Support the great work of the Girl Noticed project!

Consider making a donation to the Girl Noticed project.  On September 27, 2015, Lori Pratico erected a charcoal mural in Montclair NJ of two young women (one of whom happens to be family of mine).  The goal of the Girl Noticed project is to honor and recognize women around the country...and, because the murals are in charcoal, provoke the realization that, if unrecognized, potential too can fade away.  To see photos of the process, visit the Girl Noticed Facebook page.  Girl Noticed is coming to Oakland, so you if live in the East Bay, consider nominating a girl to be noticed.

A great audience at the recent screening at the Jacobs Center for Neigborhood Innovation

Many wonderful community organizations brought folks out to the recent screening of Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption.  Many audience members had personal experiences with our prison system and enriched our conversations both before and after the film screening.  Plus, the band Spit Freely opened the event with some amazing music.  And the Homie UP team worked very hard prior to the event mounting and framing new artworks from Homie UP students to display at the event.

Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption coming to San Diego 9/22

See the trailer here on the Films page or with Spanish subtitles at www.homieup.org.

Transcendence at the Three Gems skyspace by James Turrell...

I've sought out the work of James Turrell ever since catching his retrospective in LA a couple of years ago.  His Roden Crater project, if it ever becomes open to the public, is on my bucket list.  Today I went with a friend to his site specific installation at the de Young Museum.  We craned our necks for a couple of hours as the day turned to night.  Two young men chanted and sang.  A family came in and each of beat a rhythm using different parts of their bodies, to take advantage of the amazing acoustic properties inside the dome of the skyspace.  Kids played tag both inside and outside of the dome, shrieking with excitement.  One young man, like my friend and I, sat quietly in a state of joyous contemplation.  My breath caught each time birds flew over the circle of sky.  One gull caught the fiery white light of the golden hour.  Then as it got dark, James Turrell changed the color of the sky from blue to white to green to black and back again.   

I love these lines from Oliver Sacks' in his final months...

"My predominant feeling is one of gratitude.  I have loved and been loved.  I have been given much and I have given something in return.  I have read and traveled and thought and written...Above all I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

Lin-Manuel Miranda will blow your mind...

I got a chance to see Hamilton on Broadway while traveling in New York a few weeks ago.  He read Ron Chernow's 818 page biography of Alexander Hamilton and invited the academic into a partnership that resulted in a musical version of Hamilton's life.  It is so word-dense, so packed with information, that I suspect I could see it a half dozen more times and still pick up on things I had missed before.  The characterizations of our founding fathers, portrayed here entirely by people of color is so witty and biting that they left me breathless.  And the final number won me round to the play's gender politics as well.  The term "towering genius" was invented for someone like Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Having too much fun with my plastic instant camera...

My mom, who is a gadget hound, gave me a Lomography plastic camera last year.  I was so busy working on the Homie UP film that I only just now am getting around to fooling with it.  I'm not sure yet what content best matches this medium, but I'm definitely enjoying the goofing off in the meantime. :)  I'm also curious about how other folks mount and display these kinds of instant photographs.

Check out the new works under Series, 1893

I've got a great excuse to visit county fairs and tourist destinations to take photographs of ferris wheels in their various incarnations for use in future works for this ongoing series.  I've always been a sucker for ferris wheels, despite a fear of heights. 

I'm starting a new series of cyanotypes on the joys and sorrows of modernity...

and I headed to the Financial District of San Francisco recently to take some pictures.  I'm a sucker for all of the reflective surfaces and the abstractions to be found in the high rises.

Homie UP film screens in San Mateo on May 29

See the trailer at www.homieup.org.

SoCal tour of Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption, April 21-24

You can watch the trailer--now with Spanish subtitles--at https://vimeo.com/jennifermyhre/homieuptrailerwithsubtitles.

Ai WeiWei @Large inspired and delighted me...

With Wind, in the New Industries Building

My streak of amazing art experiences continued today with the series of Ai WeiWei installations at the National Park at Alcatraz.  I didn't know that Hopi prisoners were the first political prisoners at Alcatraz, because of their refusal to send their children to boarding schools.  I loved the installation about voice and the way that Ai WeiWei forces us into the cells to experience the variety of political expression he has collected.  When I turned over one of the postcards in the Yours Truly installation and realized that the postcard was already addressed and just awaited my message to a living political prisoner, there was nothing else to do but to sit down and write.  And how about the exquisite kites seen above in photographs I took through broken glass on the gun walk? Ai WeiWei may not be allowed to leave China but his art reminds folks all around the world about the importance of freedom of expression.

New Orleans is a feast for the eyes...

Got away for a few days to New Orleans for a conference and, in addition to delighting in the colors and shapes of the architecture and the wide range of street styles, I caught some amazing art at the Contemporary Art Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.  I especially loved the toned cyanotypes of Jaime Erin Johnson, heartwrenching silver gelatin prints from Katrina-damaged negatives by Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, Mark Steinmetz's portraits, mixed media pieces of Benny Andrews, moving installations by Radcliffe Bailey and the whimsical fiber art of Chris Roberts-Antieau.  And how about stumbling upon the duo of street musicians on violin and guitar, Tanya and Dorise?  Gotta go back!

Sometimes ya gotta get outside...

I have spent literally hundreds of hours in front of my computer screen over the last six months, editing Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption.  It is all I think about and all I want to do, most of the time.  Still, I know that my best thinking happens when my feet are moving and my eyes can see the horizon.

The trailer is coming soon and the film will be shown for the first time near the end of April.  I'll post details soon.

I want to be Julio Salgado when I grow up...

I bought this poster by Julio Salgado at the Facing Race conference this fall and finally framed and hung it above my workspace.  I am knee deep in editing on the Homie UP documentary and find it comforting to look up at it when the material feels very heavy.  He rocks a deeply intersectional and social justice approach to artmaking, plus a sense of humor.  And he works across multiple media, including film, comics and the visual arts.  I aspire to that.  Go buy his stuff!  If you like what you see, you should check out Culturestrike, Just Seeds, Dignidad Rebelde, Artists against Police Violence, and Favianna Rodriguez.

When many of your subjects are incarcerated, you have to think creatively about how to visualize things.

The Homie Universidad Popular team and I recently wrapped up production on our documentary, which is scheduled to be screened at the end of April.  It is a challenge to do a film about a education program happening in prisons through correspondence, because of the lack of visual materials to work with.  We have great interview material, of course, but have had to try out a lot of different strategies for trying to show and not just tell.  Which is how we come to be trying our hands at white board animation:

December 16, 2014