Lost

It was lost. It was lost for about 5 months. I looked in every corner of the house and the Park Avenue. No trace. Maybe I left it on one of my jackets. I checked all of my shirts and jackets one by one. No trace.

Last days of February, 5 months ago. I couldn’t find one of the brooches which my wife gave me as a wedding anniversary gift. She bought them from the antique store in the Corn Town back in December. After my peruse at home and the car, I kept searching for it everyday. “Maybe I should recall the last day I put it on. When was it? Let’s see. Alright, it was the day I taught illustration at COD.”

Tried to remember what I did that day. After the class, I was going back to home, it was cold. “Cold” was not enough to give the sense of the temperature. With the windchill even colder. It felt like -4 degrees Fahrenheit. It was snowing. I needed to stop by the grocery store. Although I had a long and thick woven scarf around my neck and face, my nose was frozen and red, my eyes were in tears of cold. I walked to my car after shopping, put the stuff in the car, walked back with the empty cart, placed it behind the other one, got my quarter back and got back into my car. It was freezing. Maybe I dropped it at the parking lot of the school or at the grocery store. Then, I was reluctantly convinced that I wouldn’t be able to find it, and quit my search.  

Months later. A Tuesday morning. Two days after that Sunday when my brooch popped in my mind again without a reason. I decided to tidy up all of the art supplies we have. We have a tiny closed outside of our apartment in the hallway. Since I emptied my studio at the music building, NIU, I was having hard time to keep our art supplies because the lack of space. The more I tried to get rid of some, the more complicated it got. Even though I gave away some supplies, we still have a lot. Everything is packed like sardines in our closed; tool boxes, canvases and canvas boards, wooden boards, photo boards, storage boxes, brushes, all kinds of paints, toy train sets, brooms, cables, and materials from my previous shows. We decided to use those supplies which were waiting forever. I took everything out from the closet first. Then started to separate them, piled up papers, made stacks of canvases and canvas boards, took all of the acrylic paints from the storage box, and place them in another box, left the oil paints in the same one, made a bunch from the brushes. Well, a little bit more space in the closet now.

After stacking things back into the closed, I threw away some old and broken stuff. I was almost done with organizing our art supplies. There was a canvas bag filled with various sizes of wooden boards to be paint in front of the china cabinet in the living room. When I knelt down to put a bagfull of figurines, I felt a sharp pain under my right big toe. First, I screamed “Ouch!” And looked at my toe, it was bleeding. My wife was horrified with my scream and looking at me with questioning eyes, trying to find out whats going on with me. Then I shouted with joy; “My bird, I found my bird!” 

There it was. After 5 months of journey, my long-lost, copper-bronze colored, bird shaped metal brooch stung my big toe with its needle in the middle of our living room. It will be a mystery where it was hidden, and how it came to the point that I stepped on. Who knows, maybe it could fly when nobody’s looking. 

Sunday, August 11, 2019, Naperville

Alumni spotlight: Korkut Akacik, illustrator, animator, and educator

Akacik_works_023.jpg

Korkut Akacik earned his Master of Fine Arts in animation from the NIU School of Art and Design in 2018.  He is currently the creative director at Econ Illinois, a non-profit organization through NIU that has been developing interesting and interactive ways to help Illinois teachers educate students so they are better prepared for their financial futures.

He is also an adjunct faculty member at College of DuPage where he teaches courses in digital animation, digital illustration, Sequential Art and cartooning.  He worked for many years as an animator and instructor illustrator in his native Turkey, and in 2007 co-founded Akacik Advertising & Design Ltd. in Istanbul and operated it for more than a decade.

Continue reading ☛

Meet the Artist!

“I was about 5 years old when I saw that animated stork that evening. We’d just passed across the Bosphorus on a boat from the European side to the Asian side of Istanbul with my Grandpa. The animated emblem of a national bank, a stork, was flying with it’s animated neon lights. [Though this was a memorable moment, observing some lovely animation], it was not the moment that I decided to create animations; It was a hot summer, and I was walking to the grocery store.

Continue reading.

What is Ugly?

Ugly_M_Korkut_AkacikUgly but good! What is ugly? How do we decide what is beautiful? Its shape, color, draftsman?

I was at downtown Chicago a couple weeks ago. It was freezing cold and windy. There was a young homeless guy sitting with his small Yorkshire on his lap, by the corner of the Monroe and the State St. Lots of plastic bags, layers of clothes, long beard, long and dirty blonde hair.

An “ugly” man was crossing the street towards to the homeless guy. Other people were trying to stay away from that “ugly” man. They were even avoiding eye contact with him. He was dressed sort of as a “drug dealer”. He was tall and wide. He came closer to that homeless guy. Young man was a little afraid of him. Yorkshire started to bark. The “ugly” stopped in front of the homeless guy, bent over. Gave him his venti size cup of Starbucks coffee and a giant size sandwich. He also took out a bag of dog food from his coat’s pocket. Homeless guy was surprised and grateful. The “ugly” left, and walked through the West Monroe, and disappeared by the alley just before the Private Bank Theatre-Hamilton poster. And this illustration is what remains from that “ugly “ man on my mind.

Was that helping man “ugly” or “beautiful”? What is the formula of the “beautiful”? What is your understanding on beauty? Is there a universal definition of beauty, which everybody would agree on? Or, is the beauty in the eye of the beholder?

One Night in Paris

One night in Paris. Years and years ago, we visited Paris just for three days. When I woke up the first morning in Paris, it was not me what I saw in the mirror. My allergies!!!

paris .jpg

I couldn’t find a chance to look around, or sketch at all. Wish I would be able to see Paris again soon:))

PAK!

One day at my studio, we decided to make a stop motion using the Ipad. We had a lot of fun when we were shooting frame by frame this little character! Hope you enjoy it : )

Button