slide if there was one they'll see the two guys and stop me so I'm walking with this pink bucket to paint over the yellow tag and they said what are you doing and I told them what I was going to do and they said we've been protecting this is how you're working and they took it for me and they took care of it themselves and at that moment I realized that this artwork had become part of the copyright of that block and had become part of the community on that block and they appreciated it and that is one of the most powerful things to do with this type of art you know how it goes on the street is the connection all right, I think it becomes part of this course on the street there's a great sense of ownership over the piece that they're ready to push you as I say no we got this what are you doing and I love the way that when I walk through the street they see it again and again and I've seen it become attractive and become like I have a personal relationship with the piece and I'm a little sad one and so on and one of the things that you're talking about is this idea of family and autobiography and the way that that comes in and it creates a connection to people who are encountering work and I think Kelly that's one of the things with your installation upstairs submerged motherlands one of the works that you incorporated into that is this relatively new work that you created that is a portrait of your mother in various stages of your life and I think that's kind of the things we see it here I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that and about including that in this installation as well yeah so I this installation is something I've been thinking about for over a year for quite a while when we've been planning it and I've been thinking a lot about kind of climate change and the flooding of our homes of motherland in that way and then during that time my mom became sick with cancer and died and I went through the process of mourning with her and started to think about this installation this kind of a multi-layered installation of thinking about some of the loss of your own mother and that sort of initial motherland as well and you know my own mother she was this totally kind of sweetest most heroic wonderful person who struggled terribly with drug addiction for her entire life she was addicted to heroin when I was born and she remained addicted to all different substances just throughout her life and that was something that I had really been as it was quick form and in my life in the last couple years I had been working really hard to find the process of forgiveness with her and then when she was diagnosed with cancer I really kind of realized that all the work that I had been doing to try to put her addiction in the perspective was kind of all coming to this place and I gave a talk about it on if he's done good it's called and I also wrote a piece for CNN so if anybody wants to like learn more about this process or if he's for the doctor that I talked about you can look there but there's this doctor named Fabo Lante and he really introduced to me the concept that people were struggling with addictions of that magnitude where you really lose control of your own life that that is not something that comes out of a heathenism but that's something that comes out of a deep deep pain that you wouldn't ever choose that and you wouldn't you know it's not this woman was like I love shooting smack more than I love taking care of my baby and you just don't you just don't choose that and I think that I spent a lot of my life being like fuck you why can't you get your shit together you know and then in the last sort of years of our our life together I came to kind of really shift perspective and to actually be able to have conversations with her about that and to really kind of make a deep connection and a deep forgiveness with her before she died and so if you see the this this culture right here kind of what's going on in there is that the top portrait is a friend of mine who's just this most incredible mother and I think they in a way I was kind of trying to give another to my own mother to sort of mother all of us you know she's just very right she's like this many universal mother here she was at the opening I did not miss her baby and she was crying I really wanted to make a gigantic portrait of her and then there's also you kind of see some sort of demon figures and those are kind of all of the drawings that I made of my mother in the life process including the demonic figures and the drawing with my friend were all pieces you know sometimes I kind of work on a different schedule also okay I'll make that next week I'll make that next month but when my mother came out I just immediately had to shift into making that work while I was caring for her and trying to process that experience and so that was something that you know originally this show was just going to be the tree of the boats and then this thing happened to me and so the narrative of it really shifted and deepened into containing the sort of personal history of my mom and her life and of our whole process together and I'm trying to really understand her and understand understand I think it's remarkable that you bring these personal stories and share them with others and I also think it's interesting when I see something on the street that I don't understand and then some leaders find out what the back story is about we've been lucky to have that experience a number of times and your work can be so powerful particularly when I find out that the story is about sometimes I think of the story myself and it's just it's just being and I think one of the things that in the work that you've shown tonight by a number of artists I think you get that sense that these are not anonymous that they mean something to the person who's created them and I think that that's one of the things Luna and you worked with the artist C215 and went around documenting and shooting the work and then that work comes up very personal to come practice as well and very much about that family connection comes with this project it's a passion really and I think all of these works are true so I first became aware of the work