4B —Thursday, October 26, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COURTESY OF NAOMI WAKU
One of many elaborate looks at the hands of Naomi Waku, better known online as ‘NamGlam’
Artist Naomi Waku puts
the glamor in Halloween
NamGlam intersects the elaborate & the glamorous in her tutorials
In the age of lip kits, contour
and ever-thickening eyebrows,
it seems that everyone wants to
be a makeup mogul. Instagram
and YouTube have made it so
anyone can throw their looks
or tutorials to the masses,
gaining online prestige and
setting the bar for upcoming
trends. But succeeding in the
makeup world is easier said
than done.
Born and raised in Belgium,
24-year-old Naomi Waku is
one such success
story; a success
story
that
has
taken
on
the
unconventional.
As NamGlam on
Instagram, Waku
creates theatrical,
transformative
looks.
She
has
made
herself
into
an
alien
fortune teller, an
avatar
princess,
a glam red devil
and
a
wicked
witch; all using
makeup. In just
over a year, Waku
has
amassed
52
thousand
Instagram
followers and has
recently
started
posting tutorials
to YouTube.
“Ever since I
can
remember
I
always
loved
fashion
and
beauty.
In
my
teenage
years,
I
came
across
beauty channels
on Youtube and I instantly
fell in love,” Waku wrote in
an email interview with The
Daily. “My dream was to one
day have my own space where I
could share my work with other
makeup lovers like myself.
Which is why I started my own
makeup page on Instagram and
the rest is history.”
Now that Waku has carved
this space out for herself,
she has found overwhelming
support for her work.
“It’s great and overwhelming
at the same time,” Waku wrote
of her followers. “I feel very
grateful to have so many people
supporting me and giving me
love. It really keeps me going.”
Waku does her best to keep
in touch with her followers and
foster a dynamic community,
acting more as a confidant
and peer than an untouchable
expert.
“I couldn’t ask for better,
my followers give me a lot of
love and support which really
motivates me to push myself
more,” Waku wrote. “I love to
interact with them through
private messages, answering
questions
they
have,
give
them advice, etc. It’s really
important for me to create a
strong and durable relationship
with them.”
This strong community is
due in part to Waku’s unique
looks. Instead of opting for
convention and the every-day,
Waku’s looks are fantastical
and
otherworldly.
Covering
her
face
with
colors
and
gems, Waku makes Halloween
makeup glamorous. Her work
is both beautiful and precise;
creating
these
looks
using
makeup techniques such as
contouring and shading, but
ending up with something
entirely other.
“I always feel the need to
challenge myself when I do
makeup,” Waku wrote. “I’m
always looking to improve my
craft. It’s a way for me step out
of my comfort zone, learn new
techniques and overall improve
my skills and artistry.”
For Waku, makeup isn’t just
about the end result; there is
much to be said for the process.
“I’m
quite
a
technical
person. What I love about
makeup is trying out new
techniques or improving my
own,” Waku wrote. “This way I
never get bored because I never
stop learning. I also love to play
with colors, especially vibrant
ones, it puts me in great mood
especially on days where I
don’t feel at my best.”
But
Waku
still
enjoys
appreciating the final result
of her work, the culmination
of all her research, planning
and execution. She finds that
intricate looks, in comparison
to more ready-to-wear designs,
are more gratifying.
“I love doing creative and
intricate looks,” Waku wrote.
“These kind of looks are the
most
time
consuming
however
the
end
result
are
the
best
especially
when you put
in the time and
effort it really
makes
the
difference.”
Like
many
other
artists,
Waku
turns
to other forms
of
art
for
inspiration
when planning
her
next
project.
She
even
has
aspirations
of
taking
on
other
artful
ventures,
namely music.
“I collect a
lot of pictures
that I use for
inspiration,”
Waku
wrote.
“Some are from
a
magazine,
music
video
or other makeup artists that
inspire me. It really depends
on what I’m creating ... I
listen to a lot of music and I
secretly would love to make
some as well. This is definitely
something I have in mind for
the longest time.”
For Waku, her passions are
first and foremost fueled by a
need for self-expression. It is
this unabashed representation
of the self in combination with
sheer talent that has garnered
Waku such a following. She
has taken makeup — something
that
is
already
inherently
beautiful — and made it art.
“(Makeup) requires work,
skills, time and effort,” Waku
wrote. “But above all makeup
represent a way to express
myself in a artistic and creative
way and this is everything to
me.”
CARLY SNIDER
Senior Arts Editor
COURTESY OF NAOMI WAKU
ARTIST
PROFILE
IN
VERTIGO RECORDS
Famed heavy metal band Black Sabbath
Darkness and the Occult:
A brief history of Doom
A musical manifestation of all things spooky and satanic
Inspired by gruesome death,
darkness and the occult, Doom
Metal has become the ultimate
projection of fear in music.
