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Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Every Inspirational Movie Teacher In 'SNL' Parody

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Last night on “Saturday Night Live,” Lin-Manuel Miranda was that substitute teacher. You know, the one who thinks they know what the kids these days are into, and tries to seem super ~hip~ while making a difference in students’ lives?


In a hilarious skit, which essentially parodied every inspirational teacher movie in Hollywood, the “Hamilton” creator tried to his best to connect with the class, but they saw right through his tired methods. 


“What up, fam,” he says as soon as he walks in the door, before introducing himself as Dale Sweeze. “You can call me Dale, you can call me Sweeze, but let’s take the Mister out of the picture.” 


One student, played by Kenan Thompson, lets out an “Oh man,” while his classmates nod their heads, feeling the secondhand embarrassment. Sweeze goes on talking, trying to convince the class that Shakespeare was the greatest rapper alive. 


“Yeah dude, we know. You’re not the first well-meaning sub to try and reach us through hip-hop,” another student, played by Mikey Thompson, says. 


Kenan chimes in again: “Let me guess, you were about to open your laptop and perform a rap version of ‘Hamlet’s’ ‘to be or not to be?’” he says, as Miranda scrambles to shut his computer, which was playing a pre-recorded version of exactly what Kenan described. 


“Oh wow, you already recorded it,” adds a student played by Pete Davidson. “Very sad.” 


Watch the whole skit above. 

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'Lincoln,' The Movie, Gets A Shoutout During The Second Presidential Debate

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In one of the weirdest (?) moments of the second presidential debate, Hillary Clinton brought director Steven Spielberg into the fold while taking a question on hacked speeches. Why? Well, she loved his movie “Lincoln,” and thinks she’s a lot like Abraham Lincoln in terms of public and private position.


“It was a master class, watching President Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th Amendment. It was principled and it was strategic,” she said in part. 


Donald Trump wasn’t having it, telling Clinton, “Honest Abe never lied. That’s the difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.”






We’re not sure how Spielberg feels about all this, but we’re assuming he’d rather be left out of the narrative ...









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Merriam-Webster Tried To Make Sense Of Donald Trump During The Presidential Debate

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Many viewers likely found it challenging to make sense of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s responses during Sunday night’s debate. So the editors behind Merriam-Webster thought they would help out.






The dictionary’s Twitter account confirmed that some words Trump said do, in fact, exist:










The tome also provided a definition of the term Trump used to describe the lewd, disgusting comments he made about trying to have sex with a married women and saying he can grab women by their genitals because he is a celebrity.






Either way, a dictionary can only provide so much insight into Trump’s rambling responses. 





Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly
incites
political violence
and is a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326"> style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar, href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b"> style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe,
racist, style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-stephen-colbert-birther_56022a33e4b00310edf92f7a"> >birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.

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Trump Won’t 'Make America Safe Again' By Dodging Questions About Sexual Assault

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”You bragged that you’ve sexually assaulted women, do you understand that?” Anderson Cooper asked Donald Trump just a few minutes into Sunday night’s presidential debate. 


“Yes I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it,” Trump responded. “But it’s locker room talk and it’s one of those things, I will knock the hell out of ISIS… We should get on to much more important things, and much bigger things.”


Cooper, along with co-moderator Martha Raddatz, continued to push the GOP candidate regarding recently leaked comments about women from a 2005 recording in which Trump can be heard saying he “grabs them by the pussy” and “just kisses” women without waiting for their consent. 


After admitting he was “embarrassed” by his comments, Trump hustled through a bizarre and downright offensive topic shift to terrorism and ISIS. 


This is locker room talk,” Trump repeated on his way to a completely unrelated subject, adding: “When we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads and frankly drowning people in steel cages. When you have wars and horrible, horrible sites all over. Where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.”


He then plugged his campaign slogan, but with a new twist: “We’re gonna make America safe again,” he said. “We’re gonna make America great again.” 


Yet with this tasteless transition, what Trump and his advisors failed to consider is that brushing off lewd, misogynistic and abusive comments about women as “locker room talk,” is ― full stop ― making America less safe. 





American women are unsafe as long as ISIS and men like Donald Trump (who perpetuate rape culture with “locker room talk”) exist in the world. Lest Trump forgot, rape is a weapon of war used by many around the world ― including ISIS. Sexual objectification of women is not a distraction from global violence, it’s a tool of global violence.


Trumps words are not keeping me or any other woman in this country safe by saying he “can do anything” to us without our consent. He is not “making America safe again” by negating sexual assault under the guise that he wants to discuss “more important” and “bigger things” such as ISIS and terrorism abroad. 


Preventing sexual assault in this country is no less important than preventing terrorism or stopping ISIS. 


When Trump flippantly excuses his misogynistic comments as “locker room talk,” he is reminding every survivor of sexual assault that their voices don’t matter; he insists that their stories and their bodies and their lives don’t matter. 


Trump moving on to “bigger things” recalls the same deep disregard for women as a a judge telling a survivor they don’t want to ruin her rapist’s “promising” or “successful” future. Trump using ISIS as a “more important” issue than rape, is another reminder to survivors to not come forward with their stories because no one will care, much less believe them. 


Trump’s comments are blatant proof that women and our bodies are thought of as second-class citizens.  


To “make America safe again,” Mr. Trump, you must include all of her population, half of whom are women.


Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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Portia Munson Talks Color And Empowerment At Frieze

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This article originally appeared on artnet News.



Among the showcases of the 160 galleries and over 1,000 artists participating in the 14th edition of the prestigious Frieze art fair in London, all eyes are drawn to the explosion of pink emanating from the booth of New York gallery, P.P.O.W. Representing four generations of feminist artists in its Frieze offerings, the gallery promises an exploration of the complexity of the female identity.


The source of the pink is Portia Munson’s work “Pink Project: Table” (2016). As you approach the arresting installation you discover that it is really thousands of pink objects arranged on a table. The dizzying array is made up of discarded items: anything from combs and dolls to dildos and tampon applicators, all in varying hues of pink.