of the French artist C215 in 2007 I think a friend of his comes to New York and kids did a lot of work with this on paper, on the wall and I found a photograph uploaded to Flickr and I guess at this point I should mention Flickr in the early 2000s was a real important resource and kind of hub for not just the street art community but it was where I really had my first education in the street art it was where I really was able to make personal connections with a lot of artists and so having uploaded this piece C215 came out of the woodwork and identified himself and through that started a conversation which sort of corresponded and then we actually met a person the first time a year later in 2008 where he literally showed up on my north step he had come to New York and I guess the place where he was supposed to stay fell through was he doing that show at Anaheim? no no no this was before that this was his first his first trip before he was really well known and he didn't really know anybody else he sent in an email can I crash to your place yeah yeah I was living with my brother at the time so I let him go you know what I'm going to like gamble and take a risk and put this slightly disheveled paint cover fresh in Anaheim fortunately he really hit it off and he ended up spending the rest of the week with us and in Chris I found a highly intelligent tropical very motivated and passionate artist and the one thing that was really clear from the beginning was that he was madly in love with his then 5 year old daughter Nina and at the time he was separated from her mother and the situation clearly troubled him very much and I think he was afraid that she would interpret his absence in her life to mean that he didn't want to care for her and so he started cutting and painting her portraits and in the beginning just putting them up in the town where she lived leaving them in places where she might find them on the way to school be surprised and I think as a home situation more unacceptable he decided to travel so this was about the time I met him and he was on the beginning of what would be sort of a whirlwind multi-year, multi-city campaign to paint as many cities as possible and even though he arrived with a stencil portfolio that was literally an interesting way to continue to produce new pieces literally around the clock and my kitchen floor was littered with bits of paper and he put up an enormous number of illegal stencil pieces in Brooklyn but the one thing was always Nina Nina and Nina was captured in all her many goods in that last piece she was looking for, she's looking for Lauren it's next to a mail slot on the door so I always think she's waiting for a letter that I think but this other picture was a more recent portrait of her now a sort of young preteen and I'm happy to say that the home situation is improved and she now lives with them part of the year and I asked him and I'm thinking probably hundreds I feel like I've seen at least a few of his daughters and it's really wonderful because you can really see how this process of obsessively portraying his daughter and other people how his craft has really developed and you can see in that last piece where he's in a much more colorful place and that's work we have to move a little quickly can you tell us briefly about some of the images that he's done and who's laid out the street yeah I mean one of his great passions was his daughter he's also very much interested in social justice and so he's gone out of his way to a portrait of a homeless and really to kind of draw attention to the people that might otherwise be overlooked and this was a homeless person on the streets of Dublin now Keith one question before we turn it over to a couple of our audience questions a couple of years ago you were able to secure a wall for the Israeli artists no hope and here when we see that you're in part a story about a local resident I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about that yeah this piece actually is another part of the Black Folk Art Program it's on the second street of Los Angeles where we saw Kate's hero and no hopes it's deceivingly simple and that's the power of no hopes and work it's very poetic and minimalized we're first seeing this big swamp blue and then we're seeing this little cartoon character on the right-hand side on this hungry flag and the cartoon character is recurring in the central character and it's not made in linear narrative that no hope has been putting out there throughout the years and I think that you all know this is hard it's not where it should be it's on this sleeve and this character is literally wearing this sleeve it's being threatened by this this oncoming wave of blues of this blue field and it's important to realize if you can see the flag there's a flag on the left-hand side and you know, we're conversations with no hope while it was here before we did this composition I mean the flag is a very powerful it can represent criticism or a heritage but you know, we've all been talking about this we're all feeling this process of wave of development and justification and increased cost of living and feeling like where we live is no longer our home and a flag is where an advancing force will lay claim to a land that they now have conquered and it becomes theirs so it's a powerful metaphor in this image but he did it also with a second fold where he made it a surrender flag so now you have no more character bearing the full brunt of this enormous wave of development and justification and I'm totally not entirely teasing him on the far end is this flag that you know, we all know of white flag he tries to reach for it in any way this thing's just going to collapse and he'll get his character and and no host characters are typically put in these situations where they're responding to these human conditions that we can all relate to that together they can address more complex issues but through the use of an illustrated character it disarms us in a way that we can explore and talk about it but the blue field that you see there we knew that it would invite that type of contribution and participation and there was collaboration we wanted it we knew it was going