H-Town Run Tourist's Guide to Mental Health
Feel like a kid again with community art
Jul 8, 2019, 6:46 am
H-Town Run Tourist's Guide to Mental Health
Jovan Abernathy is an international marathoner and owner of Houston Tourism Gym. To claim your free tour, contact her at info@tourismgymhtx.com. Follow her on Twitter @jovanabernathy. Instagram @TourismGymHtx. Facebook @TourismGymHtx
Last week, I gave my 9 recommendations to de-stressing. Because mindfulness has to be practiced every day, this week, I decided to try Hack #9 "Try Something New.". Because one of my super-powers is being at the right place at the right time, I just so happened to know of a community art project with some big time local artists.
Nicola Parente and Tami Moschioni, founders of Art Uniti, are creating a new art project and needed help. I have helped on community art projects before. My tourists and I worked closely with artist Carol Simon on "First Ward is Blooming." We painted up-cycled water bottles and cut them up like flowers. It was a perfect way to chill out after work. The project took 9 months to finish and when we did, we were all proud of our "flower garden." I had been looking for a new one since and I finally found it.
Houstonians' gifts of creativity.
Author's own
We met at the Baker Ripley Leonel Castillo Community Center in Near North Houston. I was so happy that 20 of my tourists came to help. Nicola briefs everyone first:
"This community project is called Snapshot. It is a permanent installation made of steel that will perfectly frame the view of downtown Houston. There will be a spot to stand and take your selfie with the perfectly framed skyline behind you. Hence, the name Snapshot. The frame will be sitting on top of a pedestal covered with tile designs. That is where you come in. Each one of you has a setting in front of you and a bowl of tiles. You are free to design anyway you want, just stay in the lines."
It was heads down as everyone set to making their tile designs. I decided to do a Blue Tile design to depict the first street signs of Houston. You know the ones that are found on the curbs. It seemed like a breeze until my fingers got too big.
The Taylor Family spending some quality time together.
Author's own
I listened to the conversations being had. Everyone talked about when they were kids and how they loved to paint and color. Everyone was asking questions about the person next to them. The children, in the room, were all of a sudden treated like the authorities on creativity. But, not one was talking about bills or gossip. Mission accomplished. That is exactly what I wanted.
Mother and daughter, Bobby and Rachel had a gloomy week and felt inspired and uplifted while working on their tiles. Rachel was stressed about her pre-calculus final and wanted to spend time with her mom. Gillian and Tracey moved here a few months ago. Gillian works from home and sometimes can get lonely and Tracey travels a lot for work. Both were excited to do something different and get out.
Artists Nicola Parente and Tami Moschioni hold a mock-up of Snapshot.
Author's own
Now, I bet you are thinking "What is Art Uniti?" Nicola feels that being creative is a huge component to mental health. It makes him happier and he wanted to share it with others. Because they know how important art is, Tami and Nicola founded Art Uniti to let the community get involved in creating the public art around Houston. The community is able to gift their art to the city with the help of respected artists like Tami and Nicola. Snapshot is the fifth project from Art Uniti. Maybe you've seen these projects around the city: Community Quilt at Kroger at Riverstone Sugarland, Color Bursting in Hermann Park, and Scaped Senses across from Moody Park. Unfortunately, community involvement on Snapshot is closed, but I will definitely keep you posted about new projects.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”