The piece’s vivid tones made it an early Instagram hit and passers-by still can’t help but react to it. I manage to catch Portia amidst the many clamoring to talk about her striking work. Her voice is a little hoarse but she is smiling.


“Frieze has been really great so far,” she tells me. “What I particularly liked to see was that even before the fair opened, lots of the workers (many of them male) were stopping by and getting really into my work.”


She continues, “It’s exciting, because even though I first showed the piece in 1994, people are still responding to it and it’s still resonating with them. And I think it is doing what I hoped it would do, and I think part of that is: all of these things are cheap, throw-away ready-mades, but putting them all together makes a strong cultural statement.”


The project debuted in 1994 at the New Museum as part of the Marcia Tucker-curated exhibition, “Bad Girls.” Portia explains its inception, saying, “Since I was a young girl I was always attracted to the color pink. As I got older, into my late teens and twenties, I started to question that. Why pink? Why am I being identified with this color, as a woman? So I started collecting.”


“I first started collecting the objects and did these very simple focus paintings of certain pink objects. And then I realized that I was amassing so much of it that I decided to make this collection. I started arranging the objects to see the different kinds of quantity and meaning that would come out through putting the objects together.”



We speak about the links between color and gender identities that are instilled in us from an early age: pink for girls, blue for boys. When Portia was building Pink Project she was, ironically, pregnant with a son, Zur, whom she beckons to join our conversation. She shows me a series of photographs in which a baby Zur is outfitted head to toe in each of the loaded colors, in pictures titled “Boy Child in Pink and Boy Child in Blue” and a similar second series, executed five years later, of her daughter. “I liked the idea of challenging those notions about what color has to go with what sex, or what gender,” she says.


One of the things I notice is the contrast between the homogeneous appearance of the objects and their many disparate functions. From pacifiers to sex toys, each item is lazily marketed towards women by its color, evincing corporate disinterest in female individuality. We talk about how the color pink is cultural code for femininity, which in turn is shorthand for weakness, and she explains how she hoped to disrupt that association by performing a sort of color intervention.


“What was interesting to me when I put it together, and when I first created and saw this piece myself, was that it actually felt very empowering,” says Portia. “Because before I did this piece there was this idea that pink is more passive, and that femininity is a passive thing, as opposed to a strong thing, and so I feel like what I did for myself and hopefully for others by putting it together, was to make it more full of energy, putting the power back in the pink.”



Unpacking the many layers of meaning in the pink table is an ongoing process, and even Portia’s understanding of the work has evolved over time.


“When I first did this piece I really did it as a young, feminist artist from that point of view,” she explains. “And I still feel that I’m a feminist artist but I’m older now and my awareness has shifted a little. And so I now see this piece also as an environmental piece, talking about excess in terms of plastic and single use items and what kinds of things we’re making. I see it as a sort of time capsule and I’m hoping and imagining the end of this age and that in maybe two or three hundred years it will be this totally bizarre ― I mean it’s already bizarre ― but it’ll be a real novelty, like you wouldn’t be able to find these things out there anymore, they’d be kind of extinct.”


I ask her if she thinks much has changed since she created the piece in 1994, and she responds in terms of color, remarking, “It’s harder to find the really soft-colored pinks. The pinks you find nowadays are really much stronger. When I first started doing this, the pink that you would find for any kind of cosmetics or beauty things were all this soft, pale pink and now the shade of pink has actually shifted, which might imply that all its associations have become stronger too.”


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Teenage Bedrooms Remind Us Of The Life-Changing Magic Of Making A Mess

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How old were you when “that’s it, go to your room” turned into “that’s it, I’m going to my room,” a stubborn teenage assertion of your independence, your need for personal space and personal beliefs separate from your parents’?


For many Western teens, the bedroom is a sanctuary. It’s the only space in a shared home that can be groomed to match individual tastes and beliefs — or tastes and beliefs that are shared with whichever sibling you’re bunked up with. These flourishes often include band posters (long live Third Eye Blind), photo collages (ey, JTT), school books, comic books, makeup, trinkets, instruments, and clothes spilling over from closets, intentionally or due to a lack of space.


Carey Newson, a curator at the Centre for Studies of the Home, collected photos of these rooms for an ongoing project documenting domestic spaces. She visited schools and asked for volunteers who’d be comfortable having their rooms photographed, and interviewed both the teens and their parents afterward. 


“This kind of everyday backdrop is so much something we all take for granted,” she told The Huffington Post in an email. “Talking about ‘stuff’ can mean verbalizing things that you know, but haven’t quite put into words before, so it’s an interesting journey. In talking about their rooms, teenagers touched on many significant people, events and places in their lives, and there was quite a lot of discussion around the importance of not forgetting and the dilemmas around throwing things away.”  


Because teenage rooms are often not shared with anyone else, and can serve multiple functions other than sleeping, including talking on the phone or playing on laptops, they grow into expressive spaces as opposed to, say, a kitchen, which serves a clearer social purpose.



“A couple of teenagers talked about their rooms seeming chaotic to other people but being easy for them to navigate themselves: a chaos that they understood and had learnt their way around, making the space all the more closely tuned to them,” Newson said.


“It was interesting that mostly the teenagers felt that when they put things on their walls it was for themselves, rather than other people.” Which is self-evident for anyone who lived through middle- or upper-class Western teenagehood, watching our boy band homages morph into less passionate, fan-oriented décor.


At what age do we replace 98 Degrees and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with steadier fixtures like floating shelves and hanging planters?


Newson seems to think that the chaos of teenage rooms is one of their constants; teens’ spaces change along with their tastes, and often reflect years’ worth of interests piled on top of one another.


“One teenager commented that her room was a good representation of the past seven years,” Newson said, quoting them as saying, “like, stuff’s been layered and layered and layered and layered, and nothing ever gets taken down.”  


