While on my way to the RIT campus to meet The Kiwis, I listened to a few of their songs. “Sunshine-y” was the word that my passenger and I came up with. Regardless of the legitimacy of our descriptor, The Kiwis definitely give off some serious happy vibes.
When I did think of thrifting or vintage, it always seemed counterintuitive to me. You waited all summer to finally be able to go shopping for new school clothes. It was the best part of going back to school after school supplies.
So, why would one willingly buy clothes once worn by someone else? A sh!t ton of reasons, actually.
I’m the daughter of an engineer and a nurse so you’d think I have my sh!t together, right? I mostly do but it took trial and error and probably took longer than it should have. I got my love for numbers from my Dad, and my compassion from my Mom. Unfortunately, neither of them taught me the essentials of day-to-day living – budgeting, credit cards, identity protection, etc.
When you think of comics, it’s only natural that superheroes or funny strips about cats might come to mind. That’s what Justin Hubbell thought they’d create too when they first pursued a career as a comic in college. But fast forward about a decade later, and Hubbell’s most well-known works dig a little deeper than laughing at your favorite feline. Their sold-out 2020 book “In A Word: Trans” narrates the process of transitioning and coming out as transgender and non-binary through comic art, offering humor, education, and personal stories.
I am a disabled artist and at-home fur mom. I believe I was sent here as a person to bring more compassion to the world and hopefully change it in positive through art. My main goal is to change Rochester.
Walk into Boulder on any given Tuesday night and you’ll see a variety of people — students tucking into their textbooks behind luminous laptop screens; a couple ordering lattes to kick off their first date; perhaps you’ll notice the editor of Flower Power inhaling coffee with an obscene amount of sugar. Move into the main dining room of Boulder, however, and you’ll witness a merging of creative minds.
Genae Shields wasn’t sure what photojournalism was when she got accepted into the program at Rochester Institute of Technology, and she definitely didn’t know where Rochester, NY, was. “I thought all of New York was New York City,” she laughs.
Although she knew that her photojournalism capstone project would be a book, it took a while for Genae to settle on a topic. Thinking back on her family’s history, she decided to share portraits and stories from Black survivors of sexual assault. “During the pandemic,” she explains, “I unfortunately had my own experience with assault. When it happened to me, I knew [the project] was something I had to do whether I included my story or not.”
Despite running a successful production company – Envision Productions – for 28 years, Paul admits that filmmaking and narrative are more of a passion for him and what he studied at RIT. Envision Productions has allowed Paul to help numerous businesses tell their stories, but with Westwood Studios, he can branch into different kinds of entertainment – from narrative fiction to drama to comedy.
I never went to art school, so most of my harshest critics are middle-aged white women on the internet. They really don’t like my “naked stuff.” When I started out as a lettering artist in 2016, the bulk of my work was inspirational quotes and quippy puns. (Don’t get me wrong — I still love puns. There’s something about a punny joke that will always make me cackle.) Lately, most of my personal artwork centers around the magic of fat bodies, and that makes some people uncomfortable. It’s funny to me when folks are surprised by my vocal support of fat liberation.
You don’t have to do much searching to find great jazz in Rochester, NY. We’re home to one of the biggest jazz festivals in the U.S., a world-renowned music conservatory, & live jazz shows in every corner of the city year-round.
