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"There's an alligator in audubon park" - BOOK REVIEW

10/23/2016

A Cute Story About A Real Fact.

This will be the fifth time I have read this book slowly, and the third time by myself. "THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR IN AUDUBON PARK" is a delightful story for children and for those like me who know the true story behind this children’s book.

GINA MINOR ALLEN gives us a quick peek of a normal day in Audubon Park when it's discovered that there is an alligator in the park. Rumors and tales quickly fly among interesting characters who want to catch the said alligator for reasons ranging from reward money to using it for stew! The characters are beautifully illustrated, each with their own look that is unique to them alone while fitting in with the overall look. The lines are funny and quick to read in a sing-song way. And the story from beginning to end keeps kids enraptured for their first and second time reading. I should know I read the book to my siblings who demanded encore readings of the book. While not a long read, this story gives a quick boost to the imagination of young and old about something that did happen in my home city. It’s wonderful for those who wish to keep a funny bit of history as well as people who like to give children quirky books. This is a great story that only leaves you wanting in one thing, this wish for more!

Book illustrations courtesy Gina Minor Allen.

"There's An Alligator in Audubon Park" is available now at Community Book Center. The New Orleans Blended Books Club will host a reading and book signing event with author/illustrator, Gina Minor Allen at 2:00pm on Saturday, December 10th at Community Book Center. LOOK HERE for additional details or visit www.ginaminorallen.com.

BRANDON BIGARD is an actress, activist, a Baby Doll, writer, spoken word artist, and a native of New Orleans. She has been a youth advocate for over a decade being in may groups, including the Blended Book Club. A consultant that specializes in creating youth, color, and gender friendly/ appropriate climates, she claims to just be a lover of creating and created worlds.

New Orleans Loving Festival Receives Jazz & Heritage Grant Award

10/10/2016

The Loving Festival is proud to announce that we are a recipient of a 2016-17 "Jazz & Heritage Presenting: Festivals and Concerts in Music and Performing Arts Award." Since 1979, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation (NOJHF) has reinvested the proceeds from Jazz Fest directly into our community — in the form of grants to arts and educational organizations — to support projects that reflect the Foundation’s mission.

NOJHF award funds will be used to present Louisiana-based musicians and other performing artists during the 7th annual New Orleans Loving Festival in June of 2017.

Visit www.CommunityPartnershipGrants.org for more details. #LoveYall #LovingFestival

#PutYourStampOnLoving - CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

8/15/2016

Help us Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision with a United States Postal Service commemorative stamp! Please send a message to President Obama and the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee in support of the Loving Festival's petition for a US Postal Service stamp to commemorate the 1967 Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision.

President Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500
president@whitehouse.gov, www.facebook.com/barackobama, https://twitter.com/BarackObama

Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300, Washington, DC 20260-3501

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
The 7th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is looking for 50 great stamp designs to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision. If selected, your stamp design will be featured in a limited edition Loving Festival Philatelic Collection and Exhibition. Look Here for guidelines - www.charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit. Please spread the word! #‎PutYourStampOnLoving‬ ‪#‎LoveYall‬ :-) ‪#‎LovingFestival‬

Mixed Messages 6: Race · Identity · Love - EXHIBITION REVIEW

8/11/2016

Conisha the Civil Engineer - Donna Woodley

Meesha the Chief Operating Officer - Donna Woodley

Shamika La Tray the Doctor - Donna Woodley

Its truly encouraging to see the New Orleans Loving Festival is back for its sixth anniversary. Described by its organizers as “a Multiracial Community Celebration and Film Festival that challenges racism through outreach and education”, the Loving Festival approaches this commendable mission with dedication instead of provocation, contemplation in lieu of agitation, and with art instead of politics.

The major visual art component of the 2016 festival is a juried exhibition called Mixed Messages 6: Race-Identity-Love. This year the show is presented not in a typical gallery space but on the third floor of the Myrtle Banks Building on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in New Orleans. The building was once a school, then an empty and abandoned testament to inner-city blight, but now restored features a food-market on the ground floor, and office and work spaces above. Mixed Messages 6 was hung in a large central hallway that serves as an exhibition space for the Creative Alliance of New Orleans, and the common area for a suite of offices leased by a local entrepreneurs, non-profits and charter schools. Its placement in this area felt synergistic― the works of art providing arresting and thoughtful reflection about some of the significant social and cultural issues that many urbanists, education professionals, and children in a New Orleans charter school are likely to wrestle with continuously.

