The exhibit is five or six rooms of impressive art forms that will awe you and instill pride in the richness of expression, humanity, and creativity. Just so impressive! I am honored to have my photograph included.
CAPTIONS (top, left to right) Participating artists only day! Overall view images of artists enjoying each others work, milling about. A colorful rainbow entry greets all entering The deYoung museum.
Vertical image: Alberto, intake curator gives me a smile and notes that my photograph is officially in his hands and catalogued as part of the 2023 deYoung Museum Open. I smiled right back. My photograph titled What it Says, a Covid19 slice-of-life was taken while walking on Market Street, during a shopping trip for essentials during the shelter-in-place order.
Next series are images viewed through the gallery app. Enter the image number in the search field to obtain the artist name, title, artist statement and description.
Mark your calendars for a day celebrating community artistic expression at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park on September 30. All Bay Area residents enter free. I’m so very happy to have my slice-of-life photograph, titled What it Says, wild art in the time of covid, included in the 2023 de Young Museum Open Call. The photograph taken downtown on Market Street celebrates 50 years of Hip-Hop music and heralds San Francisco as a birthplace of music and musicians who have long called the city by the bay their home. The exhibition runs from 30 September till 7 January, 2024. Hope to see you there.
From my archive. Thinking of all the children, families and community in Uvalde, Texas; and communities around the country. If you are moved to do something about gun violence in our country, please TextACT to 644-33 to get involved with Moms Demand Action Network
Over 2500 people walked together in unison on State Street in support of #FamiiesBelongTogether on Saturday June 30th, 2018 in SantaBarbara, California. In case you need some inspiration or motivation to #Vote Lenscratch curated a gallery of images that will have you/your loved ones off your derriere to #VOTENOW The images are as diverse as our nation. Have a look http://lenscratch.com/2020/11/vote-2/
Imagine, if you can, unable to walk out of your home because your hard-earned wages will be stolen by people on the street; or you are of an age sought by actors of corruption within the police force or street-gangs, and sometimes you can’t tell the difference. So you walk for two-to-three months with only a dream to keep you going.
Meet Jorge Joyal. He is 29 years old, from Honduras, and a father to a six-year-old daughter. Mr. Joyal said that he walked for two-to-three months with the hope of coming to the United States. The above exercise in imagination is his life story. While his dream to come to the United States has taken a detour, Mr. Joyal has been offered support and assistance by the Mexican government. He has applied for permission to work in Mexico and hopes to have employment at one of the high-tech companies offering employment assistance to refugees and asylum seekers.
The entrance to El Barretal – the newly designated shelter for asylum-seekers, refugees at the US-Mexico southern border at Tijuana, Mexico.
On Tuesday December 4th, 2018, DIF accounted for a total of 2,331 persons residing in the shelter designated for families with children.
On Thursday December 6, 2018 acting New York Attorney General Underwood: “13 AG’s are filing an amicus brief today to challenge the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict applications by immigrants seeking asylum. This is a de-facto denial of asylum. It is illegal, it is inhumane, and it must end.”
Attorney General Underwood goes on to write: “More than 6000 Central American immigrants, including over 1000 kids, are stranded outside California’s ports of entry waiting to present their asylum claims. They are living outside in extreme weather, without access to basic services, so that they can have a chance at a better life.”
The faces of mothers.
(front) Julio Alberto unloads the DIF van with personal care items scheduled for the families with children.
Jesús Landeros, of Santa Barbara, California is a volunteer with SBRN or the SantaBarbara Response Network; Landeros is also employed with Montecito Union school . “This was a learning experience for me too,” he said referring to El Barretal and his health, safety, and security responsibilities for students, faculty, and the school building itself during the grip of the Thomas fire and the subsequent mudslides. In this photo Landeros distributes personal health-care items donated by Direct Relief.
The contents of care.
In support of the dream to have a better life, and in efforts to assuage the delay of dreams to a better life, a generous wave of individual community-minded people, in coordination with the Santa Barbara Response Network,DIF-Mexcio and Direct Relief of Santa Barbara, California delivered hygiene products – the basics of everyday life such as shampoo, body soap, antibiotic cream, first-aid, toothbrushes, toothpaste, dental floss.. Remember how you felt after not brushing or flossing 24-hours? Imagine for months.
In this newly sprouted village at our southern border at Tijuana, amid lives stranded, one can see signs of former life ritual in children and teens playing soccer, in adding color to hopes and dreams in large scale graphics, and in the power of listening in the peer-to-peer conversations.
Overview of El Barretal. (pictured center) are Mariana Caña and Maritza Escobedo.
Mariana Caña and Maritza Escobedo are doing such work – listening. They are listeners, rendering the power of the compassionate ear. Both Caña and Escobedo are students in Psychology at the UABC (The Autonomous University of Baja California ) Both Caña and Escobedo are student volunteers, conducting health questionnaires of the refugees in affiliation with the NYU School of Medicine, under the direction of Dr. Allen Keller. According to his bio: “Dr. Allen Keller is Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT) and Director of the NYU School of Medicine Center for Health and Human Rights.
”Caña writes that she hopes “to start giving psychological attention to those who need it most at the shelter.”
Perched overlooking El Barretal, Caña and Escobedo, listen and conduct their health questionnaires as volunteers for NYU school of medicine.
From my archive, a two-minute portrait of attorney Sarah Weddington, during a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, in Orange County, California. Sarah Weddington is the attorney who argued the landmark case Roe v. Wade.
Today, Thursday June 18th, 2020 we await a potential, pending decision from the Untied States Supreme Court regarding, a woman’s right to decide for herself, her most intimate and private rights over her body, and her access to health care services, independent of religious beliefs or constructs.
For so long legislation has imposed and seized a woman’s body to determine what rights, control and access she has or had over her own body – this has/had expressed itself through healthcare choices, pregnancy, birth control or contraception, fertility choices, a right to choose (abortion as an option), or significantly in the employment of Eugenics in the enforced sterilization of women.
For the love of (wo)mankind, it appears that the male driven paradigm has determined both sides of the coin for far too long. No longer. You cannot have it both ways. NO longer should this paradigm decide for women, especially women of color who is fit to give birth, who is mandated to be sterilized, when or if a woman gives birth or not. It seems to me that enforced sterilization is a method of birth control justified by racist and discriminatory policy. This white male paradigm has owned our bodies for too long, we are not you chattel.
Image copyright Ana Elisa Fuentes and licensed through Alamy.
Molecule Man, is a series of aluminum sculptures, created by American artist Jonathan Borofsky. Installed in time for the summer Olympics, the sculpture is 32-feet high by 20-feet in diameter.
Mr. Borofsky says about the sculpture, “at the time I first conceived of this sculpture, I had been fascinated by the fact that the human body, though appearing quite solid, is mostly made up of water. In fact 97% of our body is made up of a water molecule which is ‘sea’ or salt water based, leading many scientists to hypothesize that the human species originated in the ocean.”
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