Invitation to SHE 3/20 at the Frida Cinema and Press Release

SHE: Beyond the Paradigms of Pleasure and Peril
A One-day Festival in Honor of Southern California Women March 20, 2016
Santa Ana, California

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The Studio for Southern California History is pleased to announce a one-day festival on March 20, 2016 at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, beginning at 10:00 am and ending at 10:00 pm. SHE: Beyond the Paradigms of Pleasure and Peril will include workshops, a curated gallery space, an artist talk, film screening and poetry reading. In our media-saturated world, few sets of women are discussed as much as Southern California women. Yet, the contributions of everyday women to the formation of Southern California remain glaringly underrepresented in histories and media representations. Women are the makers of the poetry, art, reform movements and beautify our surroundings through various forms of work, whether paid or not. This exhibit is dedicated to the experiences of Southern California women in an effort to let women describe themselves and their lives.

SHE Exhibit Co-Curators: Jennifer Escobar, Elwing Gonzalez, Marilynn Montaño, Sharon Sekhon and Sarah Swafford.

This event is FREE with a suggested $5 donation.

The Studio for Southern California History is an organization dedicated to critically chronicling and sharing the region’s history in order to foster sense of place.

The Frida Cinema is a community-based, mission-driven, non-profit Art House theatre dedicated to enriching, connecting, and educating communities through the art of cinema located at 305 E. 4th Street in Santa Ana.

Program
10 am – 10 pm: Exhibit.
Location: Lobby.
Curated exhibition including artwork by Chanel Beery, Karen Boccalero, Elwing Gonzalez, Jose Angel Hernandez, Lily La Bare, CAKE, Maya Luque, Sara Roberts, Mike Street, the Studio for Southern California History and Linda Vallejo.

10am -12pm:
Walking Tour of the Frida’s Neighborhood.
Location: Foyer.
Co-led by CSUF students in the Honors Program, this walking tour focuses on the social history along 4th Street and the history of Santa Ana, Orange County and California.

10 am – 2 pm:
Interview Compilation for SHE (loop).
Location: Auditorium. Interviews with contemporary Southern California women on a range of questions. This compilation was edited by Shawn C. Neill for SHE and includes a wide array of voices, often in contradiction, on what it means to be a woman in Southern California. Interviewees include: Cleone Anderson, Dear Aunaetitrakul, Katherine Angus Bartle, Mary Gallagher, Jessica Gonzalez, Satinder Kaur, Irene Kuromiya, Grace Lee, Aimee McMullen, Doris Munoz, Kristy Rena Cruickshank, Macy Sanchez, Quynh Nguyen, Leslie Sandoval, Lucille Spina, Mary Sullivan, Sarah Swafford, Veronica Valenzuela and many more!

12 pm – 2 pm: Altar Workshop by Ofelia Esparza and Rosanna Esparza Ahrens.
Location: Lobby.
Watch or help legendary Chicana artists Ofelia Esparza and Rosanna Ezparza Ahrens construct an altar to honor Southern California women. Bring an image of a loved one to include and any artwork you would like to share with this collaborative masterpiece.

12 pm – 2 pm:
Gatita Workshop by Leo Limón.
Location: Foyer.
Space is limited; to reserve a place, be sure to email us at pleasureperil@gmail.com and we will send you a confirmation. Create your own Gatita in the spirit of the Los Angeles River with Leo Limón. This workshop is designed for all ages. Be sure to wear clothing appropriate for painting.

2 pm – 3 pm:
Panel: Latina Urbanism with Carmen Agote, Isela Gracian, Kristen Guzman, Adonia Lugo and James Rojas.
Location: Auditorium.
In their everyday routines and placemaking, Latinas engage across the lines of public and private space. What does this spillover between domestic and public space mean for personal safety and economic security?, How can we make room in institutional projects such as policy and planning for these intimate relationships with place?, Can those who embody the borderlands find support for their shifting realities in formal settings?, In this workshop, audience members will hear from a panel of practitioners engaged with Latina experiences of built environments in different ways. Building on a December 2015 discussion held at the América Tropical Interpretive Center in Los Angeles, this conversation in Santa Ana will illuminate points of connection between the sites. Audience members will be invited to share their own insights.