to happen it's on the second street just east of Valerie and we knew that it would happen and that conversation with Delbo was that it would become part of the case does it support or does it become part of erasing the blue part and it becomes more of a community bulletin board in a sense or does it become more of a burden in a way that has to be carried it's going to get a legal advertising what's going to happen to this blue field but I never imagined that because I think they based everything on the flag and he had never been to New York and he sent me an email saying hey, I'm in New York it's a big inspiration to me and I'd like to collaborate with Delbo's piece my character so I think there's a slide of what happened so you'll sort of see some of that the other background and the walls and in one afternoon he created a character you can see how he is inspired by Delbo he's a great artist in his own way but his character is helping Flem is visiting from UK and here their characters are meeting for the first time in New York as they've never met and Flem's character is pulling and helping assist Delbo's character defeat this awning convoy but it looks like they're dating and they're dating so we have time for a couple a few questions to give me my cue but maybe maybe we'll start here with this question that I think any number of you didn't want to answer with the increasing gentrification of Brooklyn what impact do you think this will have on Sridhar and his girls? what's happening in the city is the city is becoming increasingly sanitized it is more difficult for street artists to go to the street art that is illegal but somehow they managed to do it so I have the utmost hope that they could still find time to go to the streets themselves because we see them I mean there's a lot of murals that are omissioned but at the same time we see a lot of the illegal street art is a place where every there are people and yeah there's an increase in gentrification and development running down neglected industrial sectors and that's usually the first place street art in the neighborhood is kind of an indicator I don't want to call it the health of the neighborhood but it's willingness to tolerate unauthorized additions and the more things get white washed the more giant, anonymous glass boxes get put up the more street art disappears so it's kind of a fine line of watching as neighborhoods get developed made over that in many cases street art and public art are part of that and that being said is almost empty of street art well that relates to another question is can street art itself be gentrified a gentrifying factor or is that the absence of as you were saying I think if it's true street art it probably isn't used as a tool but often despite itself it is a gentrifying force in the neighborhood because it draws the attention of people to look at the work of the creative class and its attractive and certainly there are a lot of muddy, blurry lines these days between developers and street artists and illegal work that's a continuum I mean I think muralism definitely and by that I mean the sanction of street art it's definitely been used by developers to add cachet to neighborhoods and build value to build a great relationship and here is a question for you a question about are you nervous when you put up your art on the streets that experience of having those moments tell us a little bit about that yeah I've been doing it for so long and I still get nervous every time I don't know I've had mostly good experiences because I think of the way that I do it because the pieces are so permanent because if it becomes an issue it's so easy to take down because of the nature of the portraits because there's such a for me there's always been a kind of a desire of generosity in the images and for kind of a connectedness and empathy within itself and so I somehow kind of always managed to have like mostly pretty good experiences around putting up work but I still always feel a sense of nervousness and I don't know if that's a little question but I think each city is really different and you can tell a lot about each place okay I think we have maybe one last question that seems particularly fitting as we're all in a museum having this conversation and what kind of advice you would give to chariots maybe to artists who are working with street artists for exhibitions and within a museum context and how can create an authentic experience and for chariots to be a good person I said that's what you want to use I'm curious from another perspective I think it's interesting talking about it here but what do you think the important things are that you would pull back to I think part of the power of what I think when you put art out in the street is in context of where it's placed so I think smooth activity here is very active because it's a huge installation and you come around and immerse in this environment so I know when he exhibits inside of a gallery complex he is exhibiting and creating these installations I like the museum work I like to see curators working with street artists to create situations that they maybe don't have the budget to do and the time to do it illegally on the street I think it's a real challenge to keep the original sense of transgressiveness and energy and badassness that you feel when you see stuff on the street once it crosses any institute whether it's a gallery or a museum it loses that energy and anything that you can do to try to preserve it to communicate that same feeling of excitement is a worthwhile endeavor obviously you're going to lose some of it but I agree in particular everyone needs to go to the works of words motherless it is site specific in this huge environment it has room to grow and to express and it does retain a lot of the rawness of the work in this industry I hope that we were able to do that can I tell them the story about the fire especially the fire extinguisher so you have to understand when you're in the installation and you see the beautifully beautifully covered walls of the central space and the great washes of color that Kelly went to town the fire extinguisher in that space in a way that when we started talking to people in the museum like she's going to do one she's going to do what I'm like yeah yeah yeah yeah it'll be fine it'll be fine plastic down it'll all be fine and then as people are coming in there are puddles of water all over the floor they're coming in a little bit into the museum offices but yeah you maintain that so pushing the boundary is such Kelly actually said that the game burned a lot of leeway she pushed the team thought it would go sometimes there's a story that I'm going to tell now I'm telling you later yeah I'm waiting to tell you stories with that thank you all for being here thank you all of you


