SECAC: Breaking Stereotypes: Recontextualizing Underrepresented Voices and Communities

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The SECAC chair for Breaking Stereotypes: Recontextualizing Underrepresented Voices and Communities was Alexander Alvarez from the University of Central Florida. Alexander is an Orlando, Florida–based multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work blends iconography, mythology, and contemporary issues to explore memory, identity, and the human condition.

The first speaker was Jason Burrell who is an Assistant Director and Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Florida’s School of Visual Arts and Design, where he also serves as the Graduate Coordinator for Studio Art. His talk was titled, Office Supplies Disruptions: Rethinking Studio Art Practice Through Radical Material Accessibility. Jason is often rushing from meeting to meeting and began to sketch on post it notes which are readily available in any office setting. This easy access to materials lead to ongoing practice of using post it notes in his work. Jason had colorful post its on a side table during his talk, and encouraged the audience to take some. I decided to just place the post its on my sketch replacing what I had sketched on the screen.

Jason pointed out that many beginning artists feel that becoming an artist is inaccessible since art supplies are so expensive. Jason makes that idea mute since he embraces supplies that are often available but overlooked. His presentation showed many artists who use office supplies in their work. One image showed an artist recreating a scale model of NYC on his hands and knees using nothing but staples to make skyscrapers. Another artist used push pins to make pointillist portraits. The wide variety of artists using found and repurposed office supplies was fascinating and made me want to rethink how art is made.

I immediately started thinking I should have my travel sketching students do thumbnail sketches on office post it notes. Stella Arbeláez Tascón also started thinking about using office supplies for a class project. Jason offered a straightforward presentation that flipped the expectations of what supplies should be used to make art. I have always thought that a pencil and a small slip of paper are all that is needed to document life with a sketch. Creative sparks come from the simplest of supplies.

 

SECAC: Life Disruptions as Opportunities for Artistic Growth, Session II

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The SECAC Chair for Life Disruptions as Opportunities for Artistic Growth, Session II was Stella Arbeláez Tascón who earned her Masters degree in Studio Art from the University of Central Florida. I attended the first session the previous day and learned so much about how artists live through seismic life changes and use that change to fuel their art.

Steven Pearson from McDaniel College gave a talk titled, Pandemic Pivot: Teaching, Practice, and a Return to Representation. My own art had gone through a huge pivot during the worst of the COVID pandemic, so this talk was high on my list of sessions I needed to attend.

Steven’s early work representational with splashes of abstraction mixed in. Someone reviewing his work wondered when the artist would take the dive and work purely in abstraction. That comment lead Steve to venture into the world of abstraction.

Then the Pandemic hit and he found himself isolated in the studio. He read a book that said and artist should focus on their environment. He started doing detailed depictions of his studio and domestic life. He did a detailed sketch of an interior wall and then would go outside and do a view of the same wall from outside. Abstraction was abandoned as he worked to truly document his surroundings.

The representational work grew larger and he used historical allegories to depict domestic life when his family moved to the suburbs. He noticed a neighbor obsessively mowed his lawn several times a week and so he depicted himself in battle as a weekend warrior. One painting depicted him going up a staircase on a mission with a vacuum to clean his son’s room. He loved the humor in the allegorical painting but his son didn’t appreciate it.

Steve had a triptych of three very large painting in the SECAC Juried Exhibition.  All three depicted on scene of an above ground pool with a deck around it. In the first panel on the left the artist depicted himself blowing up an inner tube with a pile of inflated inner tubes beside him. The center panel depicted his daughter sitting on the deck with her legs out over the pool which was now covered. An inner tube which was inflated in the first panel came into this scene deflated. The right panel depicted his wife standing in a swimsuit straining leaves from the pool surface. This painting was done as the family was being pulled apart by divorce. The center panel felt lonely and desolate as the parents worked their separate chores far from each other.

Anna Vic Webb from the University of Central Florida gave a talk titled, Growing from Myself: Abstracting Self Portraiture as a New Framework of Visual Language for Abject Experiences and Ingrained Emotions. He talk was about what it is like to live with ADHD as an artist and how that framed her view of herself and the world. Many of her works are self portraits in a world that is distorted wit a fish eye perspective and vibrant colors. The eyes are often very expressive and piercing. In one she depicted herself seated on the floor holding her legs in a fetal position. Her concerned eyes were huge staring straight at the viewer. The hair on her legs became a vibrant expressive tangle. Creating with ADHD could feel fractured but it could also be a superpower as hyper focus leads to very productive periods of creation.