In one of the exhibit’s photos, Justin Bieber posters are plastered over a hot pink wall, crushes superseding bubble-gummy girlhood. In another, a stack of books sits on top of an open drawer of what looks like an inherited dresser.


“They’re an intriguing mixture of accident and design,” Newson said. “Some teenagers used their walls to record fleeting thoughts and ideas. Sometimes things that went up originally for a purely practical purpose — such as a timetable or a computer password — then became a starting point for a display that got added to organically over time, as a sort of evolving scrap collage with a biographical theme.”


This is an anomaly within the home at large, which tends to be arranged more deliberately according to Newson. The offhanded aesthetic of a teen’s living quarters makes it both uniquely theirs and considered, more universally, to be messy.


“Of course, parents sometimes felt their teenagers were just untidy,” Newson said, adding that, “the clutter of things in these rooms can be seen as a kind of flux,” adding a lively touch to the home, a place that’s often considered closed and fixed.


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Elena Ferrante, Francesca Woodman, And Women Who Yearn To Disappear In Plain Sight

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On the cover of Elena Ferrante’s highly anticipated upcoming book Frantumaglia, which translates to “self-portrait,” a young woman crouches beneath the window of a dilapidated house, her body cloaked in shards of wallpaper, peeled off into fragments, as flimsy as crepe paper.


It’s rare to encounter a wall, often understood as a rigid barrier more than a physical thing, in such a fragile state ― so easily broken, worn like a cloth. 


The image is the work of Francesca Woodman, an iconic photographer who took her own life at 22 years old, when she jumped out of a window. It’s Woodman pictured in the photo, her figure blurred like a signature that’s not-so accidentally been smudged. The piece is a self-portrait, though Woodman’s image is purposefully and exquisitely obscured, her boundaries dissolved as if her body were spun of cotton candy instead of flesh. 


Woodman’s image is a perfect foil to Ferrante’s words, as both women thoughtfully navigate the space between absence and presence, fame and anonymity.


Ferrante, for example, published her wildly beloved four-part Neapolitan Series under a pseudonym, preferring to keep her identity anonymous. In a variety of interviews, Ferrante expressed her belief that the self-promotion required by artists and creators today ends up diminishing the power of their work. Stemming from a “desire for intangibility,” Ferrante opted to evaporate behind her richly textured characters and stories, which took on lives of their own. 


Of course, her clearly stated desire was denied recently when Italian journalist Claudio Gatti outed Ferrante in the New York Review of Books, claiming that, because the author admitted to “lying on occasion,” she “relinquished her right to disappear behind her books and let them live and grow while their author remained unknown.”


With his unwarranted and unwanted investigation, Gatti stripped Ferrante of her ability to hide in plain sight, as if the wall that once protected her was unceremoniously ripped down, haphazardly used to cover her exposed parts. 



Woodman’s self-portraits also illustrate the intangible, depicting the moment when the delineated self gives way to something abstract and incorporeal. A body turned spirit, angel, or stain. 


In her black-and-white images, which she referred to as “ghost pictures,” Woodman’s edges disintegrate, due to a skilled combination of long exposure shots, movement and time. If Ferrante sought to exist only in words and not in person, Woodman similarly strove to be only image. 


I finally managed to try to do away with myself, as neatly and concisely as possible,” Woodman wrote in a note that accompanied an attempted suicide in 1980. The sentiment is eerily reminiscent of Ferrante character Lina Cerullo, who, in the prologue of My Brilliant Friend, disappears of her own volition without a trace, even cutting her image out of family photographs. 


“She wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the age of sixty-six,” her best friend Elena writes upon hearing the news, “but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind.” Determined not to let her win, Elena then begins writing the story of their lives, working to undo Lina’s absence. Woodman embodies elements of both Elena and Lina, the will to document her life and the desire to vanish from it. 


Elena’s entire series, then, is an attempt to, through writing, provide Lina with, as she describes it, “a form whose boundaries won’t dissolve.” Woodman’s photographs, however, suggest such a thing is impossible. 



Another place Woodman and Ferrante overlap is in the spaces they occupy. Woodman’s photos are set in domestic environments, though through her lens they appear more like elaborate traps or haunted houses. Visualizing the way women often feel trapped within the confines of their homes, Woodman renders herself in uncomfortable conversations with decaying interiors that resemble crumbling ancient ruins, often threatening to swallow her whole. 


Ferrante’s world is Naples, Italy, a space which she skillfully renders in the reader’s imagination as seedy, dangerous, and in disrepair. Also, in a way, a trap, as it constantly pulls Lina and Elena back like a magnet, no matter how much the two change, succeed or pull away.


Throughout the four novels, the two women move through various homes in and out of Naples, yet both end up, in the final book, inhabiting shabby Naples apartments that feel as if they could be straight from a Woodman backdrop. 


Many have posthumously dubbed Woodman a feminist artist, specifically because of her ability to evade the male gaze, even when depicting herself nude. She accomplishes this through changing form, from an object to be fetishized to a specter that cannot be fully grasped. Perhaps, her photos suggest, the only way a woman’s body can avoid male consumption is to obscure itself beyond easy recognition. 


Similarly, Ferrante has worked to approach writing in a distinctly feminine mode, as expressed explicitly by her character Elena. The author, who too uses mystery as a form of armor, is all too aware that she’s working in a field permeated and controlled by men. 


As she writes in Frantumaglia: We accept that our need for fulfillment in this or that field should be ratified by men in authority, who co-opt us after having evaluated whether we have sufficiently absorbed the male tradition and are able to become its dignified interpreters, free of female issues and weaknesses.” Ferrante’s attempts to obscure her own self, however, thanks to Gatti’s intervention, were denied. 


Both Woodman and Ferrante create self-portraits that hide as much as they reveal. While one worked primarily in the realm of image, the other text, both were conscious of how quickly your art, your words, your identity, your body, and your edges can be stripped away ― if you are a woman.


