Make Every Friday a Black Friday!

Bryony  04.04.13

As you can see, there's still plenty of black art available on Cyber Monday – or yellow, blue or red – many shades of red actually. Today we feature #iThinkOutsideMyBox's Monochrome series (below). And these are some of my favourites. As usual, any contribution of $100 (add $10 for shipping and handling) entitles you to a signed, numbered print of your choosing on museum quality, acid-free paper. 

To order, simply choose your donation method, tax deductible (Fractured Atlas),  or standard (PayPal), then email me with your print title and mailing information. 



 Your contributions help keep #iThinkOutsideMyBox alive. Thank you.

A Week for Thanks and Giving

#iTOMB November 2013. Photo: Siddharth Choksi

In this week of thanks and giving we thank Mary and Karen and Kathleen for their kind donations and do encourage all to order an #iThinkOutsideMyBox print for the holidays. With cold weather here, your online support will see us through the winter.  Thank you all for giving. Also, please see our Press Release below and forward to interested parties you may know.

#iTOMB Press Kit 1.4 FInal: A Global Community Art Experience by David Everitt-Carlson

Choose your free print with $100 Contribution to #iThinkOutsideMyBox

Romi 09.30.12

From now,  until forever, take a print of your choosing from our gallery series (below) for contributions to #iThinkOutsideMyBox of $100 or more - or choose any print from the site for contributions over $100 (please include $10 for shipping and handling).

Each print will come original size, 3"X3" on archival acid-free paper - hand trimmed to eliminate background textures - then shadow mounted and signed with artist notes and dates. Ready to frame.

To order, simply choose your donation method, tax deductible (Fractured Atlas),  or standard (PayPal), then email me with your print title and mailing information. Voi La!  Your contributions are always greatly appreciated and we're happy to send a print to commemorate your help. Thank you all:)

#iTOMB: Love > $, but $ > #%@*!

They say it is better to give than to receive, but anyone with their head screwed on reasonably straight might question that. Of course you'd rather get things. Good things. And on that front I feel proud of what the #iThinkOutsideMyBox project has been able to give emotionally - to New York, to America, to the world - and yes, to me personally so that we all get something out of the exercise - if maybe only, just a moment of peace

Thanks to Thiag (Brazil) 11.23.12

In the last year the #iThinkOutsideMyBox project has gone from a one-man activist vehicle to a global community art mandate supporting freedom of expression, an American First Amendment right, but more probably a worldwide human right. And our effort has not gone unnoticed. Recently we've been recognized by the Smithsonian's Cooper/Hewitt National Museum of Design, for socially responsible design, The National Gallery of Art, as photographic subject matter and Fractured Atlas for artistic and social merit. And as our profile has grown, so have our needs.

Skyrocketing from 500 individual paintings in the fall of 2012 to over 7000 today, we are inundated by public art and unable to process in a Bloombergian way. Translation? If we had Michael Bloomberg's money and artistic support that would be nice - but we don't. So we rely on your help, from paintbrush to wallet - to help support the world's largest collection of publicly painted art - made in NYC.

HOW TO DONATE



Fractured Atlas is our Fiscal Sponsor. They make your donation to #iThinkOutsideMyBox tax deductible. Example: Let's say you wanted to donate your old iPhone4 ($200) to us (which we really need)? You would receive a tax deduction of $200, and that could be a real number depending on your tax rate. (Email me if you can donate a phone) And monetary donations are deductible as well. Just click the Fractured Atlas logo above or on the left sidebar of the site and your $ contribution is tax deductible.

PayPal is the next best way to donate. It's not tax-deductible for you, but it's still good karma in our bank and appreciated the same as tax-dodger money:) PayPal donations help us buy paint, food and transport with our PayPal debit card so we see the benefits immediately, whereas, Fractured Atlas takes up to 90 days for us to see. Click above to donate through PayPal.

SO, HOW MUCH DO WE NEED? 

Free Fundraising Thermometer by:
Easy Fundraising Ideas

Short term, $1000. That will get us to the end of the year. And it's a number we need to see before launching a full KickStarter campaign. This number needs to be a ray of support that we can leverage to launch a push for year-long support from a larger community - the artistic grant community (We are currently applying to the National Endowment for the Arts, MacArthur, Soros, Guggenheim and other programmes). But currently, our expenses are now at a grand, aside from our operating income. They include, replacement iPhone ($200), computer upgrades ($300), Internet and phone access monthly ($100), storage ($60 monthly) Metro monthly ($125) and so on - so we need your help to fill these needs. 

THANK YOU

Please know that your donation goes to support a greater public need, the need for all people to freely express themselves in a public forum - something we didn't see until the response to the project became overwhelming. I thank you all deeply for your continuing support and hope to advance the #iThinkOutsideMyBox initiative in the years to come :)

Happy Halloween:)

Handpainted masque 10.31.13

#iThinkOutsideMyBox Approved for Fiscal Sponsorship by Fractured Atlas

#iTOMB: Moving Forward - Now Tax Deductible

Our fiscal sponsor

Today we were honored by the Fractured Atlas board of directors for accepting us for fiscal sponsorship. This means that the #iThinkOutsideMyBox project is on to a new phase in becoming a registered 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. Aside from being who we have been for the last year, it's our first major step. This means that now all contributions to our effort, if made online, are now tax deductible.

And donations of property are also deductible, like iPhones, computer equipment and even vehicles (I'd personally like a vintage Aston Martin) - although we are greatly in need of an updated iPhone (4/4s/5). Please email and ask me for details.