Having ADHD lead to periods of self-harm with chain smoking and putting herself in harmful situations. On painting showed her walking alone on a beach with blood red waves crashing on the shore. A full moon illuminated the scene and a shadow hinted that someone was about to block her way. There was a quiet menace to the scene.

What was most inspiring was how her art grew as she found new ways to live with and harness the power of having ADHD. The final piece that she showed was a huge departure from the other work. It still had vibrant colors, but the portrait was less warped and more polished. There are exciting possibilities as she continues to explore.

The final speaker was Kayla Lehman from Georgia Southern University, with her talk titled, Obsessive Compulsive Disruption: How OCD Has Impacted My Creative Practice. Kayla created a video game that depicted what it is like to get up pin the morning and find it impossible to get out the door while experiencing OCD.In the game the character went to the bathroom, and every task had to be obsessively scrutinized. The character would reach for a doorknob and then stop as multiple choices flashed up to once again wash hands or consider another task. Every task would have multiple choices about what should be done but ultimately there was no escape the character would never leave the room.

Her life impacted by OCD also lead to her creating a short CGI animated film. In the film people other than the lead character were depicted as having heads that were just an eyeball encased in black eye lids. The character had a dark cloud always on her shoulder which caused self doubt and an inability to find friends. Only when she realized that everyone else also had dark clouds did she begin to find friends. The clouds slowly became less opaque as she socialized.

The entire Life Disruptions as Opportunities for Artistic Growth session was so inspiring. All artists have their demons and need to find ways to silence doubts and create.

After Pulse: Olga Molina

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Olga Molina is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Central Florida (UCF). On June 12, 2016 Olga was in her car and turned on a Spanish speaking radio station. She heard announcements that blood was needed and that people were lining up at blood banks. Something terrible must have happened. For the longest time they didn’t say what had happened. When she got back home, she turned on the TV and started seeing the images of people coming out of the nightclub. She didn’t know how many had been killed yet. The community came together very quickly, bringing water to those in line to give blood.

Several days later she went to a conference in New York City. There she met the executive director of Hispanic Family Counseling who said that they were short of bilingual social workers. They were being overwhelmed with the number of clients they were seeing. There are not enough bilingual social workers in Central Florida. Olga volunteered. They were doing a lot of home visits since people were so frightened that they didn’t want to leave their homes.

Olga began a Spanish speaking support group for survivors. These were people who were in the nightclub on the night of the attack. About 6 survivors came into the group. They met for about eight sessions. Then people were transferred to therapists. That happened between June and October of 2016. The meetings happened once a week for about two hours. The stories were horrific. Confidentiality and safety and trust were important. It was about mutual aid. They were the only ones who had gone through this experience and so they would best know how to help each other.

Some could not sleep at night. Many lost their jobs. Several became homeless because the FBI was asking questions and the landlords didn’t want problems. Anxiety was high. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had to be overcome just to go to the meetings.

They exchanged phone numbers, and began contacted each other during the week. After the group meeting they would go across the street to the coffee shop and talk for several more hours. They became friends, some attended church together, Some took English classes together. It was empowering.

After the eight weeks they decided they wanted to keep meeting and so a new counselor was brought in to continue the sessions. They worked with the new counselor for several more months and then decided to end the group. Progress was made as they shared and made their way back to society. The eight weeks were not enough for any type of full recovery but everyone made their own progress. People are still hurting and there are long term consequences of the attack. Bridges still need to be built.

Edwina Andrews

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Dr. Edwana Andrews is the director of Social Justice and Advocacy at the University of Central Florida. Early in life she realized that not everyone appreciates or accepts or values individuals who identify in the LGBTQ Community. The church that a friend grew up in was not inclined to host a funeral when he died. She had been taught that you should love your neighbor. Why would the church not allow the funeral?

This became the catalyst for her to do her doctorate and dissertation on the gay, lesbian and bisexual experience in the black church. She interviewed individuals who had a religious experience in a black church. She defined a religious experience as the person attending church at least twice a month. None of the individuals she interviewed continue to attend the black church. None of them identify as religious, but they do identify as spiritual. They experienced a lot of hurt and homo negativity in the black church.

While in their parents roof, they had to attend church. When they went to college, they took that opportunity to take a step back from the church and re-evaluate to find perspective as they tried to rationalize their own sexual identity.

She interviewed individuals from Florida, Texas, Atlanta Philadelphia, and California there were no geographic restrictions.