Welcome back to another book review, but before we get started with that, I want to wish everyone a happy Women in Horror Month. This will be my, I believe my second review that goes up on the channel. Second or third that goes up on the channel in the month of February, which is of course Women in Horror Month. We talked about Helen Phillips The Need last time. This time we are talking about Anaya Allborns. See, before we get, I just keep slapping, slapping, slapping. Promise I ain't as punchy as I seem. But before we get going here with this review is, I did it again! Before we get done, not done. No, before we get started with this review, let's go to Ebert for the blur reading. Ebert! With nothing but the clothes on his back and something horrific snapping at his heels. Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was still just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker's rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. But years later, the bright new future he's built suddenly turns pitch black as something fetishly familiar looms dead ahead.  But Jack knows what he saw on the road that night and it wasn't divine intervention. The profound evil from his past won't let them die, at least not quickly. It's back and it's hungry, ready to make Jack pay for running. To work its malignant magic on his angelic youngest daughter and to whisper a chilling promise, I've always been here and I'll never leave. Country comfort is no match for spying, tingling, southern gothic suspense in Anya Alborn's tale of an ordinary man with a demon on his back. Seed plants its page turning tear deep in your soul and lets it grow wild. Okay, so now that we know what Anya Alborn's seed is about, let's talk about the book. Right up front, I'm kind of indifferent about this book. I've said this several times over the course of my reviewing career, over the course of this channel. Books that make me feel indifferent, while I will rate them higher because there's nothing technically wrong with them, I actually don't like reading them. It's the only type of read that I truly, truly dislike reading. I will give this book three stars, but it's white bread.  It's just very, very basic. It's the same problem I have with a lot of modern horror. It's just very basic. I did not hate the book, dislike the book. This is the conundrum I run into when I have a book that I want to give one star because I absolutely have no feelings for it whatsoever. Maybe it should be a two star because it's just okay, but I was able to finish it so I must have liked it.  If you guys know that confusion, if you guys feel that confusion yourselves when reading a book, it's just meh, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. What do we rate something that we feel meh about? Should we rate it one because it pulled absolutely no emotion out of us? Do we rate it three stars because it's the middle of the road experience? I don't know. Do you rate it five because you just want the escape and I don't care as long as the book is terrible? This book is one of those perfect examples of how someone wanted to take an overused trope and try and make it their own. Where this book does shine is in the very last couple of chapters. The ending is fantastic. It is a great horror ending. The rest of the book is kind of just going through the motion. I think that's another reason why I'm going to give it three stars is because of the ending. I think that kind of bumps it up just one little inch, centimeter, millimeter. I don't know, above two stars. The ending was enjoyable. I was like, oh damn, she went there. There's one scene in particular at the end with the tree. That part got me. I will say because I was not expecting it. There's a certain code of conduct that mainstream horror authors don't cross all the time. King does it all the time. But there's a certain unwritten rule with mainstream horror authors that you don't do certain things. And this book does it. I can't recall. I followed Alburn's career since way back when she first started it. I remember seeing seed pop up. Am I wrong in remembering that this book was an indie book and then it became a traditionally published book? Or was it Alburn was an indie author that became a trad pub author? I don't know. She may have been a trad pub the whole time, but I'm not sure. That is no bearing on whether or not the book is good. I'm just trying to remember if that was the case. So yeah, I'm going to give this three stars. This review is kind of all over the place simply because I just don't know what to say about the book. And I wanted to review it. I wanted to give you something for it. And I'm sure there's going to be plenty of you that have your own feelings about the book. Because there's been a lot of you, a lot of you that have been recommending me Alburn's work. I've just never been able to get into it. It's basic writing with basic happenings. But if her endings are this good, maybe she's worth looking into more. I don't know. Let me know your opinion down there in the doobly-doo. But have you read seed also? If you have, let me know if you liked it. If you hated it. If you liked it. Let me know why you liked it. If you hated it. Let me know why you hated it. If you're like me and you're in different just names. Just like meh. Just spam meh down there in the comments. But until next time. I have been E. You have been U. This has been another book review. Happy Women in Horror Month. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye. Boy to people who like to sit there and like, and repeat my, my outro with me.