Both were determined to live and work on their own terms, even if that meant erasing themselves before someone else could. This, perhaps, is what makes Ferrante’s outing so heartbreaking and frightening to the women who read and loved her. To learn all her attempts to shield herself were for naught. 


I haven’t read Frantumaglia yet, but, damn, the cover is powerful in itself. 


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Meet The Last Generation Of Haenyo, Korea's Real Life Mermaids

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The Korean tradition of deep-sea diving for oysters, sea cucumbers, abalones, sea urchins, and squid dates back to the 5th century. Originally, it was a male-dominated profession, not all that surprisingly. However, by the 18th century, women divers, also known as Haenyo, or “sea women,” far outnumbered men. 


Diving is no easy job. Haenyo had to descend up to twenty meters in freezing cold water without any equipment, holding their breath for over two minutes at a time. Through mastering the craft, many women replaced their husband as the primary breadwinners of the home. 


Fast forward a few centuries to 2016, where the tradition of Haenyo still exists, though perhaps not for long. New York-based photographer Mijoo Kim set out to document the resilient women who have dedicated their life to the art of diving. “These women divers are carrying on a Korean legacy and will be the last of their kind,” Kim wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “They are the last generation of Haenyo.”



The younger generation of Korean women raised on the islands that once served as home to the Haenyo are now flocking to the mainland in pursuit of an education or more modern career. As of 2010, most of the already dwindling population of Haenyo were over 70 years old, with no generation of women training to serve as their successors. 


Kim, a Korean woman herself, has long viewed photography as a vessel through which to tell stories about her cultural heritage. She was particularly drawn to the Haenyo who, despite their lasting legacy and intense work ethic, remain largely unknown outside of Korea. 


The shooting process was not an easy one. Kim would wake up around 4 a.m. to accompany Haenyo on their deep sea journeys. She drove two hours to South Korea’s Gijang County in the dead of winter ― whose temperatures, in 2013, the year Kim created the series, averaged around 30°F. Yet winter is sea urchin ― or uni ― season, so winter is when the Haenyo get to business. 



“The first day I tried to take photo underwater, that was the hardest day of shooting,” Kim said. “I thought I was a good swimmer. I also was so confident, and I was so excited to be able to shoot underwater, but the underwater situation is not easy at all. I couldn’t even follow them. They seemed like young mermaids to me—so fast and flexible. I didn’t even see any sea urchin because the sea urchins look just like rocks in the water.”


Kim’s resulting series features images of the Haenyo both in action and at rest, showing the intensity of their daily regimen as well as the expressions on their faces. The most powerful images zoom up close on the women, their faces smushed by the slick wetsuits swallowing their heads. Exhaustion is written across their faces, tears welling in their eyes. 


Through the series, Kim hopes to immortalize a women-led tradition that may not exist much longer. “I hope to share not only their beauty as women, but also their courageousness for facing such difficulties during their lives,” she said. She hopes to continue the series whenever she visits Korea. 


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This Girl Made A Hilarious 'Get Well' Card For Her Dad

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A Utah dad received a truly special ‘get well’ card from his daughter.


When Cody Duffin was hospitalized with pancreatitis, his daughter Tabatha made a hilarious card to cheer him up. 




The card features a drawing of an angry pancreas and a note, which reads “I don’t know why, but your pancreas hates you. Just wait while the other organs teach it how to love you again. Don’t worry, it’s a quick learner.”


Tabatha, who turned 14 this past weekend, clearly knew how to lift her dad’s spirits. Cody loved the card so much, he posted it on Reddit.


Cody told The Huffington Post that he enjoyed his daughter’s joke. “When she first handed it to me, I thought it was the cutest thing,” he said. “I love how she was able to shine somewhat humorous light on something that was causing me a great deal of physical pain.”


He also praised Tabatha’s creativity. “She’s always been a sweetheart and loves to draw pictures for family,” he explained. “What I think people would enjoy about this picture is the caricatures and the simplistic beauty of the cartoonistic organs banding together to love the pancreas to death.”


Cody commented on the Reddit thread that doctors believe his pancreatitis was a bad reaction to medication. He told HuffPost he is currently home resting and dealing with another medical issue.


Wishing this dad a speedy recovery!

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White Artist 'Kidnaps' Rosa Parks' Detroit Home, Saves It From Demolition

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The Detroit home where civil rights activist Rosa Parks lived during the 1950s and ‘60s was facing demolition until Berlin-based artist Ryan Mendoza interfered.


Mendoza, a white artist who admits he is an “imperfect candidate” for this particular project, stepped in to save the pioneering civil rights leader’s former home. He did so, however, quite unorthodoxly, by effectively kidnapping it. 


Mendoza dismantled the home and shipped its façade across the Atlantic Ocean to his Berlin studio, where he’ll attempt to reassemble the house as an art installation and tour it around various art galleries and venues. The artist hopes his unusual intervention will raise public awareness about how the building was long neglected on its home soil.


“I hope either President Obama or his successor will be sensitive to this issue and catch word of the house that is held hostage across the world: a monument to Rosa Parks’ legacy that was purposely kidnapped in order for America to recognize what it has lost,” Mendoza told the Guardian.




The world remembers Rosa Parks for the peaceful defiance she exercised in December 1955, when she refused to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white rider. The act of quiet rebellion prompted the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, which ultimately resulted in the desegregation of the city’s buses.


In 1957, Parks relocated from Alabama to Detroit to live with her family in the house Mendoza has now acquired. Parks’ time there was plagued by racist and violent experiences; bigots threw bricks through her windows and passed by threateningly despite the 13 children who also lived there.


Even though Parks has remained an iconic symbol of resilience and hope in the long fight for racial justice in the United States, her place of residence has been largely forgotten. The home was dispossessed after Detroit’s housing bubble burst in 2007. It was severely damaged soon after by a string of floods and break-ins, and it was subsequently slated for demolition.


Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley eventually stepped in to purchase the home from the city council for only $500. “Her memory, her legacy, will never die,” McCauley said at an event this year. “It is an important lesson for the entire country, especially [with] what we’re going through now.”



This is not the first time Mendoza has incorporated Detroit’s housing crisis into his work. For his controversial project “The White House,” which took place earlier in 2016, Mendoza tore down an abandoned Detroit home and shipped it to Art Rotterdam, where it was displayed as art.


Many criticized Mendoza’s project for exploiting a community he was not a part of, fetishizing poverty, and flattening the complex reality of Detroit into a one-dimensional story of ruin and decay. (Sound familiar?) Furthermore, while the building’s façade was being exhibited an art fairs across the world, the residual damage of the home was left behind, causing quite a mess.


Nevertheless, it was after seeing this piece that McCauley reached out to Mendoza and asked him to save Parks’ home. She was relieved when he accepted the challenge. 


“It should be somebody in the black community doing this, not a white guy,” Mendoza told the Detroit Free Press. “I’m not even from Detroit. But my choice was ... Do I leave Rosa Parks’ house to be demolished by the city, or do I step up and say, ‘OK, I’m going to help [McCauley] preserve the memory and save this house?’ That’s what this project is all about.”



The 'White House' is an #Detroit home that was conserved by artist #RyanMendoza and then moved to Europe and exhibited as #art

A photo posted by R Y A N M E N D O Z A A R T (@ryanmendozart) on



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'Grey's Anatomy' Star Sara Ramirez Comes Out As Bisexual

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Broadway and television actress Sara Ramirez opened up about her sexuality while speaking at a Saturday seminar for homeless LGBT youth. 


The 41-year-old “Grey’s Anatomy” star used her Oct. 8 appearance at the True Colors Fund’s 40 to None Summit in Los Angeles, California, to come out publicly as a “queer, bisexual” woman. 


“So many of our youth experiencing homelessness are youth whose lives touch on many intersections – whether they be gender identity, gender expression, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship status,” she said in her speech, which can be viewed in the video above. “Because of the intersections that exist in my own life: woman, multi-racial woman, woman of color, queer, bisexual, Mexican-Irish American, immigrant, and raised by families heavily rooted in Catholicism on both my Mexican and Irish sides, I am deeply invested in projects that allow our youth’s voices to be heard.”


Ramirez, who nabbed a Tony Award in 2005 for her role in the Broadway musical “Spamalot,” reiterated those remarks in a tweet posted Saturday. 




The actress told The Huffington Post in an email Monday that her decision to come out publicly at the event was a “very organic and natural” one. 


“It made sense for me at this time as it was one piece of a larger context I was communicating,” she told HuffPost. “Our most marginalized youth touch on many intersections, and in describing the concept of inter sectionalities, I decided to describe the ones that exist in my own life.” 


She went on to note, “The days of pressuring our LGBTQ youth to conform to one homogenized way of presenting LGBTQ are over. We must acknowledge and maintain awareness around their complex narratives.”


The True Colors Fund, the New York-based homeless LGBT youth advocacy group, quickly tweeted its support for Ramirez on Saturday. 






Ramirez, who is married to business analyst Ryan DeBolt, offered similar praise for the organization, which was co-founded by Cyndi Lauper. 


“I’ve witnessed serious hypocrisy in spaces that claim to be for equality, but the True Colors Fund is the real deal. They don’t just talk the talk. They walk the walk,” she told HuffPost.


The actress has been an outspoken advocate for the LGBT community for some time, and has appeared in Spanish-language PSAs for GLAAD. Her “Grey’s Anatomy” character, Callie Torres, tied the knot with a fellow doctor in a same-sex wedding on a 2011 episode of the show. In 2009, she launched a foundation in honor of her best friend, Al D. Rodriguez, a gay actor-singer from New York who died of cancer. 


Congrats, Sara, on living an authentic life ― and using your voice to generate conversation around an often-overlooked subset of the LGBT community! 

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9 Design Projects Tackling America’s Poverty Crisis, One Community At A Time

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The U.S. economy is technically in recovery, but the number of Americans living in concentrated poverty has nearly doubled since 2000. As people struggle for stability and survival, the communities where public investment has disintegrated are getting creative to meet residents’ needs, from housing to health.


The exhibition “By the People: Designing a Better America,” which opened Sept. 30 at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York City, spotlights 60 projects that use design to solve urgent problems at the local level, from food access to natural disaster response. The exhibition catalog, which notes that “design can be a force for justice,” could serve as a loose guide for others who want to roll up their sleeves and confront their communities’ problems head-on.


The show is curated by Cynthia Smith, the museum’s curator of socially responsible design. Smith selected the current exhibition from a list of 300 projects after spending two years traveling the country and witnessing communities’ solutions to the challenges of poverty in urban centers and rural areas, the borderland and the heartland.  


“Many of [the design projects] are in response to decades of divestment, social and spatial segregation and mounting climate challenges,” Smith told The Huffington Post.


Smith said she was careful to include projects from a diverse set of places with a range of strategies and goals. She said the variety is meant to show visitors that design interventions can take place under almost any circumstances.


The projects do have one thing in common: They were shaped by the people they’re meant to serve, and many are spearheaded by partnerships between professional designers and local organizations.


“Bridging divides or creating alliances, whether it’s listening, valuing or incorporating local community experiences, is really essential for envisioning, designing and building a more just and equitable country,” Smith said.


Here are nine of the creative ways design has been used to confront poverty and inequality around the country, featured in the “By the People” exhibition.


Using data and design to save lives at the Mexican border



Aside from being a hot-button political issue, migration from Mexico is a pressing humanitarian concern. Migrants risk their lives on the hazardous trek across the Sonoran Desert, and U.S. policy restrictions have only made it more dangerous.


