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PREMIER: PORTLAND, OREGON
Coffee with Cardamom
Curated by Andrea (Ray) Boyle
–PRESS RELEASE–
Solo Exhibit: “Can You See Me Now? (Part One): Reflections on Palestine” by Sarah Farahat
Group Exhibit: “Mirrors: A Middle Eastern/ American Collaboration”
Artists: Farooq Hassan, Marwan Nahle, Becca Bernstein, Jim Lommasson, Amira Dughri,
Rolla Selbak, Sarah Farahat, Andrea Boyle, Baher Bhutti, and Beth Ann Short.PLACE II: Settlement Galleries @ Pioneer Square Mall
700 SW 5th Ave, 3rd Floor of Atrium Bldg.
July 16- August 14, 2011Opening Reception: July 16, 6:00- 9:00 pm
Gallery Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon- 6:00 pm
Special Events: Doors at 6:30pm, Begin at 7:00 pmCoffee with Cardamom: Curator Andrea Boyle presents a collaborative project titled, “Mirrors,” with a spotlight solo exhibition of Sarah Farahatʼs, “Can You See Me Now? (Part 1): Reflections on Palestine”
“Mirrors,” is a collaborative art-as-process piece exploring relationships of identity, responsibility and community between Middle Eastern-born and American-born artists within the current global context of the political uprisings in the Middle East. Using art as the common language, these artists will explore their relationships with one another by participating in weekly art therapy sessions, current topic conversations, and creating a collaborative body of multi-media artwork. As a process piece, “Mirrors,” examines the importance of artists, inspirations, and ideologies coming together in a space of reflection; in that, only a portion of the show features completed collaboration pieces, the remainder of the show focuses on pieces in process, as the artistic dialogue and weekly meetings continue in the gallery space. The show is designed to invite the audience to participate as both observer and subject, reflecting on their own insights on identity, responsibility, and community in the larger global context.
“Can You See Me Now? (Part One): Reflections on Palestine” by Sarah Farahat is a RACC sponsored solo exhibition culminating two years of travel, art making, and organizing efforts. The show contains photographs taken in the West Bank and Jerusalem, an ongoing collaboration between the artist and her deceased grandfather, sculptural reflections on Gaza and organized weekly events featuring internationally known academics, artists, and activists. All events are free and open to the public. For a full calendar of events, please visit: http://sarahfarahat.wordpress.com/events
You can listen to Eva Lake’s Art Focus interview on KBOO with Andrea Boyle and Sarah Farahat here: http://kboo.fm/node/29710
July 20th: Journalism and New Media in the Middle East: Lecture and Discussion with Stanford Fellow Jenka Soderburg and Palestinian Journalist Saed Bannoura
July 30th,:First Hand: A Night of Storytelling from the West Bank and Gaza.
August 3rd: From South Africa to Palestine: The shaping of a movement through Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
The UMass Student Union Art Gallery, the Fine
Arts Center, and the Springfield Vet Center, in collaboration with
UMass Veteran Services and the Veterans Education Project of Amherst,
will be presenting an art exhibit by war veterans called Creative
Expressions. Applications are now being accepted. Work must be
created by combat veterans. Learn more.
Deadline: September 1, 2011
www.fineartscenter.com
www.springfieldvetcenter.org
www.umass.edu/rso/suag
www.umass.edu/veterans/
www.vetsed.org
Additional Events:
November 2, 7:30 PM “The Things They Carried”- A play based on the book by Tim O’Brien at UMass Bowker Auditorium
October 31—November 19 “Creative Expressions “- An art exhibit by War
Veterans at the UMass Student Union Art Gallery
Opening Reception—Nov 2, 5-7PM
Film Series Symposium
Please check the Fine Arts Center website in August for detailed information.
No Place Called Home …This wasn’t supposed to be a love story - A New Play with Music, Written and Performed By Kim Schultz
Read more about the artists and their work here: http://iraqivoices.intersectionsinternational.org/the-art/
Born in Rhuddlan, Wales, Philip Jones Griffiths studied pharmacy in Liverpool and worked in London while photographing part-time for the Manchester Guardian. In 1961 he became a full-time freelancer for the London-based Observer. He covered the Algerian War in 1962, then moved to Central Africa. From there he moved to Asia, photographing in Vietnam from 1966 to 1971.
His book on the war, Vietnam Inc., crystallized public opinion and gave form to Western misgivings about American involvement in Vietnam. One of the most detailed surveys of any conflict, Vietnam Inc. is also an in-depth document of Vietnamese culture under attack.
Griffiths’ assignments, often self-engineered, took him to more than 120 countries. He continued to work for major publications such as Life and Geo on stories such as Buddhism in Cambodia, droughts in India, poverty in Texas, the re-greening of Vietnam, and the legacy of the Gulf War in Kuwait. His continued revisiting of Vietnam, examining the legacy of the war, lead to his two further books Agent Orange and Vietnam at Peace.