The legendary genre rose from
the ground during 1970 in the
form of Black Sabbath — the
high priests of heavy metal,
the creators of doom. The band
gave the world an introduction
to chunky basslines and sleazy
guitar riffs all played in a slower
tempo, drenched in haunting
lyrics to create an inescapable
eeriness that floods the ears.
Black
Sabbath
started
it
all after being released in
the United Kingdom on the
most appropriate date: Friday
13,
1970.
Frontman
Ozzy
Osbourne’s voice floats over the
slow, dense music and it replaces
gravity, pushing and pulling
the body in every direction
with each word escaping his
mouth. “Visions cupped within
a flower / Deadly petals with
strange
powers,”
Osbourne
sings in “Behind the Wall of
Sleep.” The song is influenced
by the common practice in
Wicca and other cultures of
using plants to enhance the
physical and mental states of a
person and their environments,
but its demonized to depict a
resurrection of sorts.
Though Black Sabbath has
occult influence, they were more
inspired by the harsh mass of
death that surrounded Vietnam,
and they focused on intense
lyrical content that included
different renditions of the end
of the world, war and drug
addiction. In the song “Hand of
Doom,” Osbourne sings, “First
it was the bomb / Vietnam
napalm / Disillusioning / You
push the needle in,” describing
the timeline from soldier to
drug addict as an effect of PTSD
in four short lines.
Black
Sabbath’s
honest
representation of the hells on
Earth and their pioneering
instrumentals created a recipe
to
induce
terror
through
sound, but doom after 1970
began honing in on the use
of surrealism in their lyrical
content. The brutal reality of
death and horrors in history
were still present in doom, but
there was a new portrayal of a
more monster-esque type of
darkness. Doom was taking a
break from the capitalist, war-
hungry cesspool Earth, and
stepping into the eccentric
wormhole of nightmares.
Pentagram executed the new
strategy effortlessly in their
1985
self-titled
record
that
brings fear to life through a more
occult lens. Some of the album
is sung from the perspective of
a supernatural force instead of a
human observer. In “Sinister,”
frontman Bobby Liebling sings,
“I am the priest of Hell make
a slave of you,” in which the
narrator becomes Satan.
Liebling manifests as another
gruesome
identity
in
“The
Ghoul,” where he sings, “I’ve
come to desecrate your bones /
As maggots crawl amongst your
flesh / You’re soon to meet the
truth of death.” Its guitar riffs
ooze desecrated sounds that
pull the victim in closer to the
song, while the drums replace
their heartbeat and shake their
lungs.
Pentagram’s ability to lace
their
murky
instrumentals
with gorey lyrics made doom
more imaginative and creepy.
It gave way to more varied
interpretation and odd content
that was cultivated in the genre
during the ’90s.
During that time, Electric
Wizard became the Doom Metal
oddity composed of cultural
fascinations
from
European
porn to Detroit garage rock.
They pulled inspiration from
the dark masters before them
and integrated it with other
horrific material from ’60s and
’70s gore films and the terror
tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Their
album titles reflect some of
their influences, with names
like Black Masses, Time to Die,
Dopethrone
and
Witchcult
Today.
Witchcult
Today
sounds
like the epitome of doom. It
starts with the sound of crying
winds and is rancid with chiller
influences. The second song,
“Dunwich” is a panicked and
blackened
interpretation
of
Lovecraft’s
“The
Dunwich
Horror,” a short story about
horrific events that occur in the
fictional Dunwich, New England
surrounded by hills and full of
silence, with a past of witch-
blood and Satan-Worship. Liz
Buckingham’s heavy guitar riffs
and Jus Oborn’s rough, scratchy
voice envelope the listener into
a mystic environment, into their
own personal Dunwich.
Electric Wizard then moves
from a surreal song inspired by
a fictional world into something
inspired by events in history in
“Torquemada 71,” which calls
attention to the Spanish friar,
Tomas de Torquemada, who
was responsible for the burning
of 2,000 heretics and for the
torture and death of many
more. Oborn’s voice singing,
“Come now and torture me”
becomes soaked in heavy guitar
fuzz and slashy distortion. It
sounds torturous and drawn
out, like the dismemberment of
a body part.
Electric Wizard is a doom
curated from the disgusting
truth
in
bands
like
Black
Sabbath,
and
their
surreal
counterparts like Pentagram.
It melts each influence together
into a sound of dripping black
tar from the top of a succubus
leading to the void. Other
present doom bands that level
with Electric Wizard are Sleep
and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats,
who project doom with their
own blackened style. They keep
doom thriving after 47 years of
existing. It remains to be one of
the most prominent sub-genres
of metal because of its growing
sludge sound and consistent
themes of death, darkness and
the occult.
SELENA AGUILERA
Daily Arts Writer
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It melts each
influence together
into a sound of
dripping black tar