gratefullness

I have just had one of those truly intense experiences that need months maybe years to sort out. We held a design conference on campus and invited some amazing people to come speak about their work and hold workshops with our students. Graciously excepting the invitation where Tarek Atrissi, Jonathan Barnbrook, Mohammed Harib, Nadim Karam, Anja Lutz, Teal Triggs, Will Brown and Douglas Haddow from Adbusters. In any context this would be a dream line up - at a private woman's college in Saudi Arabia it was a bit surreal. Just a tiny little bit.

From the bottom of my cynical little heart I am grateful to every one who participated, speakers, faculty, students, staff, visitors, and local dignitaries, for the amazing way it all came together. You can't throw a great party if nobody shows up, design is a dialogue, art is a visual medium. Talking to one's self is a monologue and without an audience art has no meaning.

I started the week in Mohammed Harib's workshop, where he explained how he came to produce Freej starting from a survey course he took in animation as a design student and then focused his workshop on concept building. Mohammed's story is inspirational and an example of conviction and determination in the face of clearly insurmountable odds. More to the point he has brought a sensitive and funny face to contemporary cultural issues in the UAE.

Somewhere in the middle I ended up at the Will and Doug Show as they introduced the joys of anti-consumerism and multiple ways to put graphic design chops to socially relevant use. Rise up and resist the brand! (Srsly, put that iphone down.)

I ended in Jonathan Barnbrook's workshop on typography - the project was to pick two concepts from geometric shapes, brush strokes, whisper, swearing and ugly, and then work out at least 5 letters from each.


My sketches got thumbtacked to the board along with all the rest and Jonathan included me in the crit. For the first time in a VERY long time I was on the other side in the spotlight and exposing my convoluted thought process which included chrome filters and fried eggs, very red faced, but survivable – even with Tarek Atrissi laughing at me. Jonathan was very kind.

Royal Jordanian's got my baby

We Rock

Dar Al-Hekma just became the first private ACICS (Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools ACICS.org) - accredited institution in the Middle East, second school in the Middle East period. First and only in KSA. Bunch of Women did that :)

Let Freedom Ring

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:46 PM (Nov 5, 2008 8:46 AM Jeddah time),

Kate wrote to Alicia:

congratulations, to you and your generation for standing up and making a change.
I hope you are in grant park right now.

Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 1:45 AM (10:45 AM Jeddah time) Alicia replied:

I was, it was amazing :D

The only bad part was that my camera battery died (I cannot BELIEVE I let that happen), but really I was so far in the back I don't know that it would have mattered. the part afterward was well worth photographing, though. We walked 8 blocks down the middle of Michigan avenue and the crowd would randomly start screaming every 5 minutes or so! It was a sad day for the photojournalist in me. I got a disposable but I know I could have gotten so many amazing shots... ugh.

Anyway, it was a totally amazing experience which I will write about in great detail later.

Love you,
God bless America :)

Alicia May


I'm posting the the end of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech because today, for the first time in my life, I can see the result of the fundamental change in our thinking that must exist for that dream to be realized.

"I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"