Donna Woodley's series Black Women Rock: Painting Black Female Experience, demonstrate this relevancy. They are small rectangles, equipped with descriptive titles (such as Conisha the Civil Engineer, Meesha the Chief Operating Officer, and Shamika La Tray the Doctor) but they are deliberately inscrutable pictures. Though the titles are suggestive of some distinctive African American women's professional identities (and attire), you're not going to find portraits like these on anyone's LinkedIn page. Each face is obscured, and instead of business suits and lab coats, the sitters appear not only in their underwear but in Grandma's as well. As the artist revealingly explains on a small text panel that accompanies her works “...White "granny panty" underwear placed on the heads of black women covering their eyes presents tension between humor and seriousness, absurdity and truth, and visibility versus invisibility. The female figures in my paintings are confrontational towards the visibility and value of black women within American society, both historically and from a contemporary context...” If these works do indeed foster trenchant and comic social discourse it's worth noting that they're coming from an African American female artist who is confidently and self-consciously defining the rules of the debate.

Ahuva with Papers - Leona Strassberg Steiner

Aziza with Papers - Leona Strassberg Steiner

Directly across the hall another female artist also explores issues of identity and the pliable craft of portraiture. As opposed to Donna Woodley's paintings, in which clothes definitely do not make the woman, in Leona Strassberg Steiner's photographs the difference between two simple garments is shown to be a potent but unreliable cultural, religious and political marker. Her series Aziza and Ahuva- A Love Story, consists of diptych self-portraits cloaked in disarmingly simple disguise. In each work the artist presents herself twice, in identical surroundings and in nearly identical pose. The main difference between the two personas is that she wears a hijab in one and she sports a smaller more western head scarf in the other. Strassberg Steiner's statement about these works relates that she has spent half her life in Israel and that they raise “...questions about land, borders, and displacement.” I don't think that these photographs are meant to tell us something that we don't know‒excluding extremists on either side don't we accept the basic humanity of Israelis and Palestinians? Strassberg Steiner's message seems more plaintive than novel, more personal than political. If ending the protracted conflict is currently too much to ask for or expect, at least in Strassberg Steiner's mind and in her photos, some manner of reconciliation is achievable.

The seven other artists featured in Mixed Messages 6: Race-Identity-Love, offer diverse responses to the exhibition's broad parameters. Iris Crey focuses on love by creating visual allegories that explore the relationships and influence between well-know 20th century artists; Belinda Shinsillas uses abstract paintings to explore the intersection of her Mexican and New Orleans identities; Gason Ayisyin finds resonance of his childhood in Haiti in documentary photographs of New Orleans; Sean G. Clarke's assemblage, In Case of, compels viewers to think about racism in everyday and in emergency situations; the artist ChE's Altar Piece is a multi-disciplinary interactive installation made in response to the Black Lives Matter movement; José Tores-Tama's drawings honor Latino immigrant workers who struggle to remain in New Orleans, a city they helped to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina; and Bottletree (the nom de guerre of Jerald L. White who is the founder of Charitable Film Network and the New Orleans Loving Festival) contributes images from his New Orleans Tokens & Souvenirs project that documents how Black Americans are depicted in contemporary New Orleans tourism memorabilia, and how these items impact the lives of Black New Orleanians. Befitting the Loving Fest's inclusive and egalitarian practice, a collaborative work made during a Create Community - Make Art Together event by artists Sallie Knox Hall, Lisa Kaichen, and about 30 New Orleans participants, is also on view.

The New Orleans Loving Festival is not only a welcome annual event. As can be gleaned from its website and its Facebook page, the organization produces, sponsors, and promotes a year-round program of community happenings, artistic performances, exhibitons, discussion groups, and various other educational initiatives. Mixed Messages 6: Race-Identity-Love, like all of The Loving Festival's perseverant endeavors, is an earnest and illuminating step along an admirable path. STEVEN MAKLANSKY

MIXED MESSAGES.6 is on view through August 13th at the Myrtle Banks Building - 1307 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., NOLA.
Gallery Hours: Weekdays from 10:00am to 5:00pm and Saturdays from 12:00pm to 4:00pm.

