Portrait Party

Some of my portraits (second row from the top). This was my first attempt at portraiture.

Last weekend I attended NYC Urban Sketchers annual portrait party. The event took place at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. I heard about the event from my instructor at Pratt who was one of the organizers, and decided it would be a great way to jump into portraiture (something I have always been afraid of).

When I arrived there were hundreds of participants divided into groups of 12 sketchers each. In each group, sketchers took turns drawing each other for 10 minutes each for a total of two hours of drawing (and one ten-minute stint of posing).

The organizer (my Pratt instructor) warned that it would feel like a marathon. I agree that it was taxing to focus for two hours without a minute’s break, but for me it was far more enjoyable than running a race - but maybe that’s because I hate running, and am slowly discovering that I love sketching.

Some portraits of me, drawn by the other artists. So inspiring to see such different styles.

Looking back at the experience I think I would try to go even more bold next time- maybe outlining my pencil lines in a heavy ink and and working harder to include shading for the shadows on the face - something I find very difficult to see, but hopefully with practice it will come more easily.

In the end we laid all of our portraits out in a grid so that each row showed all of one artist’s work, and each column showed all of the portraits painted of the same model. It was so inspiring to see the different styles - some gestural, some detailed, some bold and colorful, and some delicate. Each portrait caught some essential quality of the model, and the experience made me less afraid of drawing faces and eager to draw as many as possible in the coming months.

More Info:

NYC Urban Sketchers

About Portrait Parties

Mother Me Reading

Last month I did my first reading at Grumpy Bert in Boerum Hill. It was hosted by Lost Lit where I have been taking workshops for the last year. It was very sweet and intimate and lovely to hear everyone's work in a supportive setting.

I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which we can all share more art with each other and hope to host some salon-style readings this fall. So many people are working on inspiring projects great and small and I hope we can all share more with each other... even though it can be nerve-wracking.

In an ode to Mother's Day, Lost Lit is thrilled to curate the Mother ME Reading on Saturday, May 6, 2017. These super talented writers reject the role of Mother, the label of Mom, the relationship, the responsibility, the darkness and the unparalleled joys that go along with it.

Surviving the Delta-pocalypse

The guy next to me is telling everyone at the bar that he hasn't showered for three days, and a chorus responds, "Who has?" Another man interrupts to ask, "You know what DELTA stands for?" and before he can finish people start yelling, "Don't Even Leave the Airport!" A woman implores, "We gotta buy a drink for Rick! Rick missed his own damned bachelor party."

People are drunk the way you get drunk when you've been stuck somewhere for days. They are making unexpected friends the way you do at summer camp or in the army. I listen to a motley crew to my left share stories about unexpected jail time, failed business endeavors, foreign prostitutes, and estranged children: life stories that don't usually come out until around the third day of heavy bonding.

To my right I hear a man confess his undying love to a woman and watch her calmly explain to him that he is not in his right mind and should not leave his wife for her. After she leaves he drunkenly explains to me that he had just met her, in that very terminal, hours earlier. 

If I had been in any kind of rush I would not have found the whole thing as amusing, but as disappointed as I was to be late to my sister's bachelorette party in Georgia, this was not a life or death matter. And its good to be able to distinguish between life's outrages, and its disappointments.

Once I arrived, just 24 hours late, and with only four girls missing due to the Delta-pocalypse, I had no further complaints.

Delta had just cancelled over 3,000 flights in 24-hours. Counter-service was shut-down, and the wait on the help line was over 13 hours long. The entire system was down. Flight attendants and pilots were stranded because they could not log in to tell Delta what city they were in or find out where their next flights were leaving from. It was such an absolute mess, with people missing weddings, funerals, job interviews, and grandchildren being born, that the atmosphere in the terminal was almost punch-drunk, buoyant. Whole terminals seemed to cheer with every flight that took off. And besides, counters were closed. There was no one to complain to.