3 pm – 4:30 pm:
Panel & Workshop: Healing Girls and Women at Risk
Location: Auditorium.
This panel is intended for mature audiences only and includes three speakers whose work all connects to issues of healing, violence, sexuality and gender. Each panelist approaches the

issue of advocacy for those who are the victims of violence or marginalization due to their sexuality and gender.
Maribel Morales, “De Colores OC.” Maribel Morales will share this Santa Ana-based organization’s mission and how you can support their efforts.

Kandee Lewis, “The Positive Results Corp.” Kandee Lewis will discuss her work as a Certified Advocate on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault throughout Los Angeles County.
Jessica Delgado: “Abuse in Adolescence, Maturity in Mercy.” Jessica Delgado will lead a workshop on rape, abuse, suicide, and self-harm through poetry.

4:30 pm – 5 pm:
Video and Films. Ariel Luna Anais’ The Gaye Jolly Show Carla Orendorff’s Leaving Evidence For A Future Self. Location. Auditorium.

5 pm – 6 pm:
Panel: SHE Artists in Conversation. Location: Auditorium.

6 pm – 8 pm:
Poetry and Performance Hosted by: Marilynn Montaño with performances by Marissa Mireles Hinds, Jeremy Hight and Natalie Sanchez Del Valle.
Location: Auditorium.

8 pm – 10 pm: Closing Reception. Location: Lobby.

PARTICIPANTS
ROSANNA ESPARZA AHRENS
Rosanna Esparza Ahrens is an artist and co-director of Colibri Gallery in East Los Angeles.

ARIEL LUNA ANAIS
Ariel Luna Anais is a Video Artist, Painter, and Tattoo Artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. Her B.A. in New Media and Painting was received from the University of Southern California in 2014. In 2012, she was nominated for RAW Visual Artist of the Year in her hometown of San Antonio, Texas. She was also a recipient of the Friends of Fine Arts Endowed Scholarship and the Robert and Laura Fainter Memorial Scholarship. Her two dimensional works can be viewed in various galleries throughout Los Angeles. Recent screenings of her Video Works include The Gaye Jolly Show: Missing in the Rainbow, Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles; and Clitney $pears the Shockumentary: Crawl, Beg, Suffer, The Art Frat House, Los Angeles. Those films and others, such as Something Someone, Jr. and Prims Garcia, can be viewed on her YouTube channel.

CARMEN ARGOTE
Carmen Argote is an artist who examines space. http://www.carmenargote.com/

CHANEL BEERY
Chanel Beery is a photographer & evidence based coach.

TIFFANY BOWMAN
Tiffany Bowman is a researcher for SHE and is an undergraduate at California State University Fullerton.

JESSICA DELGADO
Jessica Delgado was born and raised in Burbank, the heart of Southern California’s entertainment industry. She was raised by a verbally abusive professional musician for a father and ever-coping artistic and bookish surgical technologist for a mother. In 23 years, Jessica has recovered from self-mutilation, suicide attempts, alcohol, substance, physical, and verbal abuse, rape and miscarriages, abandonment, and a nearly fatal car accident. Though she still struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Severe Depression, she is glad that all of these horrific incidences could contribute to her art. Currently, she resides in Corona with the love of her life and their two kitties and has returned to the stage as an actress and burlesque performer. She is excited to be alive in order to fulfill her goal of becoming an English Professor while emphasizing in theater, film, and Chicano Studies and hopes to receive an acceptance letter from the University of California Riverside. She has been published in several formats such as poetry in MUSE Magazine, online literary blogs such as Graveyard Writers and Synchronized Chaos Magazine, and has recently co-authored a play surrounding the life of Edgar Allan Poe. She continues to pursue part of her career as a playwright, and is currently working on several plays including one based on Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” and another based on “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters and “The Suicide’s Soliloquy” by Abraham Lincoln, of which the play is named after.

JENNIFER ROSE ESCOBAR
Jennifer Rose Escobar lives, works, and plays in the Inland Empire. She taught high school for many years and now teaches at Moreno Valley College.

