Did anybody hear how the !POWAR! reception went?

I sadly was unable to attend the !POWAR! reception at the last Gallery Hop on October 1st. Did anyone attend or hear how it went?

!POWAR! (People of Winston-Salem Art Reclamation Program) is a program to use public art to fight graffiti and raise awareness of gang activity. A pilot program was held during the summer after East Ward Council Member Derwin L. Montgomery held meetings with local artists to come up with creative ways to fight graffiti.

During the pilot program, nine students age 11-15 worked with artist Marianne DiNapoli-Mylet to create a “mobile” mural on sailcloth that will be used to introduce the program to schools, corporations and organizations. The students also created a gang-prevention coloring book that will be printed and distributed to local schools.

Conflict Kitchen: Phase 2

Back in July, I posted about a Pittsburgh project called Conflict Kitchen that is serving the community cultural understanding via delicious food experiences. The folks at Conflict Kitchen have asked me to post an update on the second phase of their project, an Afghan cuisine restaurant called Bolani Pazi. They are looking for community support to get the restaurant up and running. Visit their website for more information.

WFU Grad Explains How Photovoice and Psychology Came Together in Kenya

Janelle recently helped me make a discovery--North Carolina has some booming activity going on in Photovoice.

Janelle Summerville is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University and a current doctoral student at the University of Virginia. While attending WFU, she traveled to Kenya for a summer and asked female students there to document their identities using a digital camera. Janelle is a student of psychology, and these photographs provided her with wonderful qualitative data that helped shed light on the values of Kenyan girls--but I divulge too much. I'd rather let Janelle's words speak for themselves. The text of a short e-mail interview I did with Janelle is provided below. And thanks again for sparking my interest in Photovoice. I had no idea there was such a deep pool of scholarship and activity going on in this field. I can't wait to share posts on other NC projects later...

Janelle with the girls of Saint Edwin's Children's Home in Kimende, Kenya

Triad Community Arts: Why photography? What made you choose this medium to study self-esteem in Kenyan girls?

Janelle Summerville: As I was preparing to go to Kenya, I read several articles and books about incorporating art into psychological research. I became particularly engaged by the idea of utilizing different methods to encourage the power of the participant to actively play a role in representing themselves, rather than simply be represented by the researcher. Photography stood out for me for several reasons. From an artistic standpoint, the thought of seeing raw photography was fascinating to me. I was intrigued by the concept of what level of honest work would come out of girls who had never used a camera before and had lives that are not as image/media-dense as we have in the States. Secondly, I felt that photography gave the girls an opportunity to capture snippets of their lives in ways that transcends conversation and is not restricted the same way by self-perceived talent like you would find using painting or dance. Thirdly, the permanence and emotional power of it. Photography provided a way to capture a small segment of the reality of their daily experience and bring it back to present to others and share the experience, share their struggle in a way that a thousand words could not. Pictures speak to people and make things real for them, so I felt that it was my responsibility to bring that all back with me.

TCA: In the article I read [on Wake's website], you stated that Kenyan girls do not tend to value themselves as individuals the same way U.S. children do. What values did you find some of the girls had?

JS: In the short time I was there, I found that academics were highly valued, being useful to the group as a whole (through work to sustain and maintain the children’s home such as cooking, cleaning, food errands, etc.) was also highly valued. Girls as young as 7 would participate in the daily operations of the building in a way that many U.S. children would not be allowed to – but it was of vital importance that the girls worked together to promote the well-being of all. Physically, long hair was valued, although the girls all had their hair completely cut off. Additionally, I was a bit surprised to hear how highly valued light skin and more caucasian traits were.

TCA: How was the process of using photography to collect information different from using surveys or interviews? What benefits and drawbacks did you find with this process?

