hey y’all.  :)

after many, many hours of planning and working and meeting, i’m SO happy to announce that the inaugural edition of the Mambu Badu magazine is now live! a million hugs and kisses for every encouraging word, twitter retweet, blog post, etc. the response has been amazing so far and it’s good to know it resonates. this is for you guys. spread the word!

we are definitely planning future calls for entry so be sure to subscribe to our posts, follow us on Twitter (@mambubadu), ‘like’ us on Facebook, and email us (themambubadu [at] gmail [dot] com) to stay up-to-date on the latest news.

there is a lot in the works. stay tuned!

artomatic, national harbor, washington, dc.

saturday breakfast.

midday– flatbush, nyc. feb 2011.

its been quiet…but you know. you can’t talk all the time. too much chatter.

a few things:

mambu badu has been busy busy…the artists selected for our inaugural call for entries, Memory have been announced, and that’s super exciting. we’re working with an amazing group of women, and we’re anxious to show you all the final product. we’re on twitter (@mambubadu) so follow us and stay on top of all the announcements.

kameelah + danielle are steadily building on crunchy conceptual work,  so as always, make sure you check them out.

good friends and fellow african diasporic women’s art collective esoteric lore are showing new work at an exhibition up march 11th-april 30th. if you’re in atlanta, i HIGHLY suggest you swing through the auburn avenue research library and take a look. there will be artist talks and other events during this time, so check the schedule so you don’t miss anything. also, they’re raising funds for this exhibit and other events in the future, so if you believe in the mission, do consider donating. support the arts!

& lastly (because half of you seem to miss this, every year) the roots picnic lineup has been announced. tix go on sale this friday, 10am. livenation.com

you snooze, you what? exactly.

ciao ciao.

rick ross + erykah badu performing at heineken inspires, washington dc.

(the rest will be up here this week)

A T L A N T A   !

first, cool cat/former schoolmate/fantastic lady philosopher photog carla aaron-lopez has a show at the now infamous city of ink next friday:

THIS saturday, nikita gale is having her first solo photography exhibit at mint gallery (with a special performance by bosco!):

(a little birdie told me there’s an official afterparty for the above you might want to make as well):

and last but not least, KENTUCKY! wise beyond her years multi-disciplinary artist mreeuh chang has work up at  field of vue during the first friday art walk tomorrow:

go out, have fun, support good art. cheers.

Mambu Badu // Photography Collective

Mambu Badu is a new photography collective created in 2010 that seeks to find, expose, and nurture emerging Black/African-American female photographers.

// Founding Members

Allison McDaniel | Allison McDaniel was born in 1985 in Livingston, NJ. She currently lives and works in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. She studied at Howard University and Savannah College of Art and Design, where she earned her BFA in Advertising Design. She is a freelance graphic designer working in branding and identity, and photographer, working in digital and film formats. Additionally, she serves as Associate Editor of Recipes for Good Living, writing about children and healthy eating.

Kameelah Rasheed | Kameelah Rasheed was born in 1985 in East Palo Alto, CA (SF/Bay Area). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has lived in Cape Town, South Africa as an exchange student, Johannesburg, South Africa as an Amy Biehl U.S. Fulbright Scholar, Washington, D.C. as a Harry S Truman Scholar, SF Bay Area, and Southern California. A storyteller, this self-taught artist works mainly with film and digital photography. Her documentary-based photography has been exhibited in Oakland and San Francisco, CA as well as Brooklyn, NY and Washington, D.C. Her photography has also been published in F-Stop Magazine and Make/Shift Magazine. Kameelah earned her B.A. in Public Policy from Pomona College and her Ed.M in Secondary Education from Stanford University. Kameelah is also a writer. Her writing has been published in The Nation (online), Pambazuka: Social Justice in Africa, WireTap Magazine, Illume Magazine, and Make/Shift Magazine. She currently writes for Change.org as well.