OFELIA ESPARZA
Ofelia Esparza is a renowned artist and altar maker born and raised where she still resides, East Los Angeles. In 1945 she attended Belvedere Middle School, where she invited her future husband to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. Ofelia served as an educator until 1999, when she retired from City Terrace Elementary School. Before receiving her teaching credential from CSULA in 1975, Ofelia was recruited to become a teaching aid for Spanish-speaking students. Although she no longer teaches at a school, Ofelia volunteers at Self-Help Graphics, where she began working with Sister Karen in 1980. Ofelia recognizes the importance of art in education and continues making, and teaching others how to make, beautiful Dia De Los Muertos/Day of the Dead altars. Ofelia has experienced great change over time and smiles when reminiscing about a time when only two art coordinators existed for the entire Los Angeles School District.

ELWING GONZALEZ
Elwing Suong Gonzalez is an educator in US history and ethnic studies, a doctoral student writing a dissertation on the Vietnamese refugee communities of Southern California, a visual artist who deals with themes of representation, inclusion/exclusion, and identity, and a self- proclaimed philanthropic misanthrope. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she currently teaches public school in Glendale and Asian American studies at the Claremont Colleges.

ISELA GRACIAN
Isela Gracian is helping to legalize street vending as the executive director of East Los Angeles Community Corporation. www.elacc.org.

KRISTEN GUZMAN
Kristen Guzmán is a professor of History and Ethnic Studies at Santa Ana College where she thrives at sharing stories of women, artists and community builders. Kristen is inspired by and roots her curriculum in social justice movements. Kristen’s focus is on Chican@ art and wrote Art in the Heart of East L.A.: A History of Self Help Graphics and Art, published by UCLA’s Chican@ Studies Research Center.

JOSE ANGEL HERNANDEZ
Jose Angel Hernandez is a Los Angeles based contemporary artist. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Northeast of the United States. It wasn’t until his mid-life, at turn of the century, that he developed a passion for painting. Jose has shown his work in galleries and art fairs in Los Angeles, CA and Dallas, TX.

JEREMY HIGHT
Jeremy Hight is an artist/theorist/information~designer/writer/photographer/musician/editor/curator. He has articles on locative media, new media, language theory and art.

MARISSA MIRELES HINDS
Marissa Mireles Hinds is a creative director, poet, performer, photographer and activist. Marissa has recently spent six months training in film, poetry and performance in London, UK working with The Roundhouse, Media Trust, Film London, The Museum of Archives, Vivienne Westwood, The Amy Winehouse Foundation and The Heritage Lottery Fund. Marissa’s first commissioned short form documentary Future Revisited is having its first screening at The Bruce Castle Museum of Archives February 20th in Tottenham, London. Marissa has published three books of poetry, one of which is titled Poetry for the Mute and it is available online on Amazon and is on the bookshelves inside Mellowpages, a community library in Williamsburg, New York. Marissa has also studied Improv at UCB in New York on a diversity scholarship.

LILY LA BARE
Lily La Bare is an artist who describes herself as: “raised in Huntington Beach at a time tomato fields ruled the landscape and I could sit on the roof of my house and see the ocean. It was a

time when shoes were optional, playing outside was king, and I went door-to-door selling my homemade art for a nickel. When I ran out of artwork, I sold earthworms for a dime.”

CHRISTINE LE
Christine Le is an animator, poet and graphic artist.

KANDEE LEWIS
Kandee Lewis is a Founding Board Member for South Los Angeles Homeless Transitional Aged Youth and Foster Care Collaborative. She serves on Compton’s Policing & Education Task Force, and the L.A. City Attorney’s Domestic Violence Round Table. She created Stop The Pain Teen Summit on Dating Violence, Sex Trafficking and Bully Prevention, now it its 5th year, serving over 6500 people, primarily youth since 1993. Kandee has worked with Carson, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Los Angeles and Santa Monica advocating and establishing February as Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month, and collaborated with L.A. County Sheriff, L.A.P.D. and the Housing Authority for the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) conducting youth leadership academies.