Steven Maklansky is an art and arts administration consultant in New Orleans. He previously served as the Director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art and the Brevard Art Museum in Florida, the Director of Curatorial Services for the Louisiana State Museum, and as the Assistant Director for Art and Curator of Photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

#DignityInProcess Call for Artists, Activists, & Wisdom Keepers

6/16/2016

Open Call for MIXED MESSAGES.6 group Art Exhibition

4/3/2016

The 6th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is seeking original artwork and short films with themes concerning Love, Race, Identity and the Multiracial Experience, for a juried group art exhibition from July 1st to August 6th at the Myrtle Banks Building Gallery. Please follow the guidelines below for consideration:

ART Submissions must include your bio or resume, high resolution photo(s) of the artwork, and a description - including the title, size, medium, and the year the artwork was created.Artwork created before 2013 should not be submitted for consideration.
SHORT FILM Submissions must include your bio or resume, a film synopsis, and a web link to preview the film (or screener DVD).

You will need to create a Submittable User Account to submit your materials. See instructions at https://charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit/56316.

The DEADLINE for receiving submissions is Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Midnight - Central Standard Time.

The New Orleans Loving Festival is an initiative of Charitable Film Network. For more information contact mail@charitablefilmnetwork.org or visit lovingfestival.org. Please follow the Loving Festival on Facebook and Twitter!

New Orleans Loving Festival to host exhibition exploring diversity, multiculturalism & social justice with cartoons

1/13/2016

The 6th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is seeking original cartoons that address topics related to diversity, multiculturalism and social justice for a group art exhibition, A Loving Judgement from June 4th to July 2nd at the Arts Council of New Orleans’ Exchange Centre Gallery. The exhibition is curated by the Master of Arts in Museum Studies Program, Southern University at New Orleans.

About the New Orleans Loving Festival: The "Loving Festival" is modeled after Loving Day multicultural celebrations across the country that organize people to stand against racial prejudice through education and community outreach. The Loving Festival also honors the legacy of Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple whose 1967 landmark civil rights lawsuit “Loving v. Virginia” ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The Loving Festival is an important community platform for showcasing films and other creative works that explore racial stereotypes and inspire people to work together for social justice.

About the Exhibition: Nearly 50 years after the Loving decision, communities in the United States and around the world are still facing social and cultural challenges. Although the new technological revolution in communication and the growing interest in citizen journalism as alternatives to mainstream media have brought people closer together more than ever, they have also uncovered the depth and complexity of some social and cultural provocation. This exhibition explores the themes of diversity, multiculturalism and social justice, and how cartoons and comic strips may reflect the social landscape in the community.

Submissions: We invite cartoon artists to submit their original work related to the exhibition themes. Please use our online application to submit your work. You will be asked to submit the following:

1. Artist contact information
2. High resolution photo(s) of cartoon submission(s)
3. High resolution photo of artist (for the exhibition catalog and website)
4. Artist statement (between 300 to 400 words)
5. Artist biography (between 300 to 400 words)
6. $35.00 Application Fee

You will need to create a Submittable User Account to submit your application. The submission deadline is March 15, 2016 at 11:30pm CST. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered. Successful submissions will be notified by March 29, 2016. For more information contact heid@suno.edu.

TO APPLY VISIT: www.charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit

Accepted artwork must be exhibit ready - with a white mat, black frame and hanging wire. Participating artists will be responsible for shipping costs. If resources are available artists will receive a full or partial reimbursement for shipping.
The New Orleans Loving Festival is an initiative of Charitable Film Network.

‪#‎NOLF‬ ‪#‎LovingFestival‬ ‪#‎LoveYall‬ ‪#‎cfnNOLA‬ ‪#‎CharitableFilmNetwork‬

ELIZABETH CATLETT at stella jones gallery

6/27/2015

Was Elizabeth Catlett ever afraid? Her sculpture and prints currently on exhibit at Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans (through July 30th) roar with fearless conviction and creative genius. Yet I know that as a black woman artist, Catlett faced the incredible obstacles of institutionalized racism and sexism on personal and professional levels. Her accomplished, prolific archive seems to shrug in defiance, “And?” This terrific retrospective deserves great attention, as does the story of her radical, adventurous life; I will scratch the surface in the hopes that you’ll be inspired to delve deeper.

Elizabeth Catlett, 1915 - 2012

“Bread, or The Right to Eat” - Elizabeth Catlett, 1952

“Homage To The Panthers” - Elizabeth Catlett, 1970

“Bread, or The Right to Eat” (1952, linocut) perfectly exemplifies the humanist style and socialist agenda of Catlett’s oeuvre. The content is simple: a black woman stands behind a platter of bread. Yet Catlett’s emphasis on the woman’s strong, aching hands and yearning face imbues her subject with intimacy – this isn’t an idea of hunger but an experience of it. By filling the entire frame with her subject’s body, facing forward with direct intensity, Catlett personalizes this woman’s plight, and demands we engage with it. The bread becomes secondary to the human connection we all need in order to survive. In the tradition of the political Mexican artists she was inspired by, Catlett raises her subject to a noble position: look, here’s a hungry woman, she’s worthy of our respect, she’s your family, do you recognize her? The effect is bracing and indicative of Catlett’s overall approach, from depictions of mothers and their children to the Black Panthers and beyond.

