Cultivation
July 2021
SheFlexx Respects
Jennifer Leigh Smith of Community Carbon Trees. A Louisiana native, Jennifer moved to Costa Rica nearly 20 years ago, and has been restoring the rainforest there for over 17 years. While simplistic and random “tree planting” is not the silver bullet for the climate crisis, Jennifer’s organization plants diverse native species to mimic natural forests. Thoughtful reforestation is an important and cost-effective part of combating climate change (though not enough). By one study, worldwide forests totaling the size of France have been regenerated since 2000.
Angela Dawson, founder of Forty Acre Co-op, the first national Black farmer co-op in the United States since the reconstruction era. A 4th generation farmer, Angela was denied a loan by the USDA early in her career. She started digging to find out why the US has gone from nearly a million Black farmers in the 1920s to roughly 45,000 today. To counter the obstacles and systematic exclusion she unearthed, she established Forty Acre Co-op. The co-op - which specializes in hemp and cannabis cultivation - incubates and supports Black farmers, with an aim to regain the generational wealth they’ve been systematically excluded from.
Barbara Anderson, founder of Art on the Ave NYC, which transforms New York storefronts - emptied by COVID - into gallery space. This has not only enlivened neighborhoods, it has allowed emerging artists to find patrons and buyers. Artists must be NY-based and the work exhibited must be priced under $5K. So far, the program has attracted a diverse set of artists like, for example, Paola Bermudez.
Logo Go Grow
I promised to share with you all a bit about the creative journey that resulted in our new SheFlexx logo. I had never developed a logo before but I was excited to experiment and see if I could develop my design sense and creative confidence. Prior to engaging a designer, I - along with members of my Advisory Group - did a lot of thinking to drill down to SheFlexx’s “brand essence,” a set of adjectives to describe us. You can see some of them written in the first sketch below: ACTIVE, BOLD, JOYFUL, PROGRESSIVE, (and one you can’t see: POWERFUL).
I found our designer Maria Loor on the website Women Who Draw, and from there went to her website where I was taken with her bold minimalist drawings of women, especially a drawing she did for International Women’s Day 2021. At our first meeting, I explained the SheFlexx project and brand essence, then enumerated a number of goals for the SheFlexx logo: that it have an element of illustration beyond a stylized lettering of the name; that it be clean and bold; that it invite as broad and diverse group of women as possible; and that it convey a sense of maturity. All told, a mighty tall order for a simple drawing! To my delight, Maria loved our mission and our name, was not daunted by my initial parameters, and jumped in with great enthusiasm, generating many sketches (below is but a sampling).
These sketches resulted in a number of initial logo mock-ups which Maria presented to me, including these three:
My advisors and I liked the three possibilities above to varying degrees. However, all of us were particularly drawn to a fourth mock-up, below. We loved how it showed community and diversity and of course, power. As Maria and I talked about refining it further, I noted that the white space around the head of the woman on the lower left suggested white hair. Surprisingly, Maria had not consciously intended that! It was this kind of serendipity that made our collaboration so exciting and fun.
For the final version, Maria emphasized the white space/white hair effect. We also decided to move away from the “groovy” 70s-era lettering toward a clean bold font (a “kickass” font as one designer friend described it). Then we tackled colors. We tried various bold colors and had some trouble choosing among them. Finally I suggested using nature to guide us: green of plants; blue of ocean and sky, and this led us to our final color choices. This project ended up one of those dream collaborations where our ideas built upon each other’s and blossomed into something bigger and better than we (or at least I) ever expected. Magic!
SheFlexx Recs
Support indigenous land rights organizations like the Alianza Ceibo (which Nemonte Nemquino of top photo is part of) and/or The Borneo Project, which was founded by friends of SheFlexx.
Read Natalie Baszile’s new book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy. Natalie is the author of Queen Sugar, the inspiration for the TV series. In this new anthology, she brings together essays, poems, photos and more to examine Black people’s connection to the American land. You can also donate to Natalie’s Black Harvest Fund to advance the work of Black farmers and farmers of color.
Watch the new Netflix series High on the Hog, a celebration of African Americans and their food, based on the book by Jessica Harris. Dr. Harris appears in the moving first episode because of her “Vulcan mind meld” with director Roger Williams.
Re-ignite or deepen your visual literacy with the exercises in Sunni Brown’s book, Doodle Revolution.