LEO LIMON
Over the years, Leo Limón has earned recognition and accolades from his peers and colleagues throughout the professional art world and has enjoyed widespread popularity with the community as a leader and role model. His activities date back to the very formative years of the Chicano art movement and over that time, has reflected the vision, aspirations and images of his surroundings and roots. He is a street artist, sign painter and muralist in addition to fine artist.

ANGELO LOGAN
Angelo Logan is a life long visual/ kinetic/conceptual artist using materials by design, with a variety of exhibitions, group shows and collaborations in Seattle, Los Angeles and Long Beach. Angelo is a social justice advocate and is a cofounder of Art In Action Los Angeles, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and is a Director with the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College.

ADONIA LUGO
Adonia Lugo is an anthropologist investigating equitable and inclusive mobility. http://www.urbanadonia.com/

MAYA LUQUE
Maya Luque (°1993, China) works mainly in sculpture and installation. Her installations appear as romantic poems in which the highs and lows of reality are abstracted. The artist is interested in the passing of time, as well as how viewer interaction and participation shifts the state of the work. Time, ambiguity, and poetry play key roles in Luque’s work. By demonstrating the lingering omnipresence of “societal standards,” she focuses in bringing forth a sense of awe for the spectator by creating compositions that are tranquil and romantic in nature. These compositions balance on the edge of recognition and isolation. Her works are based on

inspiring grandiose situations that, when combined with serene contemplation, reflect in a subtle yet striking manner. Luque currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

MARILYNN MONTANO
Marilynn Montaño is a poet and leader in Santa Ana.

MARIBEL MORALES
Maribel Morales is a representative from De Colores OC, which provides Spanish-language family support group for family processing their LGBTQ kids’ coming out process. They also have a visitation program where members visit trans women in the ICE detention center in Santa Ana.

SHAWN C. NEILL
Shawn C. Neill is a film editor and artist.

CARLA ORDENDORF
Carla is an artist, educator, and filmmaker who grew up under the sun of the San Fernando Valley. She is the daughter of a woman who crossed the U.S. border without permission. With humility, she hopes to borrow her approach of not asking any authority for permission to travel across, span, bridge, and extend borders. She brings these thick threads of history with her- the real, imagined, and the ones in-between.

CESAR PALACIOS
Cesar Palacios is a capoeirista musician and Minecraft bandit. Cesar has a portfolio of pen and pencil drawings and has been inspired by De Vinci, Picasso and Cezanne.

SARA ROBERTS
Sara Roberts is a sculptress from Twenty Nine Palms. She writes: “Armed with the belief that confinement is an artist’s most detrimental self-construction, I consistently challenge boundaries through chosen subject matter, materials, and processes. Additionally, I particularly enjoy working in mediums that are not primarily associated with female activity, such as welding and metal casting. In this way, both the means and the end result work to challenge social standards. The result is art that is intrinsically meaningful, for it offers an affront to social norms and gender stereotypes. My art will change as I gain new experience and knowledge, but the theme will remain: question preconceived notions and expectations, establish a dialogue with the viewer, and continually address the question why?”

JAMES ROJAS
James Rojas is an artist and educator who uses interactive workshops to engage diverse groups with creative placemaking. http://placeit.org/

NATALIE SANCHEZ VALLE
Natalie Sanchez Valle is a singer, writer, performer, dancer and UC Berkeley graduate passionate about theater and performance as a tool for creating consciousness and community.

In the Fall of 2013, after becoming inspired by the Teatro Lab class taught by Angela Marino, she started the Performance Colectiva with other performers of color to create resources and spaces for Latin@s and other underrepresented students who use art as a way to express, learn, and heal. Through this work, Natalie has given several performance workshops, as well as spoken about the importance for the arts at the Luis Valdez’s Power of Zero Regents Lecture at UC Berkeley.

SHARON SEKHON
Sharon Sekhon is an historian committed to using art as a vehicle for sharing history. She was born in Anaheim and has been teaching at CSUF in the American Studies Department since 1999; and she also teaches in the Ethnic Studies Department and the Honors Program at CSUF. She is the Founder of the Studio for Southern California History.

SARAH SWAFFORD
Sarah Swafford is an educator, athlete and artist from Central California.

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