Thank you for having me!

Here’s the video of it (my portion starts at 23:35):

Check out the slides on Speaker Deck

I was always a creative kid growing up. The first time my mother realized this was when I started dancing with my fingers on every piano-looking surface I could find. She soon signed me up for music school. I was five. At that young age I was learning music theory, playing a real piano and singing in the school coir.

Looking back, those early years in my development really shaped many aspects of my life. I went through several experiences throughout my teenage years and 20’s, including playing other instruments, being a tattoo artist, dance teacher, graphics designer, and DJ – all of them making part of the whole I’ve become.

In 2010, at the age of 28, while already working as a web designer for a few years, I finally decided to go to an arts school. I had no big expectations about it, but I knew I wanted to learn the basis of my craft and some art foundations.

The first 3 semesters were completely online. Even though I had some foundation art classes, I never really connected to them fully; I kept seeing them only as a new skill I could apply to my work, not as a legitimate art form in itself.

In 2012 I finally moved to San Francisco to attend on campus classes, and the first class I had was Silkscreening; an intense 6 hour class, with an extensive and expensive list of materials to buy.

First time I came into that studio I had no idea what to expect. I barely knew what silkscreening was and had no idea how that would affect my web design skills.

Merri, the teacher, presented herself in a very professional way. She came off as almost too detached, with no emotion. I felt instantly nervous as we jumped right in, into learning the details of this craft. It was an intense first day. By the end of it I was already exhausted, not knowing that the best – or worst – was yet to come.

As the classes progressed, one of the first things that really bothered me was that she insisted on us not using the computer – my comfort zone – to develop our creative process. What was I supposed to do then? All my designs were digital. My hand skills were poor. My OCD-like attention to perfection was doomed!

I rebelled, and developed my designs in my faithful computer, in the safe haven of pixels and vectors. But my plan backfired; we had to inevitably use our hands for most of it anyway, even if the concepts were created on the laptop. Damn.

Every week that passed, Merri became increasingly warmer with us. I soon perceived that the detachment of the first day was merely a facade to impose respect. She nurtured us and our creative process and encouraged us to find our artistic voice. Most of all, she pushed us over our limits.

Every single week I was forced to go beyond my comfort zone. It was as painful inside as it was outside; my body ached from the physicality of it. The leaning forward with the rubber squeegee to push the ink through the tight mesh of silk. My back hurt from all the pushing. My feet were swollen from standing 10-hours straight working on my projects. It felt as if a woman giving birth to a child. This was my child – my creation – and it came from an emotional place out of sweat and tears. By the end of the first major assignment I finally had my big realization; these were not simple designs, they were living pieces of art. I was an artist.

With every project, Merri would push me a bit further. She wrote, like a caring mother, “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” on the margins of my evaluation sheets.

My obsessive compulsion towards perfectionism was shattered by the inevitable forces of physics. I learned to accept it and let the imperfections become part of it. Even with all the constraints of the technique and medium, I felt this incredible freedom and joy. I felt reborn.

I can call myself an artist now. I own it.

This essay was written as an “Artist’s Object” essay for my English Composition for the Artist class at the Academy of Art University.

A few months ago, on my Matt’s 28th birthday, I found out about Charity:Water, an awesome charity foundation that is all about building sustainable means to get clean water to places that need it in Africa. Matt was able to raise over $28.000 in donations on his birthday, and went on with a team to build a well in Ethiopia!

Shortly after his Birthday, I came across the following interview to Scott Harrison – the founder of Charity:Water – and I was incredibly inspired by it. I strongly recommend watching the whole thing, it’s a fantastic story.

So, this year for my 30th birthday I decided to give it up to Charity:Water and start a campaign to raise $3.000 (it would be lovely if I got $30.000, but I’m no Matt Mullenweg and they suggest we have a “realistic” goal – 100 people donating $30 seems reasonable)

So check out my page $30 for my 30th on Charity:Water – and donate $30 or more.

100% of all donations go directly toward water projects. And about 18 months after this campaign ends, charity: water will show us where and how every dollar we raised ended up helping in the field. We’ll see GPS coordinates, photos and more details about the communities we’ve impacted.

If we reach $5.000 I get my name on a well – that would make me super proud.

Thank you and if you get inspired, you too can pledge your birthday!

I was also super excited when I saw the 3.4 announcement video, produced by the always brilliant Michael Pick, where he used one of my personal art project as a Custom Headers example in the theme customizer!!

Here’s the full video:

Because of this exposure and also because it is Pride month, I thought this was a good opportunity to give away my art piece as a desktop background. This piece is part of a color and lines exploration phase I’m going through in my art. This one is intended to be part of a series, but this is just my first exploration. The final pieces are probably gonna be printed in a large format. But until then, get a high-def desktop background from it here! Also, here’s a preview of what you’ll get:

This, as most of what I do, gets a Creative Commons license:

 Color Explorations v0.1 by Hugo Baeta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

We often load ourselves up when we travel, because we want to be prepared for various situations. This burden of being prepared leaves us with our arms full, unable to receive whatever is there when we arrive.

It leaves us tired from carrying, so that we are not happy when we meet someone new on our travels.

What if we traveled with empty hands, ready to embrace new experiences, receive new foods, touch new people?

(…)

Empty-Handed, Full-Hearted, by Leo Babauta

A short film that tells the story behind the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster. Its origins at the beginning of WWII and its rediscovery in a bookshop in England in 2000, becoming one of the iconic images of the 21st century.

Reblogged from WordPress.com News:

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If you feel like it's a chore to keep up with all your favorite blogs, you can now read posts from all the blogs you follow (even the ones that aren't on WordPress.com!) in one convenient place on the WordPress.com home page:

Your reader displays all the posts across all the blogs you follow in the order they were published, with the most recent content appearing at the top.

Read more… 408 more words

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Today, after some days of thinking about this and some teasing from my team-mates to get this done, I’ve built a post-it/pixel version of the WordPress logo! It is based on the 16px WordPress icon version created by Ben Dunkle – I zoomed on it and basically made it so the color of the post-its I had matched loosely the icon. It took me a bit of tweaking and adjusting (thanks J-trip for the help, and Scott “3 part” Berkun for the awesome colorful post-its!), and going back and forth to the beach to look at it from a distance, but I’m super happy with the result!! This was the perfect opportunity to try out some time-lapse recording! Check out the short video I did:

Even thought I’m posting this technically on the 12th, the fact that this was made on the 11th matches perfectly with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg 28th birthday! Happy Birthday Matt!