Catlett’s figurative style, minimalist and elegant, pares her gestures down to their pure essence; there’s no fuss to her surface, no noise in her space – it’s a smart technique that quiets the mind and focuses the eye. Spend enough time with the clean, unsentimental lines and repeating motifs of her print work and they begin to feel like musical scores, creating songs of a transcendental nature. Take “Homage To The Panthers” (1970, color lithograph), for example. Catlett’s crisp aesthetics suggest that the faces, fists and guns of resistance are the notes in a mighty hymnal. The resulting song that resonated in me, standing in front of “Malcolm X Speaks For Us” (1969, linocut) was emotional and uplifting, feeling like the spirituals we sing in my church: oppressed people can unite, in the uniting we fight, in the fighting there’s great beauty, in the beauty is a power much greater than we, and it’s free.

Alongside this incredible collection of prints, Catlett’s sculpture stands as some of the 20th century’s most potent work in the field. The regal grace of “Seated Mother and Child” (undated, bronze), “Triangle Woman” (undated, black marble) and “Reclining Woman” (undated, bronze/wood) beautifully marry Catlett’s fierce power as a sculptor with her recurring feminist themes. These strong women are not to be trifled with; these are the women who run the world. And in a world that continually denigrates women, particularly women of color, this message remains vital. After you’ve experienced her work at Stella Jones, I suggest a visit to Catlett’s massive bronze sculpture of Mahalia Jackson in Congo Square. If you’ve any doubts regarding her mastery of the form or her opinions regarding black female power, this sculpture will silence them.

Catlett devoted her life to telling the stories of her people – the lovers, fighters and workers of the world that the white men with the keys to the “kingdom” try to deny entry to. That exclusion has horrible consequences, a fundamental one being that people on “the outside” can get to thinking they just don’t matter. Yet there Elizabeth Catlett was – creating, celebrating, teaching, bravely refusing to acquiesce to a system that would negate her and her

community, insisting that there’s another, more inclusive world to occupy. There’s a mythic heroism to artists who truly believe that art is a tool that can effect social change and that they have a responsibility to serve. Elizabeth Catlett is one of the grand warriors in the tradition whose work continues to sing, “Forge on! Do not falter! You are not alone.”

- Elizabeth Underwood

(A note regarding Stella Jones Gallery: they’ve done a fantastic job organizing and hanging this powerful exhibition. I’m grateful for their hard work and devotion to representing artists that continue to be ignored by mainstream institutions. I cannot think of a better environment to get to know Elizabeth Catlett’s work in, or a staff better equipped to insure that her legacy lives on.)

http://stellajonesgallery.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Catlett
www.banderasnews.com/0512/art-elizabethcatlett.htm

Guess Who's Coming to NOLA?

3/9/2015

Multidisciplinary Artist ANGELA FAMA travels the continent in a Pop-up Photography Studio questioning WHAT IS LOVE and CONNECTING COMMUNITIES

The concept of love has been the driving force behind the creation of some of our greatest works of art, our philosophies, and our most severe behaviors. Now artist Angela Fama is traveling across North America with her project WHAT IS LOVE, opening her traveling pop-up photo studio at community events and random spots along the way to question definitions of love. With WHAT IS LOVE, Fama will be unifying communities athwart the continent using collaborative performance and comparative photography.

“WHAT IS LOVE came to me over a year ago as a natural progression from projects I have previously worked on. It started with a small group of peers and then extended to our surrounding communities. I began to see the links between the people and communities involved in the projects and am excited to take it further and see this style of connection span the continent,” says Fama. From April through July in 2015, Fama will be stopping in Canadian cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Montreal, as well as US spots such as Detroit, Summertown, Athens, NEW ORLEANS and Portland in a motor home that has been refurbished as a mobile studio. Fama will be inviting interested passersby to join her individually in the studio to converse on the word "love" and photographically capture the micro expressions shared in the process.

