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.

ReBlog from DWSP: Upcoming Business 40 Improvement Project Corridor Wide Announcement for Downtown W-S

http://downtownwinstonsalem.blogspot.com/2010/09/upcoming-business-40-improvement.html


Let's not forget as we share our thoughts on the Business 40 Redesign that our history and connection to each other are just as important as beautiful aesthetics. Bridges are for connecting, after all.

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.

Upcoming August Events

African American Atelier Presents: 25UNDER25
Through August 6 - Greensboro Cultural Center - Greensboro
25under25 highlights a diverse group of eclectic and vibrant young artists from the Triad Community. An extensive range of expression and media will be showcased, integrating the experiences and perspectives of the members of the millennial generation.
333.6885 or info@africanamericanatelier.org

Pathway to Freedom
Through August 20 - 8 PM - Snow Camp Outdoor Drama Site - Snow Camp
An exciting account of the struggles and heroism of the 1840's and 1850's along the "Underground Railroad" from NC to Indiana. Both individuals and some organized religions fought slavery in the legislature and on the farms, while some, led volunteers and free slaves in clandestine efforts to help escaping slaves to freedom. Music in the play is the music of the period and enriches the emotions of the play.
800.726.5115 or snowcampot@aol.com

Alternate Roots Annual Meeting
August 10 - 15 - Lutheridge Conference Center - Arden, NC
In 2010, Alternate ROOTS launches a three-year initiative, The Aesthetics of Diversity. It will explore issues and opportunities to advance a progressive agenda in the South through the lens of the South’s newest citizens, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, India, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Aesthetics of Diversity will examine questions of art and culture focusing on place in 2010, people in 2011, and traditions in 2012. The goal is to build bridges across and among diverse communities and inform discussions such that members of various communities have a lens through which to view how they may positively impact change in their community.
404.577.1079

Photography Dialogs: John Rosenthal and Linda Foard Roberts
Wednesday, August 11 - 5:30 PM - Green Hill Center for NC Art - Greensboro
Rosenthal will speak about his latest series of color photographs of New Orleans taken one year and a half after Hurricane Katrina. Roberts will present her large format digital photographs "Simple Truths" portraying her family and home. Both photographers will then discuss the nature of their medium.
333.7460 or liz.busch@greenhillcenter.org

Recycle Labyrinth Swap-a-Thon
Saturday, August 14 - 2-5 PM - SECCA Grounds - Winston-Salem
During the Swap-a-Thon event, volunteers from Piedmont Craftsmen will help guide visitors through creating and experiencing the labryinth.The community is asked to bring useable household items (non-clothing) that they can incorporate into the labyrinth while walking through it. (Please limit the size of the items to be no larger/heavier than a microwave oven. If you can't carry it easily, then it is too big.)Visitors may also select one item to take home that they can use, making the labyrinth an ever-changing installation as items are added and taken away.At the close of the project, the labyrinth will be disassembled and left-over items will be donated to local non-profit organizations, such as Habitat ReStore, Rescue Mission, and Goodwill Industries.
Free. 725.1904 or seccainfo@ncdcr.gov

Again and Never Again: Can We Coexist with Ourselves?
August 19 - September 1st - Guilford College Art Gallery - Greensboro
Environmental artist Bryant Holsenbeck will create, with community participation, a monumental installation made entirely from recycled materials, Aug. 19-Sept. 1. (316-2483 to schedule time.) She will discuss her endeavor to live one year without using disposable plastic products at the reception in the Guilford College Art Gallery, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 5-7 p.m. as part of 'green & beyond', the college-wide theme year on sustainability. Exhibition runs through Oct 1.

Lanterns of Hope
Saturday, August 28 - 6:30-9 PM - Summer on Trade - Winston-Salem
During Summer on Trade at the corner of Sixth and Trade Streets, the Forsyth County Public Library will be providing attendees with peace lanterns to decorate with their own art.
Free. E-mail esparze2@forsyth.cc.

Catch Up with DWSP

Recently, the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership blog has had several arts-related posts. Check 'em out:

Winston-Salem Bus Shelter Competition!

Charlotte Blog takes notice of efforts in the City of Arts and Innovation

MICD 25 Spotlight on Winston-Salem, NC

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!

Grant to Fund Master Plan for Business 40 Bridges

Today the Winston-Salem Journal published new information on the Business 40 bridges project. The Creative Corridors Coalition will administer a grant to the Arts Council and City of Winston-Salem to assemble a team of urban designers, artists, and planners to create a master plan for the two-year construction project.

My hope is that the new bridges will allow for safer, more inviting pedestrian activity. I did some basic research a few years ago on bridges for the Florida Community Design Center in Gainesville, Florida. Here were a couple of my favorites:

One not so practical for two- or four-lane traffic:

By Miro Rivera Architects, this bridge is over Lake Austin in Austin, TX.

Zubizuri Bridge in Bilbao, Spain.

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:

Digital Arts & Technology Symposium 2010

There is a bit of information available on the Center for Design and Innovation's website regarding the food-focused Digital Arts & Technology Symposium (DATS) scheduled for this fall, and Greensboro artist and blogger, Andrew Young, has plenty of brainstorming available. Check out his blog to get psyched for DATS 2010.

RECYCLE LABYRINTH SWAP-A-THON

Learned of this cool community art partnership between Piedmont Craftsmen and SECCA via local blog, Life in Forsyth. Scheduled for Saturday, August 14 from 2 to 5 PM. Visit Life in Forsyth for more information!

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

StoryLine and SECCA Partner to Collect Arts-Based Community Stories

Check out SECCA's blog for more information.

StoryLine Turned 1!

StoryLine recently had its first anniversary on June 4. The celebration featured several moving moments by local artists and storytellers, including an especially well-received performance by Cara and Mackenzie Hagan. The two sisters joined StoryLine conversations with dance for a short performance that can only be experienced and not described.

Check out Cara's story at http://www.storylineproject.org/stories/listen/family?page=2, and listen to all the other special stories collected over the past year.

Picture from StoryLine facebook page

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.

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.

Local Theater Students Use Arts To Teach

Here is an article from the May 6, 2010 edition of the Winston-Salem Chronicle on Wake Forest University theater students using teachers' curricula to further students' understanding of their lessons. Excuse the format- I didn't have a scanner big enough to get the full page in one file.

Pixels for Food: Artist Bill Brown Uses Design Skills as Fundraising Tool

A friend of mine named Bill Brown, who is a graduate of Wake Forest, spoke yesterday at a conference in New Orleans called Launch Fest, self-labeled a "fun conference for serious entrepreneurs." The project Bill discussed is called Pixels for Food. Bill has been working at a community center and food pantry for the last year called the Community Center of St. Bernard. Pixels for Food is an online donation site inspired by his experience there. Check out a screen shot of the site below. The site is interactive, so be sure to visit yourself.

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.