Those of you in Chicago may soon see me in a TV promo on NBC for the 2010 African Festival of the Arts, to be held Labor Day weekend, September 3 to 6 in Washington Park. I’m honored to have been selected “Grand Ba Ba” of the festival.
Performers at the festival will include Angelique Kidjo, Tito Jackson, and Chicago’s own Chaka Khan. Check out the festival website for more information on all the events and activities that are part of the festival. The festival is a project of Africa International House.
You can view some photos of a fundraiser I hosted for the festival at Egami Photos.
On another note, the appearance on the Channel 2 Monsters & Money in the Morning show that we previously announced on the home page has had to be rescheduled. I’ll let you know when a new date is set.
I’m proud to announce my first small foray into the world of fashion design, in collaboration with the folks at Eyebobs. We’ve created a reading glass frame that’s a variation of their “Thick Eye” design featuring blue and brown tortoise shell front with deep blue stems. I call them “All Blues”. They’ll be shipping in July, but are available for pre-order now at Eyebobs.
The June 14 issue of Jet magazine has a brief “designer spotlight” that features my thoughts on the Eyebobs design, which are a response to the difficulty in finding fashionable reading glasses for men. Our press page has a link to the article.
Truly the best thing about these glasses is that the proceeds go to Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. Those of you who’ve seen The Pursuit of Happyness may know Glide as the homeless shelter and soup kitchen that assisted my son and me during our period of homelessness in the early 1980s. Glide today continues the work helping the community that the church and its pastor Rev. Cecil Williams have been committed to for nearly 50 years. If you’re not interested in the eyeglasses but would like to help Glide, you can contribute at the Glide website.
We’ve uploaded examples of the comic art from the TechTown event referred to in my previous blog post. Stephanie Crowley and Jim Nuttle of The Clearing and Tashif Turner of Wayne State University were the artists. Please see our feature for more examples of this artwork. The second page of our feature includes enlarged versions of the illustrations.
I recently spoke in Detroit on behalf of TechTown, a business incubator project associated with Wayne State University that’s working to create a next generation entrepreneurial environment in Detroit.
While speaking there, the folks at TechTown had a number of artists stand behind me and sketch their impressions of what I was saying on a whiteboard as I spoke. Recently they sent me photos of the artwork that was created, and I was very impressed with the work the artists spontaneously created to illustrate my speech.
I’d like to share all this artwork with you, and have instructed my staff to obtain clearance with TechTown and obtain the names of all the artists so they can be properly credited. In the meantime, here’s a little sample:
Thanks to photographer Steve Fenn for allowing us to use several excellent photos he took earlier this year. You can find these toward the bottom of our photos page.
Sponsors of my speaking appearances are free to use these photos in your publicity efforts. Please add a “photo by Steve Fenn” credit where applicable. High resolution versions of the photos are available by clicking the appropriate link after you click the thumbnail image.
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