JS: They worked so well together. Photography opened up conversations in interviews that would have never happened and allowed for a starting point for discussion and exploration. Surveys, in my opinion, often offer a preliminary understanding similar to a sketch before it is filled in with paint or a skeleton without flesh. It’s a wonderful base and support from research, but neglects some of the detail you can get with interviews and an artistic method. In the end, I used a mixed-method approach and photography was an integral part of the full picture of self in the context of an orphaned Kenyan girl. The only drawbacks came from the organizational aspects such as downloading and labeling the COUNTLESS photos that the girls took. Additionally, the director of the children’s home did not want me to leave the cameras with the girls for fear that they would be assaulted for them or feel driven to sell them for food, etc. I felt silly for not considering that possibility, but was able to adjust my plan in order to accompany them to different places and spend enough time with them each day that we could get diverse photographs to represent their daily lives and experiences. The major benefit was the look on the girl’s face taking photographs as they ran around capturing anything and everything. It was such a joy being able to be a part of that and giving them a chance to represent themselves in that way.

Acts of Creation Opening at Enrichment Center

A reblog from Life in Forsyth: Local Acts of Creation.
Don't miss the opening of Acts of Creation at the Enrichment Center this Friday!

DATS 2010: Food for Thought update

DESIGN, ART, TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM

An Annual Piedmont Event About Important Ideas

2010: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Sawtooth Center, Winston-Salem

October 9, 10, 11

(This notice covers my contribution to DATS 2010. Click here for the official site.—Andrew Young)

My paid role is to insure multicultural and alternative viewpoints through the creation of venues and other forums at this year’s event. Food is about culture. It is one of those rare, big tent themes in which everyone in the Piedmont has an interest. Everyone can bring their experience and know-how.
The best gardener I knew was my grandmother. The most flexible cook I knew was my mom. Both were frugal and could do a lot with a little. In my view, those are high standards for designers, artists, and technology innovators, whether in good economic times or bad. (more)
Why I proposed food as the DATS theme (more)
Food Geography (more)
Participate in a venue (more)

Recreation of a UN shelter, food and water at Festival Park.

Documentary by WFU Student, Courteney Morris, Now on YouTube

Just got word that a short documentary by Wake Forest University student, Courteney Morris, is now available on the university's YouTube page. Here it is below:

Upcoming July Events

Art Can! Feed the Hungry
Saturday, July 3 - Mid-Morning to Early Afternoon - Greensboro
Art Can! is a new Fun Fourth attraction, sponsored by the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, to create a temporary public art installation made of canned foods items. Architects Shermin Ata of Shermin Ata Architects with Micah Martin and Emily Hinton of Moser Mayer Phoenix Architects have joined forces to design a U.S. Flag public art installation constructed out of Campbell Soup cans. Fun Fourth attendees will be able to watch the installation as well as construct their own designs made out of donated canned goods.
373-7523 or alayman@uacarts.org

Opening: Frau Fiber and Sewing with the People
Friday, July 2 - 6 - 11 PM - Elsewhere Artist Collaborative - Greensboro
Elsewhere is sewing non-stop this June with particularly exceptional visiting artist Frau Fiber. Our fabric workshop has undergone a renovation to become Revolution Textiles, a new site for community convergence around the patterns that thread our times past and present. We're hosting a full month of textile-related events and fabric related programming. Frau Fiber is working with former mill workers, Boys and Girls Club groups, newcomer women, and people like you who want to learn to sew and/or help create a collaborative quilt utilizing Elsewhere's fabrics collection. A special opening event for the collaborative quilt, featuring a free community dinner and ceremonial final stitch.
549-5555

Opening of Happy Hill: Past and Present
Friday, July 9 - 7 PM - Diggs Gallery at WSSU - Winston-Salem
Happy Hill is Winston-Salem’s oldest African American community. For generations, residents have preserved the oral history of the neighborhood and its families. The exhibition documents this important legacy through the art and testimony of community leaders such as Georgiana Paige McCoy, Maurice Pitts Johnson, Kathleen Bitting Mock, Pastor Edith Jones, Nathaniel Tucker, William “Rock” Bitting, Jerry Hanes, Glen Johnson, Ben Piggott, Leander Sales, Kayyum Allah, James Funches and others. The exhibition includes architectural models of area homes embellished by local participants, paintings, photographs, video documentation of the community and a multi-media installation of a juke joint. The show features works by celebrated artists Chandra Cox, Juan Logan, Larry Sass, Leon Woods and Willie Little.
750-2458

