Today, in Honor of Black History Month, the DEI council showcases Jean-Michel Basquiat. Born (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980’s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al Diaz, writing enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the late 1970’s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the early 1980’s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 22, he was one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York.
Basquiat’s art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. His visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.

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How are you today? Here in the UK, it’s national Time to Talk Day, where everyone is encouraged to have a conversation about mental health, whether that be with friends, families, communities, or colleagues! So why not start a conversation, perhaps with somebody in Colart that you don’t often get the chance to speak to – having a meaningful conversation could make their day … and yours! To find out more visit timetotalkday.co.uk

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From Bad news to Good…..

At the turn of the new year we received the news that one of our customers in Scotland were closing their business down. This was a blow for the Independent channel as this was a good customer worth around £45-50k in a good year and one of Carlo Palombo’s key accounts.

The account gave Colart, particularly Carlo and Guy great feedback on our support over the years. But with increasing online competition mainly from Amazon, as well as personal reasons, they decided they could not continue to trade.

The customer had a vast array of merchandising equipment, which under normal circumstances would either have had some parts salvaged by the sales representative for repurposing, or be left behind for the customer to dispose of. For many years we have struggled with collection and storage of used units. Often not ‘worth’ the cost of collecting them. However, the customer had many units and all very well looked after…..

Thinking about Sustainability and the Environmental impact Guy Peeke-Vout developed a plan to recover, store and repurpose these units. Despite a number of quotes from current suppliers, Guy sourced a new supplier (at half the cost) to collect and deliver these to store in the Kidderminster warehouse. Shane in the Kidderminster team is now looking to use this supplier for future jobs. Nicky Gallivan has sorted and cataloged the units. And some of the team already have homes for some of it.

Great for the environment…. Recycling old units. And Great for the bank balance (saving merchandising budget)…..

Huge shout out to Guy Peeke-Vout, Carlo Palombo, Nicky Gallivan, Shane Williams and the Kidderminster Team! Great work folks.

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The third session in our weekly content series with Juxtapoz Magazine is tomorrow! Be sure to check out the live interview with Juxtapoz and Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic residency artist Omar Lawson on Instagram @juxtapozmag.

Learn more about the program here: https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/studio-time/juxtapoz-liquitex-artist-residency-programs-announces-ig-live-studio-visit-series/ and be sure to tune in to the live chats with our residency artists each week through February 16th.

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How amazing is this app https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mengyaowang11_innovation-machinelearning-artificialintelligence-ugcPost-6892784530516795392-flWa . I wonder if we can benefit from this in our factories?
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