In 2000, minister Robin Hoover started tracking and plotting the deaths of migrating people ― many due to dehydration ― on a map of Arizona’s border. She used the data to determine the most dangerous spots, and worked with former Navy engineer Tim Holt to design water stations, blue barrels labeled “AGUA” marked by flags 30 feet in the air. Their organization, Humane Borders, has installed more than 100 water stations since 2001, maintained by volunteers.


Though Hoover and Holt aren’t designers by training, they designed a simple, straightforward object to tackle a major issue in their communities. They also distributed posters in Mexican border towns that warn about the dangers of crossing and provide distance and survival information.


Rebuilding a blighted house into an event space for an isolated rural town



When artist and designer Matthew Mazzotta came to York in western Alabama, he invited residents to share their hopes for the rural town in an outdoor living room.


“Townspeople extolled the strength of their community and lamented the lack of racially integrated and secular social spaces and the proliferation of blighted properties,” the “By the People” catalog notes.


In response, Mazzotta used the materials from a blighted abandoned property to build OPEN HOUSE, a small pink structure that can be unfolded into an open-air theater for community events and performances.


Turning trash into art that opens a pathway to employment and education for homeless women 



Rebel Nell sells jewelry with a surprising origin ― the colorful pieces are polished chunks of paint that have fallen off of graffiti and murals in Detroit. The nonprofit was started to support local homeless women, who are hired to make the jewelry. Beyond a paycheck, Rebel Nell offers entrepreneurship and financial literacy classes so its employees can gain new skills along with housing and financial independence.


Rebuilding domestic violence shelters to put the needs of survivors and their children first 



In 2012, a domestic violence group in Washington joined with architects to rethink the typical layout of shelters based on residents’ feedback ― for instance, giving families individual rooms rather than housing them in communal living quarters. They created Building Dignity, an online portal that brings together design strategies and best practices for creating safe spaces for domestic violence survivors. Several shelters have used these ideas to improve or rebuild their facilities.


Bringing fresh, local produce directly to people in urban food deserts



In Chicago, old city buses painted in bright colors travel routes in several low-income neighborhoods. They’re not picking up passengers, though: Their interiors have been converted into mobile farm stands for the Fresh Moves project. Now, residents in communities where there are limited options for healthy food have easy, reliable access to produce grown at local farms.


Keeping communities intact after natural disasters with a new model for emergency housing



The buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a nonprofit design center based in Texas, conceived RAPIDO Rapid Recovery Housing as a way to help communities rebuild after a disaster without long delays or displacement. Families whose houses are destroyed would quickly get small units built on their property, and additional sections of the house would be constructed in subsequent months while the family lives there. In a pilot program, BCW built 20 houses in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley.


Closing the digital divide in an underserved New York City neighborhood



The Red Hook Initiative operates a low-cost wireless network in the Brooklyn neighborhood, giving residents access to an essential service and connecting the community. The network is maintained by young people who live in nearby public housing and take a technology training program to become “digital stewards.”


Linking communities straddling the world’s most trafficked border crossing with experiential classrooms



The University of California, San Diego, is designing the Cross-Border Community Station, with connected sites in the Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana, Mexico, home to an informal settlement of 85,000 people, and in San Ysidro, California. The station aims to promote knowledge exchange between the communities and the university, and could eventually include an ecological research station, an economic incubator, a health clinic and a community classroom.


Building affordable housing that caters to non-traditional families 



The Las Abuelitas Kinship Housing and Community Center comes out of a unique, unmet housing need: Thousands of children in Arizona are raised by grandparents, many living in homes and retirement centers that aren’t suitable for families. The South Tucson development consists of 12 low-rent homes designed to meet the two generations’ needs, with features like peepholes in exterior doors at eye level for children and people using wheelchairs.


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Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, housing and inequality. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.   


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11 Illustrations That Sum Up How Exhausting Modern Dating Can Be

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Ever feel like a tiny part of your soul dies with each consecutive bad date you suffer through? Illustrator Julie Houts feels your pain.


The 29-year-old womenswear designer at J.Crew has gained quite a following on Instagram thanks in part to her witty, all-too-real takes on modern work life (oh, joy, another depressing desk salad for lunch!) and modern love. 


Her drawings on the performance involved in dating are particularly relatable. Really, who hasn’t experienced this real-life nightmare?



pls no

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on




Or had a “conversation” with a dude like this?




Or worried if anyone in the universe would ever come to appreciate your distinct highbrow/lowbrow taste?



Idk its just really hard

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on




Too. Real.


Houts said her dating illustrations are “very much” drawn from personal experiences.


“I used to go on marathon weeks of dating where I’d be meeting people three or four days a week. It was sort of emotionally exhausting,” the Brooklyn-based artist told The Huffington Post. “While I’ve never punched myself in the face to get out of a date like one of my characters has, I’ve definitely fantasized about it during the course of a bad one.” 


Collectively, Houts’ dating illustrations remind us of Carrie Bradshaw, if the “Sex and the City” protagonist had a much darker sense of humor and a Tinder account. (Of course, Carrie would hate Tinder, but damn, think of all the material she’d get out of it for her column.) 



lol bye

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on




Though Houts herself is no longer single ― “The cruel gods of Tinder finally decided that I had suffered enough and smiled upon me,” she joked ― she’s still drawing about love, relationships and dating. 


“The truth is, I’m a pretty miserable dater. I just try to find the humor in dates,” she said.



A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on




See more of Houts’ work about dating and relationships below and browse her new print shop, too. 



A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on





sry new phone who is this

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on





Ever gross yourself out so much you have to just go to sleep as a sort of cleansing ritual?

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on





Can you ever really KNOW someone? #GOODBYESUMMER #ADIEU #alone #lightsweaters #ineverlovedyou

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on





#fun #flirty #girl

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on





When I am direct #send

A photo posted by jooleeloren (@jooleeloren) on




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Shia LaBeouf And Mia Goth Reportedly Got Married, Live-Streamed Their Vegas Wedding

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Everyone’s favorite elevator-riding, not-famous-anymore actor Shia LaBeouf just married his fiancée, Mia Goth, in the most Shia way possible.


