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We are excited to announce a lecture by Sterling Downey and Melissa Proietti, co-founders and co-directors of the annual Under Pressure graffiti festivals and Fresh Paint Gallery in Montréal.

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Under Pressure is an annual graffiti festival that focuses on community development, artist empowerment, as well as positive youth development through ownership and responsibility of a shared space. Having just completed its twentieth year, the festival is the longest running graffiti and hip hop festival in North America. It’s an event done by the community for the community, kept alive on a volunteer basis. The festival takes place over two days during the first full weekend in August, throughout which stages are given over to performers from across Canada. B-boy and b-girl battles take place on Sunday afternoon. A kids’ area lets little ones get creative, and a skate ramp is set up for competition and open jams.

Founded in 2011 by the Under Pressure Graffiti International Convention, Fresh Paint is an alternative project working on giving new life to empty spaces by turning them into temporary cultural spaces. Fresh Paint Gallery is a space for exhibitions, education, and events. Influenced by street art and graffiti movements, Fresh Paint shows collective exhibitions with a mix of local and international artists. The space presents the best of emerging artists in street art, graffiti, pop art, graphic design, and illustrations.

Fresh Paint offers an alternative to the institutionalized and commercialized cultural system for artists and the public. Forget white walls, posh openings, elitism and egos, their project is authentic, for the people and accessible. Their volunteer team works hard to develop the following:

– promoting urban culture values such as DIY, authenticity, sharing, mentoring, self-affirmation, creativity, work, and involvement
– demystifying visual art
– supporting new emerging generations of independent artists.

Our first exhibition of the Fall 2014 semester features the work of Wes Kline, who teaches photography here at St. Lawrence.  More information here – http://stlawu.edu/gallery/exhibitions/.

 

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WWNY-7, based in Watertown, NY, recently ran a short story on the Cellblock Visions currently on display in the gallery.

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As Chika Okeke-Agulu recently noted in his blog Ọfọdunka, Mt. Holyoke College Museum of Art will present a public conversation between El Anatsui and Obiora Udechukwu. Okeke-Agulu is especially excited about hearing these two former colleague and fellow artists, each an important figure in his own right:

One reason I very much look forward to this event–apart from getting together with my favorite teachers and former colleagues in my days as a young teacher at Nsukka!–is that Udechukwu is one artist-scholar that has known Anatsui more than anyone else out there. (I still return to his short but perceptive 1982 essay in a catalog for one of Anatsui’s earliest solo exhibitions). And Udechukwu has, since their years as young artist-teachers at Nsukka, and as Anatsui’s work took to the stratosphere, recorded many of their conversations, as a part of his incredible archives of interviews with artists, novelists, poets, critics that shaped modern/contemporary Nigerian art…But this one, at this stage in their careers, is something special.

The talk is in conjunction with the current exhibition at Mt. Holyoke College’s museum, El Anatsui: New Worlds, and will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 3.

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A group of St. Lawrence University students, faculty, and staff have organized a town hall meeting entitled “How do we talk about prisons in New York State?” for Thursday, April 3, at 7:00 p.m. in the Noble Center Room 109.

Savannah Crowley ’14 and Allison Paludi ’14, both global studies majors and members of Amnesty International, will introduce a panel comprised of Natasha Haverty, journalist and producer of North Country Public Radio’s Prison Time Media Project; Rev. David Van Epps, retired state chaplain at the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility; and Lauren Melodia, campaign organizer for Milk Not Jails.  Dr. Mary Jane Smith, associate professor of history, will moderate the discussion with time set aside for community members’ comments and questions.

Crowley and Paludi note that “the purpose of this event is to facilitate a community dialogue about prisons in New York State that are so economically, politically and socially important to the North Country.  In consideration of prisons’ role in our society and their effects on our communities, it is vital we add local voices to a larger political conversation.”

Visitors are also encouraged to view art and prison exhibitions at the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery that will be on display in the same building through April 12, 2014: Cellblock Visions: Set Free in the Penitentiary; Photo Requests from Solitary; Milk Not Jails, and drawings by former inmate turned prison reform activist Five Mualimm-ak.

For more information, contact Savannah Crowley at smcrow10@stlawu.edu, Mary Jane Smith at msm1@stlawu.edu, or Catherine Tedford at ctedford@stlawu.edu.

 

NCPR has done an amazing job of reporting on the important issues of incarceration and prisons in our region; recent stories have featured visiting artist and social activist Five Mualimm-ak and curator Phyllis Kornfeld, who organized the Cellblock Visions exhibition.

Cellblock Visions will be on display in the Brush Gallery until April 12.

In coordination with the Brush Gallery and other programs on campus, SLU’s Global Studies department is holding a symposium on prison reform.

The symposium will include several events dedicated to raising awareness and facilitating conversation between North Country students, faculty, and community members on issues such as the prison industrial complex, solitary confinement, and prison reform efforts across the United States. Through these events, we hope to foster a dialogue about northern New York’s role in these larger processes, which are often missing from mainstream news coverage. 

The first event is a lecture by prison reform and social justice activist Five Omar Mualimm-ak at 7:00 p.m., in Griffiths 123.  Mualimm-ak’s drawings are featured as part of the Brush Gallery’s current exhibitions, which address  issues of incarceration in New York State and the nation.

The symposium’s events are sponsored by SLU Amnesty International, the African American Studies Department, SAGA (Sexuality and Gender Activists), the Weave, the Brush Gallery, and North Country Public Radio’s Prison Time project.

Bud Ziolkowski from Clear Creek Weavers came to campus on October 26th to conduct an Adirondack pack basket workshop for 8 enthusiastic participants.

Nancy Palmateer working on a pack basket.

Everyone in the group was able to complete a basket, and it was great way to spend a rainy Saturday.  Bud is an enthusiastic teacher and made the experience fun (and painless!), and the day went very quickly.  I hope to be able to weave another basket soon!

On Tuesday morning, the Alexander String Quartet visited the gallery and played while students from Karen Gibson’s FYP (Children’s Literature and Its Life-Long Lessons) engaged in a drawing assignment. The members of the ASQ seem to enjoy interacting with students — especially Sandy Wilson (cello) and Paul Yarbrough (viola), who added historical context to the music that the group played.  I forget the individual pieces that were played, but they began with Mozart and followed that with Ravel and then Britten.

On Friday morning, NCPR aired a story on the ASQ as part of its Live Music Friday series.

The Adirondack Pack Basket Workshop with Clear Creek Weavers has been rescheduled.  The workshop will take place on Saturday, October 26, from 9:30 to 5:00, in the Noble Center Papermaking Studio.

Materials fee: large basket $95, small basket $79 (including canvas straps). Wear clothes and shoes that can get wet!

Pre-registration is required; contact Cathy Tedford at 315-229-5174 or ctedford@stlawu.edu

 

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