I was gonna do the whole burning up in the sky thing, but I really liked this :)
Josephine Baker, later known as ‘Bronze Venus’, ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Créole Goddess’ was born in America in 1906 and later moved to France to become a singer, dancer, and actress. She was the first African-American woman to star in a major motion picture, and became famous worldwide.
Though she grew up as a maid in wealthy white households she eventually became an exotic dancer in France, famously appearing in next to no clothing, and became a French citizen in 1937.
Ernest Hemingway referred to Baker as ‘the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ and she received approximately 1500 marriage proposals in her life time. She became a muse for Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior. She had a variety of exotic pets including a cheetah named Chiquita, a chimpanzee named Ethel, a pig named Albert, a snake named Kiki, a goat, a parrot, parakeets, fish, three cats, and seven dogs.
When WWII broke out, Baker became a volunteer spy for France, and assisted the French Resistance by smuggling messages written in invisible ink on sheet music. She made great efforts to aid those in danger of enemy attack, sent Christmas presents to French soldiers, and smuggled information she gathered in Spain back to France by pinning notes containing the information on the inside of her underwear. She was awarded the Medal of Resistance with Rosette and later named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Baker also aided many civil rights movements by refusing to perform to segregated audiences and storming out of a club in Manhattan with actress Grace Kelly after she was refused service. She worked with the NAACP and spoke at a Washington march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the only official female speaker. Baker was actually asked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow to take his place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but Baker declined on the grounds her twelve adopted children ‘were too young to lose their mother’.
Baker died in 1975, four days after her final show, attended by such names as Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, and Liza Minnelli.
Oh and she was queer and had a relationship with Frida Kahlo. All around badass.
I’d like a movie about her life too, please.
tags: 
(Source: sicklysweetqueen)
the walking dead: bad lip reading (x)
CAN
YOU
NOT
Some building block references my Life Drawing teacher drew up for us for our Figure Drawing class. Thought I would impart the wisdom.
Derailing My Train of Thought by Thomas Wightman
Says Thomas about this project: “The final book sculpture of my major project series. Like the previous two sculptures it uses a visual metaphor to convey the emotions of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and embodies my research by visualising an expression used by a sufferer of OCD. The expression was ‘derailing my train of thought’, because the person felt that the rituals they had to perform were disrupting their day. Where the compulsions and worry would side track them from doing everyday activities.
To convey this metaphor the sculpture shows a train travelling on a journey that has become disrupted, leading it to derail from its set path. Typography was used on the tracks for the title of the piece, also type was used for the coal. In the scene it shows the coal cart tipping over where the type has become mixed up to symbolise the mixed emotions during anxiety and panic”.
Artist: Behance / Website / Previously!
