Don’t let life get your goat

My favorite rabbi/painter, Jonathan Blum, takes an offbeat and humorous look at life through his colorful works that feature whimsical animals – like goats, ostriches and cats dreaming of oranges.

You can find him – always cheerful – at art festivals, street fairs and his brick-and-mortar studio gallery in the very happening Park Slope section in Brooklyn, where he’s spent his last 13 years.

If you get a chance, go meet this charismatic, inspirational and fun-filled man at his upcoming street shows:

Sunday, Sept 29th, 11-6pm, Hoboken Art and Music Festival.

Saturday, Oct 5th, 10-6pm,
Art on the Avenue,
Mt. Vernon Ave, Alexandria, VA. Go see the rabbi at booth W 70 between Del Ray Ave and Custis Avenues.

Downtown DC Holiday Market
Friday, Dec 13th through Monday, Dec 23rd. 12-8pm everyday.
National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Museum of American Art on F Street between 7th and 9th Streets NW. This exceptional market features vendors changing every week and live music throughout the day.

You’ll also find Rabbi Blum’s works weekends at DC’s Eastern Market, which is still one of his favorite places in the country. It’s a food/art/craft/antique/flea market located at 7th St, SE on Capitol Hill. About 4-6 times a year, the rugged rabbi visits DC and makes cameo appearances at Eastern Market!

And, yes, he is still accepting holiday commissions!

jonathan blum portraits
285 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
By appointment and Sundays 12-6 pm
To find him: (917) 855-6564!

Goat Farm, oil on monoprint collage, 42″ x 42″ (2003).

Where does your compass lead you?

Where is your compass – physical, mental, emotional, financial, moral – pointing?

Back in the late Nineties, I worked for a company that managed U.S government projects in developing counties to increase their agricultural output – promoting export-led growth in countries where agriculture represented, and still does, the largest portion of economic activity and gross domestic product. Products like the quinoa on your supermarket shelf; once a nutritious staple for Andean folks who now can’t afford it or can’t buy it.

The company’s logo was a crude plowing field shaped into its corporate initials. As it grew, a designer revamped the logo into a stylized compass rose, which combined the creativity of a Spirograph design and the Arab influences of a region that would later produce a company president and chief financial officer.

The compass, with a big letter C, had a curiously placed little triangle pointing up – North. In development, North always seemed better. Post-industrial. Modern. Developed. The South, a host of isms and a proverbial game of catching up or leap frogging. Oddly this north-south distinction applied within Western economies where North is industrial, faster paced, progressive. The South, agrarian, traditional and slower paced in language and thinking.

About the same time I had undertaken a spiritual exercise in the first decade of new century, I had a rare opportunity to view a world map compiled in 1602 by Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci. Displayed at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the 400-year-old map was being shown publicly for the first time in North America after fetching a purchase price of USD1 million, the second highest price ever paid for a rare map.

Ricci’s map included pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world; Africa is noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river. North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses and a region named “Ka-na-ta.” Ricci was the first Westerner to visit what is now Beijing in the late 1500s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map at the request of Emperor Wanli.

The map measured 12 feet by 5 feet and was printed on six rolls of rice paper.It showed Florida as “the Land of Flowers.” For the first time, China was placed at the center of the world map – thus displacing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from their primacy.

Later, after joining a global men’s organization championing integrity, accountability and self-awareness, I became acutely aware of the importance of the compass as each session of our group peer counseling began with the NEWS: a physical and verbal recounting of the multicultural importance of the cardinal points. In opposition to each other. East is East and West is West and never the twain…

And now in every man”s hero or warrior journey, does North-South axis represent highest and lowest points of journey and East-West the separation of the ordinary and special world of the journey?

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the African-American artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.” In a digital age of manipulation and mechanical and technological reproduction – as Walter Benjamin called it – artists such as Goines are going back to basics: the beauty of the male form, paper, charcoal, pencil and ink.

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.”

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Planning: a tool that’s right for you

Planning is an extraordinary tool.

Yet it often takes a lot of effort in the initial phase since you are basically starting to “initialize,” “reprogram” or “reboot” your brain to respond with behaviors that move you closer to your goals.

