Arts Night Out to bring music, art to unexpected places

Lansing bead and fiber artist Jenny Schu is accustomed to having her art on display at jewelry shops and galleries. Friday it will be on display at Curvaceous Lingerie in Old Town.

Schu’s exhibit is part of a new, free monthly event coming to the streets of Lansing — one that combines art and business.

It’s called Arts Night Out, and it will kick off in Old Town with roughly 25 venues hosting artists and photographers showing their work off and musicians performing live.

“I think this is a great event for Lansing to get exposure for both businesses and our growing art scene,” Schu said. “It’s got some good energy behind it. I love being part of any new art event in the Lansing area, but I’m also excited to work with Lauren over at Curvaceous.”

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Arts Night Out is about “giving opportunities to artists to show their creativity and be a part of the downtown areas that are already vibrant and dynamic,” said Debbie Mikula, executive director of the Arts Council of Greater Lansing, which is presenting the event.

“We’re matchmakers,” she added. “This event is matching up retailers and artists and musicians and giving them an opportunity to be out there in front of people, and we’re having a good time doing it.”

Austin Ashley, executive director at Old Town Lansing, sees bringing artists and their work into spaces that aren’t traditional art spaces as a way of creating new partnerships and sparking new ideas.

“I think any time you’re blending two things that don’t always go together, there’s always going to be something interesting that comes out of that,” he said.

Robert Shelburg’s paintings and drawings will be on display at Sweet Custom Jewelry.

“Lansing is blessed with a bounty of beautiful art and music. It is one of our most cherished resources,” the East Lansing artist said. “I love events that broaden the public awareness and understanding of the talent next door.”

Among the 25 participating venues are Absolute Gallery, Elderly Instruments, Grace Boutique of Old Town, The Old Town General Store, MICA, Preuss Pets and MessageMakers. Attendees are welcome to walk through the venues and take in the art, some of which will be for sale.

“I’ve heard about pop-up stores and restaurants happening in urban areas around the country and am excited to see the concept being applied to the art and music scene in the Lansing area,” said Lansing singer-songwriter Jen Sygit, who will be performing at Elderly Instruments. “I also love the cooperative nature of pop up shows being hosted by local businesses and the exposure between the businesses and the artists. As citizens of the Capital City, we’re lucky to have so many great artists and musicians in the area and it’s nice to have a reason to celebrate them every Friday night!”

Future Arts Night Out events will take place in Old Town, REO Town, Lansing’s downtown and East Lansing’s downtown. The plan is for the event to take place monthly, with Old Town being the bi-monthly location.

“I am excited that people will be able to come to this event and wander and find something new,” said Kaitlin Lapka, who is helping to coordinate the event. “Whether you’re new to the Old Town neighborhood or have lived here a long time, you’ll find something surprising and wonderful.”

Contact Anne Erickson at (517) 377-1006 or aerickson@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter at @AnneErickson.

How to go

Arts Night Out with artists, photographers and musicians, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at 25 venues throughout Lansing’s Old Town, free.

For information and a full list of venues, visit http://myartsnightout.com.

Also, a free outdoor concert with Desmond Jones will take place at 7:45 p.m. at Turner Mini Park, located on the northeast corner of Turner Street and Grand River Avenue in Old Town.

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Iskra Lawrence shows how easy it is to fake a ‘thigh gap’ on Instagram

Although she may be one of Instagram’s rising stars, Iskra Lawrence wants to remind her 1.8million followers that social media isn’t alway what it seems.

Since being dropped by a modelling agency for being “too big” during her early teens, Lawrence has emerged as a prominent body positivity campaigner and model on Instagram. She has a following of 1.8million and her pictures vary from  promoting the lingerie range she fronts to shutting down body shamers. Now, her latest post is making waves by showing just how easy it is to manipulate photos.

The size 14 model recently shared two photos of herself in the same outfit side by side. The one difference: a “thigh gap”.

The left image shows Lawrence with no thigh gap and the photo on the right shows her with one.

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“I’ll be the first one to tell you pics are all about good lighting and angles,” Lawrence says in the caption. “Always remember social media’s not real life, never let anyone else’s pics make you feel insecure about yourself.

“If you don’t look like her and she doesn’t look like you that’s how it’s meant to be,” she writes.

Meet the stars of Instagram

• 1/10
  
  Charlie Barker

  Barker’s following is greater than the combined circulations of Hello! and OK! magazines

• 2/10
  
  Charlie Barker

  Barker says: ‘I wanted to get a tattoo on the palm of my hand and because it was painful I was like, ‘what do I believe in enough to get tattooed on my hand for the rest of my life?’, and I was like – Hello Kitty’

• 3/10
  
  Charlie Barker

  With a photographic glimpse – or at least suggestion – of a life of colour and attitude, Barker has earned the sort of fame that only exists on Instagram

• 4/10
  
  Brian Whittaker

  Sixteen-year-old Whittaker has a quarter of a million followers

• 5/10
  
  Brian Whittaker

  Whittaker’s style and physique make him popular, but conversations with girls typically end when they ask his age

• 6/10
  
  Brian Whittaker

  An image of Whittaker’s dog on Instagram. Whittaker says he has made new friends in real life, and thousands more on Instagram, many of whom he messages

• 7/10
  
  Olivia Knight-Butler

  Twenty-year-old Knight-Butler has 15,000 followers

• 8/10
  
  Olivia Knight-Butler

  Knight-Butler calls her account a channel, and fills it with fashion and lifestyle shots

• 9/10
  
  Olivia Knight-Butler

  Knight-Butler says: ‘There are followers who like my photos without fail, and they’re mostly younger girls who want to know about my life.’

• 10/10
  
  Olivia Knight-Butler

  Knight-Butler had eating problems when she was 15 and 16. A need to be best at everything bled into social media and she later had to decide if Instagram was part of the problem or solution

  Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.

Lawrence regularly shares posts promoting body confidence and in March spoke to the Independent about posting unedited photos. “I’ve posted a bikini picture, and I haven’t used one of those apps to airbrush it. I saw what a lot of Instagram girls were doing and I just thought, ‘this isn’t healthy’, and it’s actually more worrying to me than runway models or magazines because I think now we realise that that is a bit of fantasy, that’s fashion. But social media is meant to be real. It’s meant to be a girl that has taken a quick selfie out on a day out and posted it. But no, there is probably 50 more selfies [that were taken], she might have spent an hour editing that, and that is what is sad.”   

 

Instagram has become a platform for a new style of “celebrity” to emerge, however the Insta-world was rocked last year when one of its stars Essena O’Neill shared a tearful video proclaiming: “Social media isn’t real”. The Australian model shared details of being paid for seemingly authentic shoots as well as revealing her misery while presenting an apparently ‘perfect’ life. 

• More about:
• Iskra Lawrence

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