Art Can! Feed the Hungry...Fun Fourth Public Art Project

Temporary Public Art Project to Feed the Hungry at Fun Fourth Art Can! is a new Fun Fourth attraction, sponsored by the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, to create a temporary public art installation made of canned foods items. Architects Shermin Ata of Shermin Ata Architects with Micah Martin and Emily Hinton of Moser Mayer Phoenix Architects have joined forces to design a U.S. Flag public art installation constructed out of Campbell Soup cans. Fun Fourth attendees will be able to watch the installation as well as construct their own designs made out of donated canned goods. "We're pleased to bring our creative community together to help stock and replenish the Greensboro Urban Ministry Food Bank at a time when folks generally aren't thinking about feeding the hungry. It's a wonderful example of how Art Can! make a difference," said UAC Interim President and CEO Altina Layman. Want to help? Canned food donations will be accepted for the project at the Freedom Run and Walk on June 26th, 1776 performances at the Carolina Theatre on July 1 and 2nd and Kickoff Block Party on July 2nd. Donations will also be accepted at the Parade and Street Festival on Saturday, July 3rd in designated areas marked by balloon columns. Construction will take place on July 3rd mid-morning to early afternoon in the parking lot off of Davie Street, near Summit Station Eatery. Prior to June 26th, donations may be dropped off at the following downtown locations: Carolina Theatre, Action Greensboro and the Greensboro Cultural Center between 11am - 5pm Monday-Friday. On July 4th, donations may be made at the News & Record Pops Concert and Gate City Fireworks Spectacular at Grimlsely High School Stadium. For more information, please contact Altina Layman at the United Arts Council at 336-373-7523 or by email at alayman@uacarts.org.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Altina Layman 336.373.7523, extension 242 alayman@uacARTS.org

Great Article in The Chronicle about Art & Racial Identity

Here is the article from The Chronicle bit by bit. It was too large to scan in as one image. My apologies! Click each image to enlarge.

A Women’s Weaving Group

• Supporting refugee and immigrant women to preserve traditional weaving
• First organizational meeting held at the Greensboro Central Library on June 10
• Efforts to create viable model
• Meeting attracts Nepali and Montagnard weavers; others welcome!

Pastor Y Hin Nie hosted the meeting and invited Betsy Renfrew, a Greensboro artist who has been working with Montagnard weavers intensively for the past two years, to discuss with several women who attended the possibilities in forming a cooperative or other group to preserve and promote backstrap weaving, a practice known among many Southeast Asian refugee women who live in the Piedmont. Such a group could also purchase hard to find thread and other materials, hold classes, sell work and keep technical and traditional skills alive.

A second meeting is planned for July at the Greensboro Historical Museum, details to come. 

• See videos of Montagnard backstrap weavers in Greensboro on YouTube.
• Read about the Montagnard weaver whose work was prominently featured at the Green Hill's 2009 Winter Show
• See related work on a women's sewing and English conversation class.

For more information, please contact Betsy Renfrew at betsyrenfrew@triad.rr.com

Graffiti: Public Menace and Public Art?

Last night, the Winston-Salem City Council held a public hearing on the possibility of making tighter restrictions to discourage graffiti artists. Graffiti has its obvious destructive qualities, but it's also a form of public art.

Work by artist/photographer, JR.

And in the instance below, discovered at inhabitat.org, graffiti can mobilize a community. Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn work with youth to paint humongous murals in favelas (large squatter settlements) in Brazil.

Images from favelapainting.com.

