art + books = love

i'm faith.
i like making art and reading books.
i also like a lot of other things, like: exploring new places (overseas and here in the midwest), discovering and sharing music, making salsa (and sometimes other foods), late night conversations on kitchen floors, looking up at starry skies, and laughing.
i'm caught between being an introvert and an extrovert. it makes life interesting sometimes.

May 21

“The SAT is a scam. It has been around for 50 years. It has never measured anything. And it continues to measure nothing. And the whole game is that everybody who does well on it, is so delighted by their good fortune that they don’t want to attack it. And they are the people in charge. Because of course, the way you get to be in charge is by having high test scores. So it’s this terrific kind of rolling scam that every so often, somebody sort of looks and says—well, you know, does it measure intelligence? No. Does it predict college grades? No. Does it tell you how much you learned in high school? No. Does it predict life happiness or life success in any measure? No. It’s measuring nothing.”

John Katzman, founder of The Princeton Review (via thepeacefulterrorist)

But all those test prep folks sure do make a shitload of money off it.

(via eshusplayground)

(via loveyourchaos)

May 14

dogjournal:

PHOTOGRAPHER TOURS SHELTERS TO HELP DOGS GET ADOPTED - “Our mission is to provide shelter staff and volunteers with the resources to successfully groom and photograph shelter pets, helping give them the second chance they deserve.”

The One Picture Saves a Life initiative teaches animal shelters how to groom and photograph the shelter animals to present them in the best light (probably both literally and figuratively) for adoption. Photographer Seth Casteel is currently touring various shelters in the U.S. to put on workshops. You may be familiar with Casteel’s Underwater Dogs series. The photos above are examples of how different the dogs look depending on how they are presented.

In addition to Casteel, John Paul Pet, The Animal Rescue Site, GreaterGood.org, and the Petfinder Foundation are all partners in this endeavor. Click here to learn more about One Picture Saves a Life. You can also donate to this cause by clicking here. (Photos from One Picture Saves a Life)

(via loveyourchaos)

May 4

“If owning a gun and knowing how to use it worked, the military would be the safest place for a woman. It’s not.

If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.

If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.

If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.

If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.

Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists.” A Short Post on Rape Prevention (via brute-reason)

(via loveyourchaos)

May 2

nprradiopictures:

Before the age of computers and vinyl printers, sign painters worked by hand to illustrate storefronts, billboards and banners. Local craftsmen often developed a signature style that could distinguish a neighborhood, or even a city.

But technology made creating signs less expensive — and less expressive. Sign Painters, a new book and documentary written and directed by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, focuses on dozens of artists who are keeping the art alive.

Before Macon began working on the film, he said never thought much about sign painting.

“I had never really given any thought to the fact that this is someone’s job, and the fact that individuals across America were painting signs regionally that defined the way the United States looked,” Macon told NPR’s Neal Conan.

Once word got out about the project in the sign-painting community, they were flooded with personal stories. “We were totally inundated in the best way, and we ended up having more content than we could track down,” Macon said.

‘Sign Painters’: A Close-Up Focus On An Endangered Art

Video Credit: Faythe Levine & Sam Macon

(via npr)

natgeofound:

Three grinning men smoke from intricately carved pipes in Austria, January 1961.
Photograph by Volkmar K. Wentzel, National Geographic

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