Danielle Scruggs | Danielle Scruggs was born in 1985 in Chicago, IL and currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. Scruggs’ photographs have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Baltimore, and appeared in The Washington Post, Stop Smiling magazine, F-Stop magazine, Preservation Chicago, and Literago. She earned her M.A. in Digital Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her B.A. in Journalism from Howard University. Danielle also serves as the Visual Arts editor of the grassroots publication Liberator Magazine and writes about all things photography for the Baltimore Sun‘s Charm City Current collective. She is currently serving as a 2010 fellow in the newly formed Public Media Corps.

The details for submitting to our first online exhibit, Memory // A Call for Photographs, can be found at our website, www.mambubadu.com. Please email questions, comments, and concerns to themambubadu@gmail.com .

Memory // A Call for Photographs

What is memory?

The fuel, the burden and force of revolts, movement and heritage.

It is somewhere between Sun Ra’s travels to Saturn, gospel call-and-response, motherships, funeral dirges, and insomnia.

A well-worn groove that bridges prophecies on the future and ruminations on the past to create personal mythologies.  The wishful alchemy of autobiography, religious fantasy, and coerced forgetting.

They are unrecorded microhistories, the foundation of family and the far away look of nostalgia in someone’s eye…the intangible and tangible evidence of life and love.

The ever continuous series of “now this moment” and “now this one, too”; a re-remembered timeline of past/present realities.

Rituals of storytelling as well as the spiritual nature of keeping, recording, and creating time.

The collective forgetting and the collective remembering.

With film and and digital cameras, we are looking for works that explore the boundless concepts of memory, nostalgia, and transition. We seek works that explore the transient and temporal ambiguity that is born from a desire to be boundless and open to the change that comes with the possibility of moving through time, rather than with time. We seek works that reflect on what memory is, how we remember, what we remember, and the memories we wish to forget. Let your work explore the shape and visual sound of the ephemeral; the incarnate and manifesting nature of memory. No memory is off bounds, and all off bounds memories are welcomed.

this has been an interesting month.

things have shifted, communication wrecked and the bottom has fallen out of many a situation. the last two days, i’ve had to finally lay to rest my sony laptop and its forever dying hard drive and the next day, i cracked the screen on my (second) replacement phone. evaluation is coming up at my job in the next few days, and i’m scared sh*tless. i turn 25 in two weeks and i am still trying to figure out what i want to be when i grow up, and i’m finding that alas, i am growing up. i never imagined my life to be where it is now…but you can never predict these things.

the prevailing theme recently has been “out with the old, in with the new”. since i’ve intentionally asked for my path to be cleared, it has, and in dramatic ways. honestly, in a lot of ways i wasn’t really ready for. but you can never predict these things.

the funny thing about asking for things to change is that THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE. and we somehow don’t quite process this and complain in the midst of change occurring. it is what you asked for, right? you can’t just wave a wand and things magically become bright and shiny and color coded. you have to box up the heirloom china and sell it to goodwill. you have to clear some stuff out of the way to make room. you have to make room. accordingly, i’ve been quiet, shifting time and space around, being mindful of energy expended…reserving more for myself than i have in the past.  breaking routine, creating new ones.

i’m being dropped at a crossroads: i’ve declared what i want, to myself and to a few others, and now the universe is presenting me with an opportunity to build towards that dream, however undefined it may be. is this really what you want? i’m being asked to make (temporary) sacrifices of comfort in exchange for greater opportunity, and it’s only now that i’m starting to see this. daily i have to convince myself that i deserve what i desire, and it’s only because i see that i’m more than capable but have to deal with this little girl inside that’s scared of the open air. i doubt i’ll ever evict her completely…you’d be hard pressed to find a creative who ISN”T scared all the time/sometimes. and that’s ok. but, as i like to say often, i have to throw myself off the cliff nonetheless, trusting wings will sprout. because they usually do.

i didn’t intend to write this monologue…it just happened. i really just started this post to say i won’t be posting (photos, anyway) for the next week and a half.  yea. in the meantime, i’ll be going down my to-do list and doing things i’ve been putting off forever.

as you should.