Artsy dives in to Lorna Simpson’s “Of Earth & Sky” and the beauty of her collages.
Simpson began her collage process by reappropriating and manipulating the imagery and messaging in those beauty ads. She centered Black women from those vintage magazines as her primary subjects. In earlier iterations of the “Of Earth & Sky” series (2016–present), she replaced the subjects’ hair with vibrant watercolors. Depending on the color, the subjects look as though they’ve been crowned by various elements—her choice of green is reminiscent of foliage, while orange is comparable to fire, and the blue calls to mind both ocean and sky. Simpson catapults the found images of Black women beyond terrestrial beauty standards. Through her lens they are exquisitely ethereal, the perfect protagonists for a Marvel comic.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.