Haters Gonna Hate
Category: Cartoons
The Silence Between Us
Just Blaise
By Nasia Jones
Staff Reporter
CNM is home to many students with different talents, one of those students is Business Major Blaise Habona who has been using his graphic art to build his name and brand as a local artist.
An animation courtesy of Blaise Habona
The type of art Habona makes is digital illustrations, he said, although he also does other things such as photo manipulation and animations.
Habona has been exploring art since he was in the 10th grade, he said.
He started with creating traditional style art which ended up leading him to graphic design, Habona said.
A graphic made specifically for ASAP Worldwide courtesy of Blaise Travis
Habona has worked on graphics for local bands such as CO-O and has also worked with main stream music groups like the Migos, he said.
“CNM has impacted my career in a positive way because I have met other artists in classes and on campus that I could share ideas with.”
The reason Habona started to create art pieces is because he saw other artists’ pieces and liked how cool they looked, he said.
“I tried to copy what they would do, and the more I did it the more I fell in love with art.”
A few CNM students have also had work done by Habona, recently a classmate came to him wanting cover art for a song his band made called Snake Bite, he said.
A Migos mock cover for their album Culture, courtesy of Blaise Travis.
The art he makes doesn’t really have a message, Habona said, but he wants to inspire other young artists like himself to be fearless and do what they love every day.
Art work done by Habona can be found on his website at Blaisetravis.org or his Instagram @blaisetravis.
20 Degrees
By Nasia Jones
Staff Reporter
Students in the Art Career Concerns course at CNM are currently working on putting together their art for the upcoming art exhibition, 20 Degrees.
The exhibition is scheduled to be held from April 18 to April 27, said Fine Arts major Siv Limary.
A preview of “Sorrows of Genesis” by S. Stearman, Fiber clay, wire, and acrylic paint.
There will also be a reception for the exhibition that will be held on Friday, April 20th from 6pm-8pm.
The exhibition will be located in the 5G North Gallery at Factory on 5th street, the address for the gallery is 1715 5th Street NW, said Limary.
The exhibition is free, but the only time that spectators can walk in and see the exhibition is on Friday April 20th during the reception, he said.
To view the art after the reception appointments must be scheduled with Staff Instructor Amy Rangel, he said.
“Enjoying Coffee” by Siv Limary, Acrylic Paint/ Mixed media on wood.
Amy Rangel can be contacted by email at arangel2@cnm.edu
During the exhibition from April 18th through April 27th some of the student’s art work will be for sale, Limary said.
There will be up to 20 students showcasing their artwork at the Exhibition.
There will be many different types of art such as acrylic painting, charcoal painting, sculptures, drawings, color pencil, and many more, he said.
The theme behind the art exhibition is to show that even with diversity in the world, art and a passion for being creative is what brought these 20 students together, said Limary.
Like many of the other students in the class, 20 Degrees will be Limary’s first ever art exhibition, he said.
“I am excited about it, because this exhibition is a reality check to see if your art is really presentable,” Limary said.
“Recreation of Carnage” by Jackie Montiel, water colored pencils on paper.
Each student in the class oversaw a different committee to give them a real-life experience of what it would entail to be an artist, said Limary.
The class started in January of 2018, but some students showing their work may be showing previous work, work they’ve been working on for years, or even work they’ve made just for this exhibition, he said.
“I think this is a great class because it balances the practicality of being an artist with your passion and find a more realistic view of the industry.”
For students that may be interested in the Art Career Concerns course for next semester the class code is ARTS2210.
About Theatre and Stuff: Beyond the Classroom
Story by Layli Brown, Staff Reporter.
CNM Instructor Jason Witter, Artist/Director/Writer/Actor/
Jason Witter teaches Theatre appreciation and Acting 1, “I love the academic part of art, and I also love to feel that I’m participating in what I’m teaching outside the classroom” said Witter, CNM instructor since 2008.
What CNM has to offer, is arguably just as strong as a four-year university, in the sense that the college might not have as many classes but, the classes that CNM does offer are taught by top notch instructors who encompass many aspects of theatre with very strong acting and performance backgrounds; and strong movement and voice backgrounds, as well, Witter added.
The Coal Avenue Theatre, (CAT), gives students the possibility of creating shows in an on campus theatre that is open to the public. Witter says, it is a fantastic opportunity for students to have a theatre that produces shows.
