“Take a lyre player: he’s relaxed when he performs alone, but put him in front of an audience, and it’s a different story, no matter how beautiful his voice or how well he plays the instrument. Why? Because he not only wants to perform well, he wants to be well received — and the latter lies outside his control.” -Epictetus
We are, in a way, only that which others perceive us to be. We strive to own our space, to be all of what we are capable of being, and in the end are we really dictated by our own perception of ourselves or by that of others? Perhaps the answer is both. We can decide who we present to the world but we can never predict or choose what the world sees of us. In this is a lesson to internalize should we choose to be so brave. That we will perhaps never know our
true selves and can only strive to be the very best of us that we know how.
Kevin Robinson is currently working on multiple projects. He recently graduated from Mills College Masters Program. His thesis involved his system of writing music and allowed him to collaborate with some incredible mentors.
Robinson is very interested in labyrinths and mazes. A large piece of his last two years have been focused on this. He relates to his early days in music and how this connected to his emotional and spiritual life.
It was in third grade when Robinson began to play music and at the time he wasn’t too interested. He didn’t understand how he fit into the larger part of music and wanted more meaning than could be gained at that age. He needed an outlet.
Eventually, Robinson found the outlet he needed and has built a career around this. To hear more about this and his life as a performer, listen to the complete interview.
Brian Alfred is an artist living and working in Pensylvaina. He teaches at Penn State and also has a studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC. When he isn’t involved in class, he spends his time in the studio in Brooklyn.
At the moment he is working on an upcoming show for September. This new body of work is comprised of new paintings as well as new animation. At the same time Alfred is working on several group shows. He has reached a point in his career where he always has quite a lot going on at once and sometimes needs to edit down what he is working on at once.
Recently, Alfred has created a few public works which he says always draw a different response than his studio work. These public pieces were on a very large scale and were created for Rag and Bone.