City of W-S Human Relations Department and WFU Art Department Collaborate on Art Project as Part of Kenan Institute for the Arts' ACCORD Initiative

As part of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ ACCORD Initiative, the City of Winston-Salem Human Relations Department and the Wake Forest University (WFU) Art Department are collaborating on a visual art project entitled Transforming Race.

The Transforming Race project will culminate in the presentation of visual art pieces by five public high school students and five WFU art students that address issues relating to racial identity and diversity at a gallery opening on Thursday, June 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Liberty Arts Center at 526 North Liberty Street in downtown Winston-Salem. The opening is free and open to the public. The art will remain on display at the Liberty Arts Center for just one evening before traveling to high schools throughout the county during the next academic year.

Photo credit: Paul Marley, WFU Art Department.

The ACCORD initiative, which stands for Artists Contributing to Civic-Oriented and Responsive Democracy, is a project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts dedicated to sparking dialogue about the essential role of the arts and civic-minded artists within a thriving democracy. Through this initiative, the Institute is partnering local nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies with area college students to create arts-based projects that address community needs and/or social issues.

The high school and college students participating in the Transforming Race project are working together in pairs to examine racial attitudes, personal experiences, and the overall relevance of diversity. The goals of Transforming Race are to: create a dialogue among participants about racial identity that leads to insights about those different from themselves; have participants work together to find words, images and metaphors that can communicate the problems and joys of being a person raised in a multiracial, post-segregation society; use the content developed in the workshop to create art objects that convey the feelings, attitudes and conclusions of the participants; and use the art to communicate issues of racial identity beyond the participants to the high school community and further.Participants in the project include five artists from WFU: Becky Bowers, senior; Courtney Whicker, junior; Mary Alice McCullough, freshman; Katie Wolf, freshman; and Lauren Arrington, junior; as well as a videographer, Courteney Morris, senior. Participating high school artists are Rae-Yao Lee, a junior at Reagan High School; Victor Mendoza, a junior at Parkland High School; Elizabeth Rosales, , a junior at Parkland High School; Brandon Wilkins, a junior at Parkland High School; and Jonathan Cunningham, a sophomore at Mt. Tabor High School.

Transforming Race is the second project of the ACCORD Initiative. This partnership project is a strong example of such community outreach. For more information, contact the Kenan Institute at 722-0030.

Review of The Yesman

Check out Jana Tasich's review of The Yes Man, an original play that is the result of a collaboration between The Enrichment Center, students at UNCSA, and Art Tasting.

Creative Aging Symposium: Thursday and Friday in Greensboro

The Creative Aging Symposium offers artists and healthcare professionals ways to embrace creativity and advance culture change in aging service environments. Because of the rapidly expanding older population and related lifestyle changes, we must find new ways to improve the quality of life for older adults of all ability levels. This highly interactive two-day Symposium will highlight important research results and raise awareness of resources available at the national, state and local levels during the General Session on Thursday. Workshops on Friday will offer experiential concurrent sessions providing valuable hands-on tools to encourage innovative thought and implementation of new creative programs.

Objectives: (1) learn about the untapped potential of older adults and the growing field of creative aging, including research and programming at the national, state and local levels (2) receive hands-on training in creative programs that you can take back to your community (3) learn about the resources and creative opportunities that exist for older adults locally, regionally and nationally, and (4) connect with other artists and aging service providers in your area.

What an impressive organization to have right here in the Piedmont. Attend if you can!

Teaching Literacy While Instilling Empathy in Students

Troubles, Worries, Work

Moving day. It always scared me to death.
Troubles, worries, work.
It includes everything to make me crazy. Some people
like it, but not me. There is always some
hope but what are hopes? Hopes bring
troubles, worries, work,
and they include everything to make me crazy. Some people
like it, but not me. I would like not to move.
I would like to stay, because actually days
are not moving. There are no moving days.
Time stays. We move. I would like to stay
not to move.