“Theatre becomes a real sense of community and family; I fell in love with it from the beginning, due to that sense of belonging”, said Witter.
After receiving his master’s in theatre in dramatic writing, Witter started a sketch comedy troop called Eat Drink and be Larry with some people from UNM. He says, we’d do parodies; horror classical comedies of the plays theatres were putting on in town. All the acting, directing, writing and producing shows in the community was a great learning experience that started at the Reptilian Lounge, part of Tricklock Theatre Company.
Witter’s got into theatre after going to Wales for an exchange program, upon his return to New Mexico he found auditions going on at the Vortex and got a small part, then another small part, then got cast in Hamlet at UNM, “that was super exciting, I really fell in love with theatre, the people, the atmosphere the comradery of it, everything about it was so vibrant and exciting”, said Witter.
Witter did a lot with children’s theatre in grad school. He found a lot of freedom writing for a younger audience. He said, you can create worlds and characters because expectations and barriers don’t exist in kids, you can express anything that comes to mind.
A couple years ago Jason Witter started writing silly little poems and doing drawings for them, he said, they’re geared towards kids with a lot of stuff that adults understand and kids still dig it. I always loved Shel Silverstein, he added.
Witter loves monsters, he’s a horror movie fan and his take on it is to create silly poems about monsters and making them silly because it takes the fear out of them. “I love being scared but I also love being able to laugh at it, so that’s what I try to do with the poems”, Said Witter.
He gave himself a challenge a couple years ago, to do a poem and a drawing every day and post them on Facebook starting sept 1st until October 31st; Witter added that although he doesn’t really like social media, it worked for this. He did 60 poems and got through it.
By Halloween he had a rough draft for his book, friends suggested that he do a Kickstarter for it as a way to get it out to people and it blew up. The Tiniest Vampire and Other Silly Things ended up being supported and shipped out to people in Ireland, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Australia, “it was super cool!”, said Witter.
The following year he did the same thing and put out the Monsters Eating Ice Cream and Other Silly Things. As part of the “Silly Things” series of books, Witter plans to do one more this fall for the trilogy and then focus on something else, he said. The seed from it was loving children’s theatre.
Witter drew comic books growing up, his father and brothers were artists; his mother was a writer, and this is something that he wanted to revisit. He said, he feels fortunate to have been supported with that.
He added, “I love the arts in general and I love dabbling, they’re all an important part of our existence. I’m fascinated by every aspect of it and all the arts go hand in hand. They work together to create the humanities”.
Witter is working on a series of short books called Classics Kind of, where it retells the story taking the classics and putting them in very simple terms, “Kind of” geared for kids. He said, his goal with these little books is that they be fun for everybody, that’s the way he learned Shakespeare, by understanding the basic story and going from there.
He is doing Hamlet, The Raven, The Odyssey, Dracula, and Moby Dick in a series of 5 books he called tiny versions of the classics with silly illustrations. Witter’s undergraduate degree was in literature and naturally he’s a huge literature fan. His love for the classics and putting them in simple terms has led him to basically doing hamlet in 16 pages with drawings to go along, he said.
Some people might disagree with this, but according to Witter, most of Shakespeare can be summarized in a few pages. They’re fairly simple stories brilliantly written, “there’s so much meat to them” he said. It’s the language that is so broad and immense that it can be intimidating. But when you understand the basic story you start to understand the text, he added.
In his off time Witter is reading and researching plays that have been around for 500 years, yet people keep doing them because they’re great stories that we like as human beings, he said he loves seeing what people do with it, Theatre being an ephemeral thing, you do it and its gone.
Witter added a classical quote by William Shakespeare,
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” – As you like it, Act II Scene VII
Witter’s is also directing a parody of Macbeth that he wrote for his Theatre Appreciation class to perform at the Reptilian Lounge Saturday June 24th
Jason Witter will be on stage at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Peter and The Star Catcher. “there are no small parts only small actors”
Next week About Theatre and Stuff interviews Heather Ashley CNM graduate, Actor & Stage Manager of this summer’s play Tragedy Plus Time at the Coal Avenue Theatre (CAT)
Editorial Cartoon
by H. Hay
Editorial Cartoon by Whitney Browneller
Editorial Cartoon by Jacob Perea
