Artivism

all right um

before i get started i thought maybe

just um do a quick breathing exercise

what do you think

i’m seeing some nods okay good i know i

need one

okay um so you don’t have to close your

eyes you can if you want to soften your

gaze

get settled in your seat

take a deep breath in

hold it and then let it out slowly

okay very good you can open your eyes

now think of um just

well it gets you know you’re sitting in

a chair

obviously um maybe a few of you are

standing

the reason i say this is i want you to

notice that

notice how you’re sitting in the seat

notice how your body is connected

to the chair notice how your feet

possibly are

touching the floor okay notice how the

air is touching your fingers

you know your face just notice

how you are in space right now

okay perfect all right

how are we feeling now oh

we have a great from over here allow

that to

spread throughout the room okay

excellent

all right so my name is naya uh nyah

gabriel i use they them pronouns

and i um as says here i’m an artist

an artist and an activist

it’s a little term that some folks use i

like it so i

use it and basically

i started painting uh three years ago

um sometimes i sort of leave it like

that and let people figure out why i

might have started three years ago

ah very nice i like that i like that

november 2016 all right those who didn’t

get it the first time got it the second

time there you go

very nice all right um so i needed a

little self-care if you will

for a variety of reasons and

i am a scientist by training

i um my day job i work at hampshire

college as a lab manager in the sciences

um i went to mount holyoke college and

uh

yeah yeah and uh and

so you know i i i needed something else

i needed something

um that took me out of my head and you

know that i didn’t have any preconceived

notions about i did not

i i have not been trained in the arts uh

in the

creative arts so to speak um didn’t take

any art classes

um but you know i had this this uh

a much larger bin than this of craft

supplies

in the attic um so i pulled it out and

there were a bunch of things in there

um crocheting supplies and whatnot and

including paints

acrylic paints and you know a couple of

canvases

and for some reason i just started

painting um

and for whatever reason that inner

critic

uh didn’t show up i don’t know why it

just

whatever it just did we don’t question

it

we just say okay fair enough

um and so

it’s interesting all these talks there’s

a lot of resonances

with my own experience with my own

journey

and i’ve i’ve been noticing that you

know about identity discovery

for example and creative resilience

and creating the path as you walk it

whoa it’s it’s it’s nerve-wracking

but beautiful at the same time that’s

how i think about it

i literally feel like you know i take a

step into the great unknown

and then suddenly there’s a path for me

ready to

keep walking um and that’s what is

that’s what it’s felt

like as i’ve kept painting um because i

i do this

now for three years uh and it’s it’s

become a thing you know people

respond to it and i i you know have

exhibits and all that

um creative resilience in fact is my

what i call it’s a multimodal project

multimodal because

it involves

creative engagement opportunities uh

involves

exhibitions uh facilitated dialogues

about wellness um and and also

i suppose live performance live painting

performances

yep so

as far as the the live painting so these

are two canvas panels

um they’re basically pieces of cardboard

with canvas on them

um and i try and use recycled materials

these are not so that’s a bad example

but

it’s just easier for right now so

basically what i’m going to do

first is i’m going to take

well let me explain first of all i don’t

typically mix my colors i just sort of

go with the colors as they come

and i paint intuitively

which basically means i just go with

what

works for me at the time what sort of

speaks to me

so basically what i’m doing here is i’m

just adding this is brilliant blue which

happens to be

my favorite one of my favorite colors uh

onto the canvas here real quick

and now i

i sometimes i use brushes brushes are

pretty standard right

but most of the time i don’t most of the

time i use

various different things i’ve used you

know

well this this for example is a it’s a

old

health insurance card

i don’t know this it seemed appropriate

so right now what i’m just going to do

is just scrape the paint along the

canvas

can everyone see that yeah okay great

uh so as you can see it sort of spreads

the paint out

and now i’m sure

that i could get better coverage if i

spent more time on this but

you get the general idea and

getting full coverage is actually not

the idea

the idea is to get a base

of color

upon which i’m going to add other colors

okay so that’s one and i’m very quickly

going to do

the other one because there are going to

be two

um because this whole process is a

it’s i hesitate because i

it’s kind of printmaking but it’s

definitely not traditional as you can

tell because i don’t have a press

but it is because i am going to

and you’ll see why in a minute um

now

let’s see okay so the one thing that i

like to do

is i like to experiment okay so this

particular technique that i’m going to

show you

it came just you know because i was

playing around

with materials i was playing around with

colors and this is what i came up with

okay now

all right we’re gonna put that in there

all right so the next step

uh is basically to start adding colors

um so basically these are the colors

that i grabbed

this morning um i did not plan it out

uh as that’s just i was going to i was

like

it’s got to be perfect then i was like

but that’s not how i work

i i just don’t it’s going to be wrong so

i just grabbed whatever

felt right so this here is quinacridone

magenta another one of my favorite

colors

and so basically i just add the color

as it comes out is there a

reason a rhyme or whatever that phrase

is

uh no yes and no

um i kind of sort of know how it’s going

to turn out and i kind of don’t

um so i work with it

and sort of play around i add the colors

kind of randomly but also not

so basically what’s going to happen is

we’re going to have different forms

shapes

how’s how’s everybody doing in terms of

being able to see what i’m doing

yeah okay all right so i’ve got two

colors on here now

um

the one i just added was

cadmium yellow medium hue if you’re

keeping track

this is cadmium red uh deep hue

there are so many colors i

when i started out i didn’t have you

know a huge budget

for paint uh and canvases and whatnot so

you know that certainly pushed me to use

recycled materials

and pushed me to keep a very limited

palette

which is part of what informed my

process

in fact and has continued to inform my

