During last week’s live chat with filmmakers — co-presented with PBS NewsHour’s Art Beat — we launched a contest daring Independent Lens fans to submit their artwork.

Our inbox quickly flooded with entries and we have assembled 15 finalists for you to review. Check out the slideshow of our talented contestants’ work, and then vote for your favorite. You can vote only once a day.

Polling will close on Monday, April 25 at noon PDT. We’ll announce our winner on April 26!

(This works best if you click the four arrows icon in the bottom right of the window to make the slideshow full-screen, and click “show info” as the slideshow plays, to learn more about each piece and the artists.)

Ready to vote? Click on through to the other side!

In celebration of Artists Month, we’re putting out a call for entries to you — our creative audience — to create and submit a piece of artwork that best reflects you. We’re looking for expressions of identity and creativity here: Perhaps it’s a self-portrait, or a photograph of a beloved object, a diorama scene, or a collage of found objects. Prizes will be awarded to all who enter, but the further along you advance in the competition, the better the goods you’ll win!

We were inspired by the docs airing this month and the artists they celebrate: Vik Muniz’s portraits made with garbage in Waste Land; the graffiti artwork in Tamra Davis’s Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child; and Mark Hogancamp’s spectacularly evocative photographs of his entirely original universe in the film Marwencol. In that spirit, we created this contest to celebrate that original vision in you, our raison d’etre.

Guidelines

• Entries should be created with found objects at minimal to zero cost

• A JPEG of the artwork must be emailed to ILartistsmonth@itvs.org by noon PST on Monday, April 18.

• A brief caption (200 words or fewer) must be included, describing your artwork and what inspired you.

• Contestants must include their full mailing address in order to receive prizes.

Prizes

• All who submit will automatically be mailed an original 24 x 19-inch Independent Lens season poster featuring the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

• Finalists, announced on Tuesday, April 19 will receive a poster of the Oscar-nominated film Waste Land autographed by Director Lucy Walker.

• Art by our finalists will be opened for a popular vote on our blog.

• The Runner Up will receive a signed print by Mark Hogancamp, subject of Marwencol

• The Grand Prize winner will be profiled on our website Tuesday, April 26, and will receive a one-of-a-kind original painting from outsider artist Mikey Welsh (former bassist for the band Weezer).

Really, you can’t lose by entering, but you could win a lot of unique prizes that most of our staff wishes they could keep for themselves (it’s true!).

For inspiration purposes, take a moment and watch the clips from the film below and get cracking!

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (premieres April 12)

Waste Land (premieres April 19)

Marwencol (premieres April 26)

Good luck!

In preparation for the release of Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, I was asked by ITVS to blog about it for Beyond the Box. While I’d like to think it’s because of my terribly trenchant observations about art, a subject I occasionally write about for The Huffington Post, it’s probably because I am Haitian.

Basquiat was born of a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father; but I can tell you that to us, that darling of the 1980s New York art scene who went on to international fame and fortune, was of course Haitian! The natural outgrowth of a country where an artist is born every day. In fact, Haiti just might be the biggest source for black art in the world; so it makes total sense that a wunderkind like Basquiat should hail from there.

I had seen the Julian Schnabel feature, which chronicled the artist’s short life. I visited the electrifying retrospective of his work hosted by MOCA in 2005. I bought the catalog and often browse its pages, marveling at the man-child’s lavish creative output, searching for references that speak of Haiti. But this film gripped me in a way that transcended my Haitian filter.

Directed by Tamra Davis, Basquiat’s longtime friend, the viewer is regaled with footage of the artist responding to questions about his lifestyle, his art process, the art world’s perception of him; about race, and racism toward him; his new-found fame and its repercussions … you know, the things you would ask if you could hang with him and have a cup of tea, or vodka.

Of course, I wanted more. I enjoyed listening to reflections of the people who loved him, lived with him and did business with him, but in the end, the enigmatic artist (who might be diagnosed with Aspberger Syndrome were he alive today) is the one you want. Like clues to a life-changing puzzle, or diamonds that shine a light on your soul, I hung onto his every word for a wider glimpse into that radiant mind of his.

And then there is the art. Happily, the film shows lots of it. Although we hear many hotshot art dealers proclaiming Basquiat a genius based on his early drawings and graffiti scrawls, I can’t say I would have been as insightful. To my eye, they looked like the drawings of a 7-year-old. There, I said it. But as the film progresses, we are treated to the artist’s creative evolution; and it is jaw-dropping, powerful, and heady stuff.