Imagine if every self-help, motivational and diet book came with an easy goal plan to do whatever’s recommended in the book, you would be a better manager, employee, people-person, entrepreneur, leader, leaner, thinner, healthier and better dressed, groomed, grounded and balanced.

Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals and “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently,” the most popular and commented on Harvard Business Review blog post in 2011, suggests contingency or if/then planning – is a successful way to reach your goals.

Connecting the if – situation you’re going to act on – and the then – specific action you’re going to take – duplicate the language of the brain, “if z, then y.”

When added to SMARTER goals, contingency planning contributes to succeeding in short-term goals and establishing a foundation for other successes.

How do you define success?

Why are you pursuing the goals you are pursuing?

How are your goals really satisfying your basic human needs for belonging (relatedness), competence and autonomy?

Let Joe the Life Coach help you with transitions, important life aspirations and goal planning! One step at a time. Call 202.328.7414, Skype to sandpdc or tweet @aprayerdc.

Men’s boundaries and thresholds

When do men face thresholds?

Between land and water.
Between land and air.
Between land above and land below.
Between each other.

Each threshold, though, is a new opportunity to grow, a challenge to defy or an obstacle to overcome.

Trinity West Fine Art Gallery in the Dallas Design District recently announced painter Robert Dye’s new body of work, “At the Threshold,”
that will be featured at a solo show at the gallery.

Dye, known for his water-filled landscapes, blurs the distinction between landscape and pure abstract imagery. Painterly yet precise.

After beginning his career at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibiting in numerous group and solo shows in the Philadelphia area, the painter now lives and creates his art in Dallas.

Dye declared that Texas, “with its big skies and wide-open landscapes, has brought more atmosphere” to his paintings.

The opening reception will be Saturday September 21, 2013, from 6-9pm at the gallery, a new addition to the Dallas Design District focusing on North Texas art and artists.

Trinity West Fine Art

2335 Valdina Street, Dallas, Texas

Hours 10:00 to 5:00 pm
Tuesday through Friday
Saturday by appointment.

Tel. 214-688-0288

gallery@trinitywestfineart.com

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.”

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.” Practice inspires perfection.

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Exhibit runs until late October. Showings by appointment available.

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Global do-gooders: train free online

Free training online resources!

Where else can you study for free?

Through USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, you can learn online and get a certificate in:

+ Conflict Analysis
+ Interfaith Conflict Resolution
+ Negotiation and Conflict Management
+ Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

http://www.buildingpeace.org/train-resources/online-courses

enlightenMENt through Yoga

Men’s Yoga: body + mind + spirit. Reconnect with your physical abilities and sense of balance.

DEFINED: Blog

“Practice, and all is coming”

– Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

I have so many clients, especially male clients,  that come to in search of the best way to stay pain free and the simple response is to stretch more. The usual response that I get is “I don’t like to stretch, it’s boring” or “I don’t know how to do it right.” There is an easy solution to this, Yoga. I don’t practice nearly as much as I should, however; I am a huge advocate of utilizing the technique to optimize flexibility and health. To help explain the many benefits of Yoga and how it can positively effect an man’s health, I will put the following entry in the hands of Ken Immer. Ken is one of my clients and friends who hosts weekly yoga sessions catered to men specifically.

Men &Yoga

By: Ken Immer

 

I have been…

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Logical Affirmation

Logical affirmation.

Power of PIES

For some reason I had a mental flashback to my freshman year of college. I was brought back to a logic class that I loved and hated at the same time.

In honor of that, I will share an affirmation based on one of those logic formulas:

A. All things are possible to those who believe

B. I believe

C. Therefore, All things are possible for me

Does this sound logical to you? If so, affirm this several times through the day. You will see a noticeable increase in your faith and confidence. Try it!

Enjoy the blessings : )

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Are you a good judge of people?

Do you focus on extrinsic markers — academic scores, net worth, social status, job titles?

Social media has added new layers of extrinsic scoring:

How many friends do they have on Facebook?

Who do we know in common through LinkedIn?

How many Twitter followers do they have?

These extrinsic markers, however, only tell one part of a person’s story. They are necessary, but not sufficient.