process because

it’s what works i also have

i also have another limited resource

which is time

so that also creates

um part of my process

is to make things as quick as possible

so that one was dioxazine purple now

that color entered my

repertoire if you will very recently

thanks to a friend a new friend who is

here somewhere

lauren hi how you doing uh and this one

is light green permanent

okay and that’s going to be the last one

i believe i probably forgot something

but you know what doesn’t matter okay

perfect actually no

i forgot the most important titanium

white come on now

has anyone ever seen bob ross gotta have

the titanium white

all right we’re gonna add some glops of

titanium white all right

good now i’m done

okay all right so

i imagine you can guess what i’m gonna

do next right yeah okay

all right so this is what it looks like

now

all right um now of course i could just

leave it like this right i mean this is

interesting enough in and of itself i

agree

um you like i’m putting words in your

mouth all right

and it would it would dry much like this

the the the shapes would flatten out a

bit

unless i used a thicker paint but you

know yeah it is cool

but what i’m going to do instead of

course as

you are all very intelligent you can

figure out that i’m going to press these

two panels together

and i usually have a roller and that’s

the semi

press print making part of it but i

forgot to bring the roller so you know

it is what it is

i’m going to press the two panels

together

like so now as i do this

part of it where i sort of squish the

paint together

very technical term yeah

um i’ll just tell you that

one of the reasons why i

sort of mix i like to sort of combine

art and wellness

you know in my practice is because i use

my own lived experiences

with invisible disabilities and

neurodiversity and

other things to sort of bring awareness

to all of that um

and basically just tell people look art

you know is healing art

is life changing it has been for me

it’s life-saving in fact um

and you know audrey lord has this whole

quote um

basically talking about how wellness

self-care um

and not the you know putting mass on

your face that you know

facial masks that kind of thing but but

actual wellness like

actual taking care of oneself um

how it’s it’s a radical political act

right

and taking care of our communities is a

radical political act that

is activism okay and so for me

creating art is wellness for me

uh and for others because i share it

with others i teach others and i

do make art with others um so art is

healing

and it’s it’s a key to healing ourselves

it’s

key to healing our communities and it’s

the key to our liberation

okay so that’s that’s why i do this and

that’s why i will continue to do it

and all right i think this is ready

peel these apart

and there they are

all right so this is the one on the

right side and this is the one on the

left side

see yeah and they are slightly different

yeah it’s a lot of fun and sometimes

i will um sometimes i will

add to in fact often what i will do is

do

two panels like so and then add to

one in a different way than i add to the

other okay um

and sometimes you know i’ll add

more paint so that the because you can i

don’t know if you can tell but there is

some blending that’s happened here

between the dioxazine purple and the

titanium white

in this area here um so that’s that’s

the kind of

that’s the only color blending that i

tend to usually do

is the kind that happens directly on the

material the the surface that i’m

working with

and the kind of surfaces that i use um i

use a lot of recycled wood nowadays

because i really love working on wood um

and i’ve worked on actual carp like just

straight up cardboard

you know from boxes and whatnot um

and and i’ve also recycled canvases from

other

you know other projects or or student uh

artwork that kind of thing

um and you know so

the up the opportunities are pretty vast

at least i find them to be um and like i

said i’m trained as a scientist

so experimentation is you know it’s it’s

a thing

with me you know um there’s

there’s a photo i suppose i’m supposed

to be embarrassed by it but i’m not

um it’s a photo of me as a baby and i

you know

you know photos of babies right and um

and i’m sitting there

with a uh a calculator and i i think i’m

like taking it apart right and so

that is sort of the beginnings of me

experimenting and playing

you know i hand me some materials and

i’ll figure out a way to turn it into

something else

and so you know this is just one

technique that i’ve come up with like i

have

you know another one where i mix

acrylics with

um with inks and it creates

this these these interesting cracking

patterns on the

on the surface of the canvas and it’s so

much fun

and this this technique the one of the

main reasons i love it so much is this

veining pattern

that creates i don’t know how well you

can see it from there um but these these

where the texture pops out and it

creates this almost

it sometimes it looks like leaves you

know and when i when i

uh added the paint onto the surface i

let it drip sometimes and i did that on

purpose so that it could

come out looking like leaves especially

the green

um yeah i do that so and

you know anything that sort of mimics

nature

natural sort of forms is just really

exciting to me

um and so that’s that sort of informs

a lot about the way that i’ll put paint

onto the surface

and the and the techniques that that

speak to me the techniques that that

really excite me

um and so i will play with

you know you know there was last this

past summer

i’ve discovered that there was this

entryway i was

painting and um i was able to use this

this studio and

the entryway of the studio got really

hot because of the way the sun was

coming in

and so i would set my paintings there to

dry

knowing that they were basically baking

in the sun

and that was part of that was an

intentional part of the process because

it caused

you know caused certain ways that the

paint dried

was different from if i hadn’t done it

that way

um and so just you know just different

things like that and

and again like i said i don’t have a i

don’t have a whole lot of time to do

these things i usually do them on my

lunch break

or you know right before i go to you

know go home from work

after work or you know on the weekends

right um

and so it the the experimentation

happens very quickly it’s kind of like

oh what can i do

really quickly you know with whatever is

at hand

um and i like i really like using

you know kitchen materials you know

utensils and things like this that are

have been sitting around um not that you

know

are going to be going back to the

kitchen obviously

just to clarify

but uh yeah so that’s that’s kind of

that’s me