Griffiths’ work reflects on the unequal relationship between technology and humanity, summed up in his book Dark Odyssey. Human foolishness always attracted Griffiths’ eye, but, faithful to the ethics of the Magnum founders, he believed in human dignity and in the capacity for improvement
Philip Jones Griffiths died at home in West London in March 2008.
Read and watch more on Philip Jones Griffiths here:
- Philip Jones Griffiths, a short film
- An interview in Photo Histories
- A slide show and interview in Aperture
- Background materials for the acclaimed show 50 Years on the Frontlines: Philip Jones Griffiths Photographs with links to video and more.
- Images from his book, Vietnam Inc.
Work by Philip Jones Griffiths was part of the Odysseus Project Art Exhibit: The Hidden Costs of War in 2010.
Wendy Watriss is a photographer, curator, journalist, and writer. She is one of the founders of FotoFest, the internationally known photographic arts and education organization based in Houston, Texas. Watriss began her professional career as a reporter and writer for national newspapers in the U.S. and later became a producer of news documentaries for national public television in New York. From 1970 to 1992, she worked internationally as a professional photographer. In her editorial and photo journalistic work, she has covered the 1968 political upheavals in East and Central Europe, the effects of drought in the African Sahel, civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador and the political history of Texas’ cultural frontiers.
As a young girl growing up in Europe in the fifties, Wendy Watriss saw the poverty and suffering that followed World War II. In her work as a photographer and documentary filmmaker, she has gravitated to themes of need and injustice as well as to social and political subjects. She became interested in the Vietnam war and the lives of U.S. Vietnam War veterans affected by the herbicide Agent Orange in 1980 .
Since 1982, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened, I’ve been back many times. I find the people’s response to the memorial and to each other very moving. It shows again that war doesn’t end when the combat is over.
Wendy Watriss from an interview with Lois Tarlow
Read more about the power of photo journalism and Agent Orange in these articles for the Nieman Foundation by Wendy Watriss.
Wendy Watriss photographic work has been published and exhibited around the world, and she is the recipient of numerous international awards for her photography. Her work on Vietnam veterans affected by Agent Orange was part of the Odysseus Project Art Exhibit: The Hidden Costs of War in 2010.
Hien Duc Tran was born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. as a refugee at the age of twelve in 1975. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston’s American Studies Program in 1987, where he pursued his joint interests in photograph and ethnic studies. He has been chronicling developments in the local Vietnamese community since 1984. 
In 1989, he returned to Vietnam as a photojournalist, accompanying a delegation of American Vietnam veterans.
In August 1990, his exhibit entitled Ngoc I Was, Pearl I Am: An Exhibition of Photographs on the Amerasian Experience in Boston and Vietnam was held at the Boston Public Library.
Hien Duc Tan about this project:
…But most of all it has been the Amerasians themselves to whom my heart has listened; I am in deep gratitude to them all. Yet, even so, I cannot quite escape the feeling that I have somehow sinned against them, a kind of simony of their suffering…. I have no real defense beyond that ancient justification that spiritual beauty must always be recorded. In the suffering of these children, I have felt a terrible beauty breaking forth for which I must personally make a record…. I feel honored they invested so much with me. And while they more easily permitted my questions and prying lens in Vietnam than they ever could in New England, it is here that I have come to understand and appreciate the bravery of these children who have survived so much, now, finally, surviving even their dreams themselves.
Hien Duc Tran’s work was part of the Odysseus Project Art Exhibit: The Hidden Costs of War in 2010.
Meridel Rubenstein mixes mediums and metaphors to make art about our tenuous connection to place. Originally trained as a photographer, she combines disparate materials such as earthy palladium prints with cold steel mounts, transparent photographic imagery with imagery sandblasted into glass, video imagery projected onto cast glass, and digital still imagery on floating vellum and hand-coated tree bark papers. A sense of fragility, transparency, and passage, in her works, underscores a possibility for change. Her complex narrative photoworks and installations derive from a sense of place, personal and collective history as well as myth — the precarious landscape of the cultural mind.
In more recent work, like Joan’s Arc/Vietnam, she uses Vietnam and the American war as a mirror for different ideas in the east and west about nature/ body /place / forgiveness. Large luminous digital prints on hand coated paper combine with video projections and objects in wood and sandblasted glass. The image in this blog post was part of the Odysseus Project Art Exhibit: The Hidden Costs of War in 2010.
Reknown art writer Rebecca Solnit has written of Meridel Rubenstein:
…a consummate maker of metaphors, an artist who can never talk about only one thing at a time, but speaks of things in relationship, of lives to landscapes, of corporeal location and homing in terms of labyrinths and minotaurs, of bombs in terms of other myths, of physicists in relationship to pueblos.