The oral history was cut short by a fire alarm. The line work was finished in the 30 minutes we had, and I added a few washes afterwards from memory.

After Pulse: Dr. Tracy Wharton

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Dr. Tracy Wharton is a social work faculty member at the University of Central Florida and a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Florida and Alabama. After the Pulse shooting Dr. Wharton was involved in organizing and providing volunteer counseling for survivors and victims families.

Tracy’s phone started pinging early, before the sun came up, the night of the shooting. The third time it pinged, she had to pick it up. Facebook had pinged with the mark yourself safe feature. Her sister left a message making sure she was OK. Other friends started to text. Her sister texted “Get up and turn on the TV.”

The Knights Clinic is literally around the corner from the club so she was familiar with Pulse. She had driven by it 100 times. All the residents at the hospital immediately went back to help. Faculty started texting one another.

By early morning she was in contact with social worker colleagues. They started to figure out how to plug in and organize to help. She knew families would be showing up. There would be people at the barricades. She went to the memorial that afternoon.

The next day she began work and it didn’t stop for weeks. There was a Google Doc spreadsheet that pointed out different places needing support. There were a few dozen names to start, 48 hours later there were 300 or so people, a week out there were 600 people on the sheet who wanted to volunteer time. There were about 13 different locations where social workers were needed and people would sign up for time slots.

A lot of people went to clubs to support patrons. Club owners wanted social workers there. Bartenders were feeling stressed out. She was called on to go to Southern Nights. There was a flamboyant sparkling fundraiser going on at the club. She let the bartender know she would be outside should anyone want to talk. It was too loud to talk inside.

Moms were waiting outside as well, sitting on the curb all night. There is something terrifying about the mindset at the time that moms felt the need to wait outside to make sure their kids came out alive. Police were on hand with wand metal detectors and they were great. But the moms felt the strong need to protect their children.

She realized that social workers would need some way to be identified. An artist donated the rainbow graphic and a local business donated pins. About 80 were created. She wanted to give pins to Spanish social workers who were working with victim’s families directly. When she showed the pins she was asked, “Do you have any in Spanish?” She hadn’t thought of it, so she decided to pay for another print run out of her own pocked to make it right.

 

Creative Isolations: The American Artists Project

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I am one of 20 artists who have been selected to participate in Creative Isolations: The American Artist Project as a creator. I joined this journey by creating original work in response to other artist’s stories. The results of these collaborations will culminate in a live broadcast online for free on Monday April 6th at 8pm Eastern Time (US and Canada). Any tips or donations will be divided between the creators. The artists include painters, actors, designers, singers, sand sculptors, composers, leather artists, and more.

I was given two stories and asked to illustrate one. I was fascinated with the story of a sand sculptor who was a 2D artist who became obsessed with sculpting with the heavy medium of sand. Clients were lining up and 2020 looked like the first year where he was completely booked to do conventions, festivals, weddings, parties, and resorts, then the Covid-19 virus closed the country. He was suddenly faced with having to work from home in his private sand box. Despite the endless uncertainties, he continued to create art that others might never see. His story very much parallels my own experience. As I am locked down and creating in my own private vacuum while listening to my inner demons. Lock down has become a time of feverish creation.

Artists have been asked to keep their individual contributions to about 5 minutes in duration. Rehearsals start April 3 and I might sketch the Zoom conference meetings that result.

Here is the breakdown of the performers in the Creative Isolations cast: 

          3 male actor/singer

          2 male actors

          1 medieval musician (multiple instruments)

          1 female actor/voice actor

          1 female comedian/actor

          1 male dancer  

Creative Isolation’s consists of a group of graduate students from the University of Central Florida, have partnered with Orlando Story Club and the Downtown Arts District for a celebration of artists in America. They have gathered stories about how artists’ lives have been altered by COVID-19 and selected artists to create original works based on those stories. Now, the artists are ready to share their creations with you!

The performance is free of charge. However, since social distancing has made it difficult for artists to make money, so funds will be raised by passing a virtual hat for the participating artists via PayPal during the event. 

The performance is free of charge. However, since social distancing has made it difficult for artists to make money, any funds raised will go straight back to the participating artists.

The Downtown Arts District and Orlando Story Club are proud partners of this project (6% of your donation will be used for an administrative fee).

The Performance is Monday April 6, 2020 starting at 8pm to 9pm.

LINK TO YOUTUBE CHANNEL:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1swgTahl0or-KNaCYFCjZg?view_as=subscriber

LINK TO DONATE:

https://downtownartsdistrict.com/product/make-a-donation/