#iThinkOutsideMyBox is an open mind project promoting freedom of expression, creative problem solving and socially responsible design. We operate through the #iTOMB public painting project. sm@rt cart production and associated corporate/school/foundation programs that facilitate creativity. That means, we have fun, we get stuff done (GSD) and try to make a positive difference.

With the winter months approaching, your donation means more than ever so please consider whatever is appropriate for you. $5, $10, $25, $50 or larger, we haven't seen a dollar that didn't help - and now, those dollars are tax deductible (and we get 93 cents for every one:) 

So please contribute, and thank you all as we move forward in this pretty amazing journey:)

America 2013: a State of Denial

As we enter our second week of the "Government Shutdown" we come to realize that the government hasn't really shut down at all - just the fun parts like the National Park Service and all the museums. But the mail still comes, police are on the street, prisoners still locked up and the military has been assured that their paychecks won't stop - not to mention that all the legislators who voted for the shutdown, or didn't, are still getting their cheques as well. 

So it doesn't matter. The sky is not falling, but even assured that the sky will stay where it is, there is disconcerting evidence that our underpinnings are eroding - that creating the world's largest prison population through the War on Drugs and creating a permanent underclass of people who live below the poverty line through unemployment and insufficient job creation will eventually come to threaten the backbone of our country. And the average American is just blithely unaware of any of this at all - living in a State that is in a State of Denial.

The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

This book, by Michelle Alexander, Stanford Professor and Civil Rights lawyer, has become a national best seller by illuminating the fact that since 1980 and the start of the War on Drugs, that the US prison population has grown from roughly 300,000 to over 2.3 million (the highest in the world) and that over 80% of the prisoners are black or Latino - not to mention that there has never really been a 'drug problem' in the United States (Crack didn't even show up until 1985 and most of the prisoners are in for minor marijuana violations).

But the fact that most of the prisoners are black cannot be overlooked. As simple as it might be for the police to be busting down the doors of frat houses at universities across the country looking for joints, that's not what's happening. Instead the police focus on low income areas with more poorly educated residents because it's just plain easier to not only arrest, but to convict them. And once convicted, mostly of drug felonies, they lose their chance of ever becoming functioning, taxpaying, members of society - and so end up adding to our national economic woes. And did you know that prisoners are not counted in our numbers of unemployed? And that once released, stay unemployed because felons are certain pariah for any worthwhile employment.

And so we, as a country, have chosen not just to incarcerate our poorest, least educated members, but to screw them for life by never giving them the shot that Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey got. That's not going to work out well for us.

Give us your poor, your tired your hungry - or we'll just make them ourselves

What's the poverty rate in America? How many are there? What's the poverty threshold? And what is one supposed to do once they reach a 'threshold'? According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 50 million Americans can be considered as living below the poverty line - and 20% of our entire population are children living below that line. How might we think that's going to grow into the future? When the total poor population of any developed country reaches the size of more than Spain or Argentina that just can't be a good idea. Statistically, the Chinese have fewer people below their poverty line than we do. And the average American thinks the Chinese are poor.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg here in New York thinks that just adding more rich people to the mix would solve it - so that they can pay the taxes that support everyone else. "If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend, because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.", he says. But that seems just totally bass-ackwards, because the way people get rich is by selling things to the middle classes - so the more you grow the poor side of the equation the less market there is for reasonable profit margins from the people who are making a decent buck.

Why not grow the middle class by growing it out of the less fortunate class? Why not graduate the poor to the middle by providing a path of growth based on acquiring knowledge, experience and providing value to society? Maybe Mr. never President Bloomberg can answer that question for me - because I'm not a billionaire - just an aspiring social architect.

But economically, it makes sense. For every commercial dollar you put back into the hands of a socially dependent citizen, that's less you have to spend on taking care of them, and the more that they put back into the commercial spectrum by buying a bag of chips, a bus ticket, whatever. The money our government puts into the food-stamp program doesn't help anyone economically. It's just an expense - whereas, should that dollar go directly to that person, they're going to spend it in a way that benefits a few other citizens.  

Take your percentage, rich people, but don't take so much. The disparity between rich and poor in this country is the issue - not that we don't have enough money so we have to shut the good parts of the government down. We just manage our finances poorly. That's the issue - our State of Denial.

So where does the money come from to realign our society?

Chart please:

World military spending in billions

But wait a minute. China has five times the number of people to protect as we do. So why are they not near as preoccupied by war as we? Maybe it's because they're not pissing off nearly the number of people we are globally. And maybe because one of China's major sources of income is us - both in commercial products made in China and sold in the US and in debt. For all the money the US borrows every time we raise the "debt ceiling", the majority of it comes from China. But that's not really the story here. The story is that for all our military spending, for having not only the highest incarceration rate (and wildly higher per-capita) in the world and for having the developed world's nearly worst child poverty rate - that we are grossly fucking up our future.

World child poverty rates by country

And barely a small fraction of America knows these things. A collective State of Denial that allows the rest of them to make the monthly payments on the Chevy, keep the cable and maybe repaint the house next year. But the last thing most Americans want to hear about is how their children will have to deal with this - and a Chinese kid will not. "Just get the kid out of college - and then I'll be out-a here", they think. 

But when you think that the total number of convicts sent to Australia over an 80 year period from England (the penitentiary in England being embarrassing and a totally American concept they thought) was only 160,000, and they turned out fairly well, I might think that setting our prisoners free, growing a society that supports the common man and not needing a military to defend anyone against that - might be a worthy goal. 

But it won't be called America. It will be a State of Acceptance - instead of a State of Denial. 

Maybe called just, "Home".