Anda #13 - April 27, 2024

Discover new art, dance, and design. Anda means "egg" in Sanskrit: a vibrant zone of creativity.

Source: We Are In House

The revolution, beautified

I haven’t made an Anda post in more than two months because almost all of my online time has been taken up with what’s happening in Gaza and the growing movement for Palestinian liberation here in the U.S.

In the past, I’ve created Anda posts out of links to eclectic arrays of memorable online performances, sources, and resources.

Pretty much the only “extra-curricular” net noodling I’ve done lately is looking at art, dance, and design. And as the saying goes, the revolution needs bread and roses, sustenance and beauty. So here’s what I got!

Anda #17

• First Nation artist Archie Moore was born in Toowoomba, Australia. He’s of the Kamilaroi/Bigambul people. Recently he became the only Australian to ever win the The Golden Lion first prize at the Venice Biennale in Italy. Archie's work is his family tree. Archie drew it in chalk on the walls and ceiling at the exhibition space. It took him 2 months to complete. This massive family tree goes back 2,400 generations and 65,000 years.

• Jameel al Baz is a very young Gazan artist I found on Instagram. Here is one of his installation pieces with drawings of Gazans amid the rubble. His family’s house was destroyed, and he’s running a fundraiser to save for rebuilding.

• Brigita Krašovec is an amazing dancer and gymnast from Slovenia. She describes this as a “draft.” Talk about presence. Only 20 years old! I can’t wait to see how her dancing evolves. Visit her Instagram for more.

• Confession: I’m not a big fan of figure skating. But this video of Gabriella Papadakis & Guillaume Cizeron captured me. Maybe its the absence of sequins and awkward “ballet”. But I think it’s more than that.

The Design Section

I love design. Furniture, dwellings, typography, graphic art, clothing, books, kitchenware, political posters, websites, any design, really. Design is my career path not taken. Here’s a grab bag of designed things I’ve enjoyed recently.

• Noho, my favorite new designer from New Zealand, makes super-functional furniture out of castor beans, old carpets, and recycled fishing nets. Somehow, all that trash is not cheap. 😆 But I love that they not only recycled the materials, but also recycled the canonical crappy plastic chair to make something beautifully minimal and spectacularly engineered. Also comfortable.

• 177 Milk Street. Japanese-inspired knives designed especially to cut vegetables, but hybridized with more traditional chef’s knives. What does this mean? It means you can cut straight down in the Japanese style or hold the tip and rock while slicing and dicing. (If you know, you know.) They are also lighter, which is nice especially for the cleaver. The shapes take a bit of getting used to.

• Alchemy Digital in London has long been one of my favorite website designers. Some of their stuff is corporate, but when they get a project where they can let loose, wow! It’s unusual to find web designers who are so attuned to typography.
  
  Long time back, on a whim, I wrote and asked if they would consider designing Jaya Kula’s website for not so much money. Turns out one of the owners is Buddhist. For a hot second, they considered doing our site pro bono. But they nixed the idea as it would have been too expensive due to the size and complexity of jayakula.org. Not a total loss as we had some fun conversations!
  
  Here’s a screenshot from one of their projects.

• My current fave graphic designers are the folks at We Are In House. Their homegrown typography is to die for, and they are never less than entertaining. It’s impossible to capture the dynamism of what they do here. So visit and have a look!

Have a beauty-filled day!

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Want more? Please join me and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter on Substack to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

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