The pair exchanged vows at the Viva Las Vegas chapel in Nevada, according to TMZ. An Elvis Presley impersonator seemingly officiated the ceremony. The whole affair was live-streamed, which, if we know Shia, was likely for the sake of #art.


The stars have yet to confirm the wedding. 


LaBeouf, 30, and Goth, 23, met on the set of “Nymphomaniac: Volume II” and have been dating since 2012. The two made headlines for their rumored engagement after Goth was spotted out with a ring in early 2015, and again later that year for being filmed getting into a very public fight on a street in Germany. 







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Original Live-Action 'Mulan' Script Reportedly Starred A White Love Interest

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In early 2015, Disney announced plans for a live-action reboot of the 1998 animated Disney film “Mulan” after purchasing a spec script from the writing team of Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek. Since then, the anticipated adaptation has sparked concern over potential whitewashing.


On Monday, a startling anonymous article published on the blog Angry Asian Man alleged that the reboot’s original script exemplified the worst fears of many Asian-American readers by inserting a white male character as Mulan’s love interest and the ultimate hero of the script.






A quick refresher: “Mulan” was based on a legendary Chinese woman warrior, Hua Mulan, immortalized in a sixth century poem, “The Ballad of Mulan.” In the Disney adaptation, Mulan is a misfit among the marriage-minded women in her village. When her elderly father is conscripted into service to battle the Huns, Mulan secretly takes his place, posing as a man. She heroically saves the empire from the invasion, and along the way meets a gallant officer, Captain Li Shang. Li Shang, also known to many as the hottest Disney prince ever, comes to respect her valor, even after learning her secret, and the two fall in love. 


Notice anything missing from that plot summary? Yep, no white characters. However, the Angry Asian Man blog post, written by an anonymous “Asian American person in the industry,” alleges that the live-action spec script gave over much of the plot’s focus to a white man, ultimately transforming “The Legend of Mulan” into a white savior narrative.


In this script, Mulan, the legendary heroine of the tale, plays second fiddle to a white merchant initially attracted to her due to his exoticized views of Chinese women. After genuinely falling in love with her, he becomes involved in the war in order to protect her ― and ends up saving China from its invaders himself. Writes the anonymous blogger:



That’s right. Our white savior has come to the aid of Ancient China due to a classic case of Yellow Fever. [...] I am deeply disturbed that a remake of the beloved Disney classic rejects the cultural consciousness of its predecessor by featuring a white male lead, once again perpetuating the myth that cultural stories are not worth telling without a western lens or star.



Due to the author of the piece choosing to remain anonymous, Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man immediately fielded questions and pushback as to whether the allegations were trustworthy.


In a series of tweets, Yu stated that he had verified the details of the script, as had others in the industry: 










Of Disney’s lengthening slate of live-action remakes of classic animated flicks, none has been met with more excitement ― or more apprehension ― than “The Legend of Mulan.”


Fans of the ‘90s classic, and advocates for more diverse and gender-equal representation in cinema, expressed optimism that a movie about a strong, independent Asian heroine would be coming to theaters. Some noted that the writing team behind the spec script, Martin and Hynek, were not only women, but had a track record of writing empowered female characters. That said, given a spate of controversies over Hollywood films whitewashing Asian and Asian-American characters, anxiety over whether “Mulan” would be properly cast has run high.


This latest report only deepens widespread concerns about how Disney will handle a live-action reboot of a movie with an all-Chinese cast of characters (save, of course, the Huns), a Chinese man as the love interest, and a Chinese woman as its ass-kicking warrior heroine, as evidenced by an outburst of criticism on the Twitter hashtag #MakeMulanRight. Tweeted one, “mulan did not save the whole of china for y’all to make her a secondary character and for her love interest to be white.”  An online petition has also circulated urging Disney to “ditch the white savior plot.”


Nonetheless, Yu cautioned that the problematic script his blog reported on was the original spec script and may not reflect Disney’s current or final adaptation of the tale: 










With mounting pressure on social media and elsewhere to properly cast and script the reboot, Disney might well be taking pushback like #MakeMulanRight into account. 


HuffPost reached out to Yu and to Disney, as well as screenwriting team Martin and Hynek, for comment. As of the time of this writing, none had responded.

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'Mangier Things' Reimagines Your Favorite Netflix Show With A Cast Of Plump Kitties

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Keep these kittens from the Upside Pound! 


Just when we thought our love for the summer Netflix hit “Stranger Things” had hit its peak, one artist’s illustrations made us have to sit down for some serious coffee and contemplation. 


Cassie Murphy, a Seattle-based artist, is no stranger to feline-filled art. Her website is full of four-legged purr machines — one held aloft with tiny wings, another gleefully stomping through a delicate vase store, yet another dressed in Xena gear and riding a pug into battle. Y’know, cat things. 


Murphy’s art is the purr-fect match for our latest pop culture obsessions, as is evidenced by her poster renderings of the cast of “Stranger Things,” of course, but also “The Last Man on Earth,” “Game of Thrones,” “Broad City” and more.


Murphy is currently at work drawing all the art for an upcoming video game with Spite House studio. Check out the a-meow-zing (we had to) illustrations below, and pick up a poster for your favorite cat lady (or gentleman) from Murphy’s Etsy shop.


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Trashion Is Turning Your Trash Into High End Fashion

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Artist Gloriously Depicts Trump Getting Literally Pounded By P***y

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Warning: The below image contains a large, anthropomorphized vagina so, if you’re not into that, you should leave now. 


Listen up, patriarchy. This is why you don’t go around grabbing women, as Donald Trump so eloquently put it, “by the pussy.” Because pussy fights back. 