“WHAT IS LOVE is inclusive of everything that I have learned in life so far, it takes my entire being to be present in order to capture these images. It is fulfilling. I'm always hoping to take collaborators and viewers one step further within themselves and their own understanding. I like it when they share and compare their new understanding with others, either at the viewing of the work or within their lives. When this happens I know the WHAT IS LOVE process and artwork is cultivating individual and communal growth. WHAT IS LOVE is a worthwhile journey and I consider my work and efforts a success,” says Fama.

The 5th Annual Loving Festival is collaborating with Fama to present her WHAT IS LOVE Pop-up Photo Studio to the New Orleans community in June. For more information visit www.wabisabibutterfly.com, www.angelafama.com or email info@wabisabibutterfly.com. Please follow WHAT IS LOVE on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wabisabibutterfly

Photo courtesy of Angela Fama. #lovingfestival

What “We” Can’t See

7/21/2014

Artist Samantha Wall at Stella Jones Gallery by Jeri Hilt

The American South has been inundated with the stories and likenesses of the mulatto and—if you’re in Louisiana—Creole characters. Portrayals of multi-racial women specifically have ranged from substantial and transformative to exploitative and vapid. As an African American woman—with a cultural understanding that nearly all of the African American community has mixed ancestry of variant degrees—I found the portraits of multi-racial women in Wall’s exhibition, Indivisible, arresting if not remarkable.

There is an undeniable universality in their likenesses. These were women I recognized, both for the distinct traces of their various ethnicities, and for the laughter and vulnerability in their expressions. Completely distinct and apart from their racial composition, the subjects of Wall’s exhibit are portrayed in their truth. In this way, Wall’s portraits challenge the socially constructed tiers of beauty ascribed to women of color—with beauty being determined, externally, on a scale of lightest to darkest with a predilection for European features.

When asked about the impulse behind her art she explains that themes of identity will most likely stay with her work for a long time to come. “I’m interested in the ways shame operates in society,” says Wall.

"What I Can’t See" by Samantha Wall

In our interview she discussed the palpability of shame, and it’s evidence in her own life. For Wall, this concept has been linked more directly with the country of her birth. Born in Korea and relocated to the U.S. at the age of four, Samantha Wall moved around quite a lot, and resided in Fort Jackson, South Carolina for most of her childhood. For a time Wall never questioned her parentage and believed that her white stepfather, also the father of her siblings, was also her father. However, in 2009 Wall took a DNA test, and discovered that her father was a man of African descent. Traces of European and Native ancestry would imply that he is also, most likely African American.

Samantha explained that finding out her father’s ethnic background was significant in ways that she had not anticipated. Even before she knew that she was both Korean and African, Wall describes feeling lobbied between cultural groups rather than feeling a part of them. This confluence and fracturing of identity is an observable theme in this collection.

Included in her show is an astonishing self-portrait. Only her eyes are visible to the viewer, while the rest of her own image is a silhouette blacked out in charcoal. The title of the portrait, What I Can’t See, reveals what is otherwise invisible to the viewer, and Samantha herself. This level of honesty and vulnerability in art and the socio-political constructs of race forces us all to reconcile its incongruence, and the falsities embedded in who we perceive both ourselves and each other to be—especially when those perceptions are based on phenotypic observations.

Wall’s art exposes and deconstructs socially and politically constructed barriers that regularly impact how we engage with individuals of color. The presence of her work in New Orleans exposes and reveals these concepts in another environment. The portraits belie the inaccuracy and conceptual limitations of deeply entrenched notions of race and ethnicity. As an artist of color who is also a woman, our greatest artistic challenge is to represent women of color, however they identify, in their complete humanity. For Wall to accomplish this in a two-dimensional art form is both rare and exceptional. More than portraits, her work renders all women visible in liberating ways, Indivisible.

Samantha Wall lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is married to video and installation artist Stephen Slappe. For more information about her work visit: www.samanthawall.com. Wall's exhibit is part of the 4th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival and will run through July 31st at Stella Jones Gallery - 201 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA. www.stellajonesgallery.com

Jeri Hilt is a former lecturer of African Studies and International Development issues at Tennessee State and Dillard Universities. She has also worked with research, development, and teaching projects in South Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, and the United Kingdom. Hilt, a Louisiana native, currently teaches literacy intervention at an elementary school in New Orleans.

#lovingfestival

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The New Orleans Loving Festival is a Multiracial Community Celebration & Film Festival that challenges racism through outreach and education. The "Loving Festival" is an initiative of Charitable Film Network.

Contributors:

JW Bottletree
Rachel Dangermond
Elizabeth Underwood