-- Madmax

Stumbled upon a great resource called Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. One particular project drew me in-- teachers use poetry by homeless people to teach literacy. Students read and understand a poem, write a poem based on their feelings about home, learn to understand why some people are homeless, and empathize with other homeless children. This method of teaching has such multiplying benefits. While attempting to reach a singular of teaching literacy, teachers can affect students' emotional maturity, give a social studies lesson, and encourage students to express themselves in artistic ways.

The poem above is from a writing workshop at the Clergy Coalition Shelter for the Homeless in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The Enrichment Center and UNCSA Collaborate on Play as Part of Kenan Institute for the Arts' ACCORD Initiative

As part of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ ACCORD Initiative, The Enrichment Center and students from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), who are also part of Art Tasting, an emerging performing arts organization in Winston-Salem, are presenting an original short play by Ian Antal and Suzy McCalley. The play, entitled “The Yesman,” will be performed Thursday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m. at The Enrichment Center at 1006 S. Marshall Street in Winston-Salem.
Visit the Kenan Institute's website for more information.

Gulu Choir Sings "Home"

Although The Voice Project is by no means local organization (it's based in Uganda), it offers a truly inspiring example of social change through art. Ravaged by conflict and war, Ugandan women, victims of rape and widowhood themselves, are using songs to bring home boy soldiers who have fled to the bush in shame and fear of the violence they committed. These songs are played on the radio or sung by women's choirs in villages across Uganda.

I found out about the organization because of an international exchange in which musicians offer up their talent and music in various ways to help bring attention to the work of the Voice Project. The Gulu Women's Choir sings a song I enjoy, "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I applaud these musicians for bringing attention to the project with their voices, but the truly remarkable voices are those of the women who communicate love, acceptance, and forgiveness with their voices.

"Home" in Gulu from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting in NC!

Alternative ROOTS Annual Meeting Website: Click Above

Presenting: Public Performances by Renown Artist, Tim Miller

Groundbreaking performance artist, world renowned humorist, writer, social and political satirist, post-modern avant garde artist and gay rights activist, Tim Miller, will perform this week at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA, Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose frank and unabashed antics on stage and off have earned him the distinction of being one of the most controversial and sought after performers/artists/writers/political satirists and humorists of our day.

The San Diego Union Tribune says his latest performance piece, The Lay of the Land, "scores him points through humor, vivid personal anecdote and recurring sense of marvelously frank, poetic sensuality. It’s the kind of testimony and revelation that doesn’t deny his gay sexuality, yet its honesty and tenderness speak directly to any- and every- one."

You won’t want to miss this golden opportunity to see Tim Miller in Lay of the Land and to see the Student Project Performance that he has created at UNCSA.

Public Performances

Thursday, April 8 - 8:00 PM - Agnes deMille Theater, UNCSA

Saturday, April 10 - 7:30 PM - Patrons Theatre, Performance Place, UNCSA

Limited free tickets are available for UNCSA Faculty, Staff and Students.
Tickets for the Public, $7; Seniors and Students, $5. Available through the Stevens Center and Watson Hall Box Offices.

721-1945

**The material is of an adult nature and not recommended for children under 13 years of age.**

Esse Quam Videri

I have always thought that North Carolina's guiding slogan, "Esse Quam Videri (To be, rather than to seem)," is about the best state motto for which one could ask, one from which North Carolinians should draw pride. Now an enthralling photodocumentary project, Esse Quam Videri: Muslim Self Portraits has taken on the motto and its connotations to present the personal and varied stories of those who practice Islam in North Carolina.

The photographs are accompanied by a statement from the participants and sometimes an additional audio recording of why the participants posed as they did to present their "Muslimness" and how it has, in part, defined their identities. I've included a few of the photographs below.

Ansar, High Point, North Carolina, 2009

Tamir, Statesville, North Carolina, 2008

Cyclones, Charlotte, NC, 2008

All images are reproduced from the Esse Quam Videri: Muslim Self Portraits website.