Janet has a 35 year relationship with Africa, especially with Mali. Since her 1995 Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, she has spent several months every year in Mali engaged in a wide variety of cultural projects including collaborations with Malian artists. She has been an activist for as long as she can remember.

She has been carefully following the situation in Mali since the coup on March 21, 2012.  Because the situation is so complex and the reporting is so difficult to follow, Janet has been writing periodic summaries in the belief that the first step to solving a problem is to understand it.

Here’s a link to the summaries, maps and images:  The Situation in Mali as I understand it

POST NEW BILLS intimately documents the Green Patriot Posters campaign, revealing the experience of contributors such as Shepard Fairey, DJ Spooky and Michael Bierut (Pentagram Design).

It also debuts the work of new designers, such as Mathilde Fallot, who solicited her work on the Green Patriot Posters open-source website. Her poster was then published in a book, displayed in bus kiosks and included in museum exhibitions at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Center and the Walker Arts Center as part of the on-going campaign.

POST NEW BILLS is the first film about Green Patriot Posters and is also part of the first solo exhibition dedicated to the project entitledPublic Notice: A Green Patriot Salon.

Here’s our FB invite - help spread the word about arts and sustainability!

Beverages generously provided by Gerolsteiner and Active O2.

For more information contact Hilary White; Phone:310-625-1608
Email: hilary@creativemigration.org

Resilience as a theme grew from the opportunity to curate an exhibition in regards to Genocide for the Mizel Museum which was developed into an installation for the 7th Biennial International Conference of Genocide Scholars in Sarajevo, Bosnia, for which she also presented her discourse on genocide and visual representation. This presentation was also featured at the Art & Social Justice conference in St Louis. Other international exhibitions have included an installation of prints at the Instituto Allende in Mexico and paintings exploring the imprint of tradition in contemporary Vietnamese culture at the Metropolitan Center in Saigon, Vietnam.

Recent environmental exhibitions have included REAP: The Environmental Unsustainability of the American Food Machine at C Emerson Fine Art in St Petersburg, FL, Extinction at the Denver Botanic Gardens, and Vanishing Pollinators as part of the Bioneers Conference on Sustainability in San Raphael, CA. Resilience in the face of environmental degradation was explored through an series of work, Guatemala: Mayan Women, created for the 2010 Biennial of the Americas in Denver, and on view during the Mayan New Year at the Dairy Center in Boulder in 2012.

Currently, Lee Lee is using plastic as a material to explore the impacts of plastic on the environment as well as the chemical imprints left in our bodies. Complimenting this theme is work being created which follows the development of a permaculture installation around her Taos, NM studio. The small scale production of food will be presented in contrast to industrial agricultural practice, which like plastic, is exacting a tremendous toll on the environment. Her permaculture garden as well as the work which grows from it will be featured as part of ISEA2012: Machine Wilderness. The educational watercolors may be found at www.TalesOfThatcherGray.com

Rain - Oil Refinery in Commerce City

Oil Refinery, Commerce City: oil, polymer transfer & melted plastic silkscreen on paper

Ghost: Abandoned Slaughterhouse in Commerce City. The state of decay of this structure reflects the unsustainable nature of our food system. Watercolor, pencil & tar on shotgunned collage

Bleed - oil & sharpie on shotgunned plywood - this work came from the frightening images of aspen trees in CO suffering from a cancerous virus which make them appear corporeal...as if they are bleeding as they release their red sap

Materialism - oil on canvas. Because of winters which are not cold enough, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest simply died through the Rocky Mountains. Whole mountainsides were adorned with the rust colored mantle of dead trees.

Voices of the Rio Grande - water based media - New Mexico hosts one of the highest concentrations of breeding birds in North America, according to the Nature Conservancy. This series is based on local birds who live or migrate through Northern New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley. The backgrounds of the paintings, while organically textured, are whited out to represent the constant environmental threats we face here in the high desert.

Wire - polymer transfer & oil on melted plastic silkscreen - Vietnam

Texas Roadkill: Tar & graphite on paper

Resillience in the face of environmental degredation: the Maya. Starting with stone lithographs of lush forest, these mixed media works on paper were truck-tracked with fresh tar, then torn into small squares. They serve as a foundation that speaks to the situation imposed on the Maya: pushed off their land and treated like slaves on plantation style agricultural production facilities owned by multinational corporations. They fill US demands for cheap commodities which comes at a severe cost to both people and the environment. The texture of tar is an echo of the continuing destructive influence of these corporations. Tar is made from oil which also makes up the petrochemicals used in the style of agriculture that is decimating the environment. Somehow, Mayan culture is not decimated. They maintain an incredible dedication to tradition, working in harmony with the environment. Ancient customs are manifested through the colorful and intricate weavings which are worn with pride. These portraits are of Mayan women from the highlands market in Chichicastenango. Exploring a wide range of human emotion from being weary and hurt to looking forward with hope, the vignettes are intended to explore the breadth and range of emotional textures in this community.

Building solutions: Permaculture

On Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 we’ll show Gasland,
a 2010 documentary film made by Josh Fox 

about the natural gas production process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

 

This process involves injecting hundreds of chemicals, many of them toxic, into the ground to fracture rocks and release natural gas.

 
Underground water is poisoned in the course of this activity and Gasland documents the consequences to people and animals unfortunate enough to live near where fracking is being done—in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York, but also in California.

 
The Hillside Club is very fortunate to have the support of the environmental law organization Earthjustice for our screening and a post-screening discussion with Deborah Goldberg, the point person in their New York office, where fracking in upstate New York threatens Manhattan’s water supply.

 
Gasland
Wednesday, April 25, 7:30 PM, Free
The Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street at Arch
Berkeley 94709
Post-screening discussion with Deborah Goldberg of Earthjustice

Sponsored by Earthjustice and the Hillside Club