Although vastly different in style, the art brought to mind the work of an artist who goes by Killy. Fifteen years older than Basquiat was when he died, his paintings and sculptures are forceful, emotional, and gripping without revealing his native roots. Perhaps art has nothing to do with place, and everything to do with the soul. But Killy is Haitian, and so was Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Carine Fabius is an author, museum curator, and owner of Los Angeles-based Galerie Lakaye, which specializes in Haitian art.

Stalin consolidated his 1950′s post-war power by declaring all modernist art “decadent” and “bourgeois.” Those caught practicing it were sent to the gulag, or executed.

So archaeologist Igor Savitsky began his heroic quest to save 44,000 pieces of forbidden art from the masters of Russian modernism by squirreling them away in an Uzbek museum, far from the eyes of the KGB.

When the USSR disintegrated, it seemed the collection would endure. But under an increasingly autocratic Uzbek regime, the museum’s newfound notoriety may be double-edged. Can these masterpieces survive their second threat in a century?

To learn more about the museum and art works, watch The Desert of Forbidden Art Tuesday night on Independent Lens.

In celebration of Artists Month, the Independent Lens team has constructed an array of interactive features on Marginalized Art. Enjoy!

Watch the video after the jump.

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

Join Independent Lens to celebrate creativity and art throughout the month of April:

Special Section: Marginalized Art — explore the films and interactive features highlighting this month. They include interactive galleries, a quiz on outsider art, and a do-it-yourself toolkit to make your own vernacular backyard art, and much more.

The films:
• The Desert of Forbidden Art by filmmakers Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope  (Tuesday, April 5)

• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child by filmmaker Tamra Davis (Tuesday, April 12)

• Waste Land by filmmaker Lucy Walker (Tuesday, April 19)

• Marwencol by filmmaker Jeff Malmberg(Tuesday, April 26)

From street art to pre-punk beat literature; from Soviet censorship to the Third Reich’s condemnation of “degenerate art”; art from the underrepresented always seems to nudge culture to the edge of its comfort zone. Check out our galleries, quizzes, and video goodies on the special Independent Lens Artists Month page for a multimedia safari into marginalized art. Features include:

• The Eye of the Beholder Challenge — Why does one work of art sell for millions while another lands in the Museum of Bad Art?

• The Savitsky Collection — An interactive gallery of artwork from the Nukus Museum in Uzbekistan.

• The Ultimate William S. Burroughs Quiz — How much do you really know about the man and his work? You have 15 seconds to answer each question!

• The Curiosity Cabinet of Vik Muniz — Artist Vik Muniz creates the “worst possible illusion” using soil, thread, chocolate, sugar, air — whatever strikes his creative spirit.

• Off the Map: Build your Own Backyard Paradise — Choose one of our virtual “backyards.” Then scavenge through some “junk drawers” to find “objects of delight” that you can use to create your own visionary world.

Join Independent Lens to celebrate creativity and art throughout the month of April:

• The Desert of Forbidden Art by filmmakers Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope  (Tuesday, April 5)

• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child by filmmaker Tamra Davis (Tuesday, April 12)

• Waste Land by filmmaker Lucy Walker (Tuesday, April 19)

• Marwencol by filmmaker Jeff Malmberg(Tuesday, April 26)

The documentary by filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev tells the incredible story about a group of visionary Soviet-era artists and one man who risked his life to rescue their work.

The art exhibited in the film was featured earlier this month in The New York Times.

The Desert of Forbidden Art, by filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev tells the incredible story about a group of visionary Soviet-era artists and one man who risked his life to rescue their work.

Coming to Independent Lens on April 5, the documentary has its theatrical release in New York starting on Friday at the Cinema Village.

For background, check out this recent feature in The New York Times.

The film, directed by Hector Galan, explores everything from New York’s break-dancing community to the theater scene in Texas, offering a truly unique cross section of Latino artists working today.

Visiones weaves a tapestry of paintings, songs, dances, and spoken-word performances to reflect on how Latinos have impacted arts and culture.

Watch a clip from parts three and four of Visiones, airing this Sunday on Global Voices on PBS WORLD.