Chris Vogsawat graduated with a BA in Computer Animation/3D Design Studies from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004. In 2008 he was deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Eduring Freedom VII. At first, Lt. Vongsawat just wanted to tough out his tour and get back home. But his experience took on a new sense of meaning after he went on eBay and bought a digital camera. He realized that it could be a therapeutic vehicle to help him through the year. His photographs document the life around him during his tour of duty.Through the act of taking a photograph Vongsawat seeks to view his subjects not as targets, civilians or potential threats, but as people with their own intricate histories.
These photos were an attempt to maintain a connection with what was happening around me, to prevent the sometimes inevitable downward spiral into blindness that often comes with getting used to a place and seeing everything in tactical military terms. …I wanted to remember that I really was in a place called Afghanistan, that I wasn’t just a ghost with a rifle and a nervous dream of going home.
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- Afghanistan: Cook in the Kitchen
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- Afghanistan: Convoy Driving Down the Road
Watch his Afghanistan portfolio here and read more in this article.
Chris Vongsawat lives in NYC and his main focus now is in fashion photography. He keeps a blog called Chamber Images.
Desert Storm Missile Attack
When George Peet was working in Jordan, he photographed this Iraqi civilian and his son. His wife and 9 of his other children were among the 475 civilians killed in the missile attack on a shelter launched from a US Navy ship.
George Peet has taken workshops with Ansel Adams, Jerry Uelsmann, Judy Dater and Wynn Bullock and was part of a year long live-in workshop conducted by Minor White. He has had extensive experience in documentary photography and some of his projects include; Missions of the Southwest, USA, the architectural ruins of Greek Theaters, Greece, the landscape and architecture of Jordan and the Middle East.
George, along with Gabrielle Keller, did a photographic study of the Superior Courthouses of Massachusetts, which was published in a book entitled “Courthouses of the Commonwealth”. George’s photo-documentary of Revere Beach, was awarded two grants. Along with an extensive exhibition record, his work is included in many corporate collections.
George currently works as a freelance photographer, as well as continuing his career as a fine art photographer. Visit his website for more information.
Jon Orlando is an artist activist that uses photography to deepen our collective sense of humanity. Images from his current project, Warriors for peace, have been exhibited in group and solo shows throughout the US. Through the use of intimate portraits and in depth audio interviews, this project challenges the perception of the soldier and reintroduces us to them as humans with distinct and varying sets of emotions, morals and beliefs. Specifically it looks deeply at the emotions and feelings behind their decision to oppose the wars they have been a part of.
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- Maggie Martin
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- Zack Choate
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- Jeremy Archambeault
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- Brian Hannah
Maggie Martin – Maggie Martin deployed once to Kuwait and twice to Iraq. She was a part of the initial invasion in 2003. “I think about the kids I met in the market that were 10, 11, 12 years old that are now 14, 15, 16 year old. Young men who have had an occupation in their country their whole adolescence. I wonder what it must be like for them having their whole childhood destroyed by this war and the occupation. I’m sure all the happy little kids that were there in 2003 that were getting candy from us and standing on the side of the road, are probably now a large part of the Iraqi resistance and I don’t blame them.”
Zack Choate – After three months in Iraq, the vehicle Zack was traveling in was blown up by an improvised explosive device. He was sent back to the states for several months to recover his injuries and then voluntarily redeployed to Iraq for the remainder of his tour. “I went back thinking that maybe we were going to do some good. But it continued, day in day, countless pointless missions… It was a lost cause, we went over, we participated in things we probably shouldn’t have participated in, we made choices we’ll have to live with forever and then we get on a plane and come back here and nothing is ever said about it…”
Jeremy Archambeault – Jeremy was a mortuary technician while serving in Iraq. That is a fancy term for the soldier who deals with the bodies of his fallen comrades and stated enemies. He has been scarred deeply by the horrors he has witnessed and remains frustrated by the continuation of those horrors. He was photographed several blocks from where he grew up and still lives in Chicago, in front of a building whose windows were full of photographs of soldiers who have died in Iraq.
Bryan Hannah – “…I brought my rifle up to aim, put my finger on the trigger and took the slack out. I was getting ready to fire and they came halting to stop. I saw the little red dot on a little girl’s forehead and realized I was aiming a rifle at a little girl and I saw her crying. I didn’t want to do anything but freeze it all and hold her and tell her it would be ok… Shortly after that my friend Heredia died… the way everyone reacted, everyone just went on like it was another day… We have to realize that PTSD is a symptom of an attack of conscience and my conscience is telling me something is wrong. I don’t need pills to silence my conscience. I need to listen to it. I need to take steps to end this war and make sure no one suffers like I did or does what I did.”
Warriors for Peace is an ongoing project recently accepted by the Blue Earth Alliance. All portraits are expected to be done by winter/spring of 2010 with a book and gallery tour to follow.
In July 2009, veterans Zach Choate and Maggie Martin participated in a papermaking workshop by The Combat Paper Project in Savannah, Georgia. You can read the article and see photos in the Savannah Morning News.
