OUR KICKSTARTER PROJECT WAS SUCCESSFULLY FUNDED!!

We want to dedicate this blog post to all of the wonderful people who have pledged towards our project and made it so successful with us raising OVER our goal by $90. We could not be more excited and eager to get this road trip happening to we can experience all of the wonderful things ahead. This whole process is about humans being humans and helping one another, from the Kickstarter, to on the road, to collaborating with the artists we'll meet, this is a moment of sincere gratitude and happiness which we will soon share with all whom cross our path! Thank you again, and please let's all take a moment to thank the wonderful folks who made this possible:

Claudia Vasquez

Ernie Garcia

Kate Crowly McNeill

Susie Stephenson

Julie Lausterer

Enriqueta Garcia Oakley

Daniel Garcia

Balbina Leeming

David Leeming

Charles Simmons

Joanie Schneiber

Bob Thompson

Lisa Donnan

Kim Holmes Calhoun

Valentina Gordon

David and Cathy Katz

Eli Garcia

Safi Ali-Khan

Eugenia Vasquez

Stephanie Read

Jeanne Brady

Issa Sabah

Jennifer Daro

Tegan James

Stephanie Katz

Jennifer Reis

Josef Pinlac

Diana Garcia Benito

Fr. Alejandra Lopez Cardinale

MaryKathryn McNeill

Agatha Salvatierra

Doerte Weber

Janet Sousa

Bob Holman

George Rue

Jesse Steir

Emma O'Mara

Emily Evans

Josh Barocas

Jude Fox

Brianna Zukarfein

Chaerin Ahn

Danny Garcia

Berny Tan

Mark Harris

Linda Bradbury

Annette Wehrhahn

Arlene Thayer

Priscilla Beer

Robert Sanchez

Francine Steadman

Wilfredo Benitez

Monica Lowe

Cara Young

Janet Swindler

Miles H. Lewis

Jack West

Emma Stern

Robin Dunn

~And special thanks go to~

Our families, our parents, our siblings, our cousins, our grandparents, uncles, aunts who have supported our crazy ideas since the very beginning. 

Our grandfathers whom continue to provide for their family generation after generation. We would not be the women we are today without such strong family men in our lives.

Professors and professional support received from the School of Visual Arts, special thanks to Jeff Edwards for posting about SoapSkeptics on the Visual And Critical Studies Blog, Annette Wehrhahn for giving us some helpful tips.

Our friends and local communnity for sharing on facebook and social networking to help spread the word along with those who visited us at June Bug and helped us out in some ways: 

Tegan James, Bryn Krenner, Olivia Beer, Brianna Zukarfein, Valentina Gordon, Jennifer Reis, SEEMORIAH, Alex Manikas, Julia Garcia, Kerri McNeill, Tyler Coy, Tara Ali-Khan,  Wilfredo Benitez, Rebecca Grossman, Anda Simmons, Dulce Isler, Melissa Carolyn Maloney, Metuchen Yarn Bombers, Jennifer Daro, Pete Drago, Conner Calhoun,  Destination Moon, Josh Barocas, Walker Evans, Edison Reeves, Susie Stevenson, Mark Harris, The Sentinel Newspaper, Geoff Papas, WRSU FM, The Dream Catcher Girls Molly Weidmaier, Eric Silverman, Jon Johnson, the whole June Bug Committee, and so many more wonderful people. 

ONE WEEK EXACTLY!!

WE HAVE ONE MORE WEEK TO REACH OUR KICKSTARTER GOAL!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793708100/soapskeptics-traveling-across-usa-to-film-art-and

Help us make a documentary about art and culture across America. The money goes towards our travel costs, equipment, and post production on our book and full length documentary film!

We have great rewards and incentives for those who help us out in some way. Any little bit helps!

Peace,
Andrea & Rosie
SoapSkeptics

www.vimeo.com/soapskeptics
www.facebook.com/soapskeptics.1

 

Special THANK YOU to everyone who has been supporting our project!
We have 28 days to go and $3,459 left to reach our goal. 
Please share this with fellow art supporters and appreciators:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793708100/soapskeptics-traveling-across-usa-to-film-art-and

For those of you who are new to follow SoapSkeptics, we are two artists from New Jersey. We recently began filming short interviews with local artists about how today's culture influences their art practice and the way they view art.

We are doing this because in the present moment, SO MUCH is happening-- not just in the art scene, but in our society as well. Culture and art go hand in hand. We want to capture a little chunk of today's history and society so that one day we can look back on this time of information overload and maybe try to make some sense of it... or just a little part of it. 

Traveling across America to interviews local artists of all mediums will help us collect a wide variety of perspectives and influences. These interviews and our experiences will be filmed by us, produced by us, edited by us, and exhibited by us as a full length documentary film.

We will also be making our own art while on the road. We plan to make a weaving to represent every state we stop in; each weaving will be soley made our of raw natural materials found in that location. Along with our weavings, we will have our own personal sketch book which we will draw/write in throughout our journey and we hope to even collaborate with some of the artists we meet with. All of these art works will be published into a book that will serve as OUR OWN visual interpretations of our trip. 

So please, check out our kickstarter and help us reach our goal of $5,000 by the end of June.

Thank You & Peace,

Andrea & Rosie 

SoapSkeptics

Taking A Break From Work Is Good For You

We have been busy busy the past few weeks, getting our Kickstarter Campaign launched, continuing to interview local artists, edit the films, and creating creations to sell at our local art festival, June Bug!

We decided to take this glorious day and spend it at Round Valley Park in New Jersey. 

GO THERE BECAUSE IT IS AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL! The water is crystal clear, the trees are radiating good vibrations, and the air is just too good to not breathe. It's always good to get out of the office/studio/home and just explore somewhere new with good friends, and some sandwiches. 