A recent artwork by artist Illma Gore depicts Trump getting absolutely pounded by a giant, anthropomorphized, and very buff vagina. (Must be those kegels!) The piece shows that no amount of “locker room talk” can prepare you for being in the ring with some actual female power. 





Gore is also the artist behind “Make America Great Again,” the viral drawing depicting nude Trump with a micropenis. “Your genitals do not define your gender, your power, or your status,” she explained in a statement accompanying the work, a memo that Trump certainly didn’t receive. Gore was reportedly attacked as a result of the image, by a man who jumped out of a car and screamed “Trump 2016!” Gore will be on Facebook Tuesday, Oct. 11 starting at 11 a.m. PST to answer questions about her art.


Gore is just one of the women fighting back against Trump’s grotesque comments about sexually assaulting women. Author Kelly Oxford invited women to tweet their first experiences with sexual assault, and was overwhelmed by the thousands who responded in minutes. Canadian musician Kim Boekbinder also created a music video called “Pussy Grabs Back,” which has been viewed over 22,000 times in the past two days.


We have just under a month until Trump officially steps into the voting ring, when women will be happy to be the ones to knock him out once and for all. As Lindy West put it: “Next month we will grab you where it hurts. By your ballots.”


Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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Gabby Douglas Would Like To Keep The Glitter In Gymnastics, Thank You Very Much

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With all of its scrunchies and Swarovski crystal, gymnastics stands out among other sports for the element of pageantry at its most prestigious levels. Some might like to see that change, but gymnast Gabby Douglas isn’t one of them.


“We all like to get glammed up. Everyone does,” Douglas recently told The Huffington Post. The star Olympian, who has become a face of the ActuallySheCan campaign for women’s empowerment with sister Arielle Hawkins, added: “It’s like a masterpiece finish.”


The rules of gymnastics glam are actually quite strict, especially at the Olympic level. Each athlete must be “well-groomed in her appearance” ― no undergarments peeking out from beneath leotards ― while not restricting her movement. The contemporary version of the sport is about the ability to flip, bend, stick a landing and look good enough for a red carpet. 


Whether or not glitter has any business participating in an Olympic sport, however, is a minefield of strong opinions. Sometimes, they’re not so sophisticated: During the Rio Olympics, Fox News decided to air a segment in which two men ― a radio host and a retired NYPD detective ― shared their expert views on the Final Five’s appearance.


But sometimes, they are. In a piece for The Atlantic, Megan Garber wrote that makeup and sparkles in athletics exemplify the questions surrounding gender roles today. The Huffington Post’s Chloe Angyal explained how contemporary gymnastics fits squarely in our comfort zone: “Even though they’re throwing themselves around in skin-tight leotards that show every line in their six-packs, they’re competing in an appropriately feminine way.” In a piece for New York Magazine, Meghan O’Rourke called gymnastics “the most dramatically feminine sport” in a way that makes her question the ethics of even watching. 


Why can’t women gymnasts wear plain spandex like the men? Why do they need makeup?


To 20-year-old Douglas and her teammates, the aesthetics of their sport have a more positive deeper meaning. Douglas agreed that makeup and crystals can give an athlete an extra confidence boost, which can mean all the difference on the mat.


“You look good, and you go out there, and you compete well,” she said. “I think we should keep it.”



Although she enjoys the pomp and circumstance of her sport, Douglas is not one to display her three gold medals around the house, or even wear them. They live carefully under lock and key because, evidently, organizers won’t replace broken or lost medals. (Which she finds strange.)


“They’re like, ‘Oops, sorry! That’s the one chance you had!’ They won’t even make you another one.”


Now retired from Olympic competitions, the athlete is setting her sights on another industry all about optics ― media. She’s set to live in Los Angeles full-time with some of her family, who are in talks to continue their Oxygen reality TV series, “Douglas Family Gold.”


For more information about #ActuallySheCan, visit ActuallySheCan.com or register at ActuallySheCan.com/Mentorship.

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What This Child Prodigy Has To Say About Her Art More Than A Decade Later

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Born to a Lithuanian mother and American father, Akiane Kramarik grew up in rural Illinois, just outside Chicago. Around age 4, the young girl realized she had an interest in painting -- and within just a few years, she would become one of the most well-known prodigies in the art world.


When Akiane began painting, she says she had begun experiencing visions that she was eager to express artistically. Once she did, people took notice, and the stunning realism and emotion in Akiane’s work led her to be featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” at age 10. As Akiane told Oprah back then, she believed her talent came from one place: God.


Akiane wasn’t raised with religion, but her visions and art felt truly divine. One of her most popular paintings at the time was a portrait of Jesus, which she painted at 8 years old. Today, Akiane is 21 and her works feature everything from people to animals to the abstract. As Akiane tells “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” her technique has indeed changed over the last decade. 



“I did notice over the years ... a maturing. The techniques have become more detailed and more vivid,” she explains. “I can paint ‘soulscapes,’ which is my artistic interpretation of the soul’s journey.”


After appearing on “The Oprah Show” and being recognized nationally for her art, Akiane says she became fortunate enough to be able to make a good living off her paintings. “Being an artist did actually give us the financial [means] to provide for my whole family and for others,” she says. “My paintings have been selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.”


Today, Akiane continues to paint and also travels the world as an art ambassador.


“While I was living in Lithuania, I had the opportunity to help the educational government to change the laws there, to have more creative education,” she says. “Currently, I’m funding my own art and science academy.”


After traveling to 26 countries and meeting countless people from different cultures, Akiane has come away with a poignant observation about humanity in general. 


“I truly, truly believe ... that the arts has the ability ― a rare ability ― to unite and inspire every single one of us,” she says.


“Oprah: Where Are They Now?” airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN. You can also watch full episodes on demand via the Watch OWN app.


Another child prodigy’s update:


Boy genius Greg Smith went to college at age 10 ― here’s what he’s up to today

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