Ancestars Original Air Cork Yoga Mat

LOVELAND THERAPY FUND

100 mats are available in the Ancestars limited edition design with our goal to raise $2,500 toward the Loveland Foundation. This will provide up to 40 black women and girls therapy sessions.

With the barriers affecting access to treatment by members of diverse ethnic and racial groups. Loveland Therapy Fund provides financial assistance to Black women and girls nationally seeking therapy.

WHY GIVING TO THE THERAPY FUND IS IMPORTANT NOW MORE THAN EVER

COVID -19 is disproportionately affecting minority women, 70% of Black Mothers don't have access to paid leave, despite 80% of them being the main breadwinner for their family. According to the US HHS Office of Minority Health report Black/African Americans living below poverty are three times more likely to report serious psychological distress than those living above poverty. And while Black/African Americans are less likely than white people to die from suicide as teenagers, Black/African Americans teenagers are more likely to attempt suicide than are white teenagers. Loveland is committed to investing in the healing of black women and girls nationwide during this difficult time. Collectively we can let these women know that we are invested in their healing.

LEARN MORE: https://thelovelandfoundation.org

Meet the Artist: Noraa James

Noraa James is a creator from Norfolk, Virginia presently based in Athens, Georgia. As an Old Dominion University Drawing & Design graduate, Noraa's work is an exploration into the representation of blackness in its beauty, sublimity and the connectedness of such with the natural elements in and around us, primarily through the scope of afrofuturism and afrosurrealism. Outside of art, Noraa occupies himself by swooning over his wife, listening to and learning music production, anything sci-fi, healthy cooking/eating, intimate and deep conversations, most things eclectic, defining blackness in my own terms, fitness, and alternating between reading a book and the clouds barefoot under a tree at a park.

Find Noraa at: https://srealism.com | @noraa.james 

Behind the Ancestars Design

Sharing the same name to an earlier series of digital manipulation pieces I created under the former pseudonym, SReal, Ancestars (2020) is an imagining of my ancestors as connected constellations among the cosmos, full of peace, compassion and guardianship. I am deeply inspired by ritual masks of various African societies and that is the primary component in how I form the faces of these beings. In this way I attempt to connect representational ancient beings with a space beyond size and time.