***

Now, we must continue on our work! 

We have a couple "Artist Perspective" 

videos coming to ya'll this week:

One is with SEEMORIAH, a very passionate multidisciplinary feminist artist from New York City. She gives us interesting opinions about living in New York City as an artist and as a Puerto Rican woman. 

Second, we have Boat Shoes, a one man experimental band who uses cacophony at it's finest. He talks with us about being from a small town in New Jersey with little cultural influences, how hip hop shaped his interest in music, and how/why his interest has evolved over time.

Help Us Film A Documentary About Art and Culture in 2014 Across America

Visit this link to watch out promotional video!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793708100/soapskeptics-traveling-across-usa-to-film-art-and

Watch, Share, Donate :)

~

SoapSkeptics

!!! KICKSTART CAMPAIGN TO BE LAUNCHED MAY 14 !!!

Local Metuchen, New Jersey Artists (Andrea Garcia and Rosie McNeill) are embarking on a trip across North America to discover the relationship between our quickly-evolving culture and art practice in 2014.

SoapSkeptics is traveling to and supporting other local artists across America in order to create a documentary on the subject, collaborate with the artists, and create a new form of community which can only be obtained through  human interaction.

We are ALSO publishing a book which will consist of handmade weavings we create out of raw materials in every city/town we stop in along with our drawings and writings from our personal sketch books. The book will be the way in which WE visually represent our journey and experiences across America.

For more details, stay tuned for our kickstarter which will be launched on May 14- help us reach our goal of $5,000 to make this project happen !!!!

Help us get the word out about our mission and if you are interest, please feel free to contact us, follow us, like us.

@SoapSkeptics
www.soapskeptics.blogspot.com
www.vimeo.com/soapskeptics
soapskeptics@gmail.com

Support local artists!!
Peace.

"About an Artist: Issa Sabah"

Check out our new video of Issa Sabah. He's an artist from Dubai studying and living in New York City. He discusses his personal perspective on living two separate cultures and being a visual artist as well as a writer. 

Keep up with SoapSkeptics!

@soapskeptics

www.facebook.com/soapskeptics.1

www.vimeo.com/soapskeptics

www.youtube.com/soapskeptics

Hello, New and Old Friends! We are SoapSkeptics....

SoapSkeptics

What's goin' on, folks! Rosie McNeill and Andrea Garcia, here! We are starting this blog as the very beginning stages of what will become an adventure of a life time.

A little about us:

Andrea Garcia is graduating in May 2014 from the School of Visual Arts with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in Visual and Critical Studies. That is basically a fancy title for art history, critical theory, and art practices. Andrea focuses mostly on sculpture and fiber arts. Andrea is inspired to make fine art objects by using conventional craft techniques to create both functional and dysfunctional works using fibers, wood, clay, wire, and other materials. Andrea just recently moved back to New Jersey after living in New York City for two years. Although her experience in the big apple was well worth the dollars and chaos, she feels there is something for her elsewhere... now the answer is to be sought, where?!

Rosie McNeill spent the last two years in California and Colorado, working, living, learning, and experiencing life. She has returned to the homeland of New Jersey and is ready to continue on a new adventure. Rosie aspires to be a tattoo artist, but in the meantime focuses her energy into weaving, crochet, and other handy crafts. A little opposite from Andrea's ideas of creating, Rosie is geared towards things with function and meaning such as dream catchers, handbags, and jewelry. She is really good at teacher!




Both artists have reached a fork in the road of life. Where shall we go next?! Should we just be what's expected of us and apply for big girl jobs?! What do we want to be!?

It seems serendipitous that we both moved back to our hometown at the same time after being away for years with nothing but a passion to create and explore the unknown future. We are going to take a risk. We are taking our blank pages and we're going to fill them with experiences and opportunity to grow, educate, and learn. 

SoapSkeptics is just beginning and it is so exciting!
Our short term goal is to travel around North America to create a social documentary. This documentary will be about the diversity in culture and art throughout America. We live in a country with so many ideas of living, what is art, what is culture, what are traditions, how do people follow these ideas, and what are their perspectives on other areas as well as their own. We hope to expand the knowledge of how life is lived. We want to spread life experience to those who have never left their hometowns, we want to share the knowledge of those who have traveled the world. We want to show what art is, how it's made, how it is used, or not used in everyday life. We will take a month out of this summer to execute this project, blog about it, and also create cite specific weavings made out of natural recourses we find in the different towns/cities/villages we pass by. In the end, we will have a DVD and a printed book of the weavings we made across America. 

After this adventure, we have a long term goal to make SoapSkeptics a center for studio and gallery space, and educational classes on craft and DIY's for people who are interested. Of course, we are understanding that life will throw us curve balls and obstacles to climb... this is why this long term goal is not so much as important as our summer adventure to create a Documentary about Culture and Art. SoapSkeptics also has the opportunity to travel to Lijiang, China to participate in a residency to film a similar documentary comparing and contrasting culture between New York City and Lijiang, China. If all goes well, and we receive the loving support we hope to achieve, we would love to take this opportunity for the Spring of 2015. But, we digress.

This blog will be utilized to spread the word of our adventures, along with the things we make! Please keep an eye out for updates on our KickStarter, news, and creative executions. :)

"To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. 

To reach out for another is to risk involvement. 

To expose feelings is to risk rejection. 

To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule. 

To love is to risk not being loved in return. 

To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. 

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. 

The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. 

He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.

Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. He has forfeited his freedom. Only a person who takes risks is free."

-anonymous

Peace and Love,

SoapSkeptics 
Andrea & Rosie.

Follow us on Instagram @soapskeptics