In addition, the president had just sent 59 missiles to bomb Syria in an apparent response to a horrific chemical attack. And the 24-hour loop of airport CNN wouldn't let us forget it. So being stuck in an American airport for a few days seemed comically trivial. 

It was like when I was a kid and a big storm would leave the neighborhood without electricity, with everyone huddled together in the one house that had a wood stove (which I remember, because it was ours). There was no one to be angry with. Just thankfulness that we were warm and together. And there was hot chocolate. Singing. Camaraderie. There would be time later to assess the damage.

Eighteen hours, three cancelled flights, and one completely unexpected long car-ride through rural Georgia later, I thought: I am part of some strange history now. I can't wait to tell people that I was part of the Delta-pocalypse. I'm sure it's been all over the news.

But... not a peep. I cannot find a single headline. Delta PR works miracles.

Arrived. April 8th, 2017. Georgia on my mind.

HRC Gala in its Glorious Complexity

There were easily a million things that made the HRC Gala unforgettable. I felt so fortunate to be there - to feel not just safe, but respected, held, seen, and honored by everyone at the event and at the Waldorf Astoria.

February 11th, 2017

I understand that this is a great privilege, and that many members of the LGBTQ community find such a show of ostentation to be in distasteful contrast to a daily fight for dignity.

Many find the disconnect between Hollywood and reality to be not just jarring but violent. But I believe that alliances must be formed wherever possible, and that a community ,such as the 'Hollywood elite', having power does not make them necessarily corrupt. Many genuinely want to connect and to understand and were drawn to the art by a love of human justice that they cannot quell. All in all, I am so grateful that I had the chance to go. After feeling for most of my life that I was not seen, it really did something for me. 

If you have a chance, at least check out the end. I cannot stop adoring her:

"If you think people were mad when they thought the government was coming after their guns, wait til you see what happens when they try to take away our happiness." 

What is Love?

(from January)

After dismissal I realized that my students had changed my lesson on the four distinguishing characteristics of fungi, its three primary phyla, and their sub-classifications into something far more important.

The best part is the beat left empty before 'no more.' 

Kids these days... are amazing.

Comedy & The Election

 

Dear Wyatt Cenac - 

(from December)

I've been going to your comedy show for years, and the community and energy you've created is fantastic. The tone you set is one of deep empathy and vulnerability, and the performers you host clearly aspire to emulate your thoughtfulness, creating a ripple effect throughout comedy. You consistently channel the emotions of the room and amplify them in a way that is at times awkward, cathartic, and revelatory. 
 

Comedy obviously plays an important role in times of political discord. I remember clearly the temporary hibernation of irony after 9/11, and the difficulty performers and television hosts had getting back into the swing. I remember how certain jokes and styles of humor just permanently seized to resonate, making way for something new, and how uncertain and awkward the blank spaces felt for some time. As an artist I look back at things I made just weeks ago, and nothing from before the election feels like it could ever be relevant again. These are undeniably dark times and its hard to know where to go from here. 
 

At your first show after the election your audience wanted to be entertained, consoled, and told how to process. We wanted to be made to feel present, and we also wanted to disappear. You seemed to think it didn't go well. In fact, you sat down on the stage and asked the technician to just turn the lights off. But you always bring people together and you have the ability to carry us through with strength and earnestness, so if there was a nervousness in the room, it wasn't caused by you. This is a time of mass trauma, and unlike the weeks after 9/11, it feels like the enemy is among us, and the worst may be yet to come. 
 

We have a lot of work ahead of us, and I can't wait to see what you bring to the new era. You are an important voice of compassion and responsiveness, and you have a lot of ears on you. Stay strong.

November

My nails, November 9th.

I wrote this with my seventh graders the day before the election. They are brilliant and I love them:

 

It started months ago as a tickle in the back of our throats. We thought, “Are we getting sick?” No, it’s probably our imagination. Just a slight tummy ache, and only when we really thought about it. We thought, “Are we about to get really sick?” No, it was probably something we ate. There were days when we thought we could see it coming in the distance, and we thought, not the America I know.

But the truth is it started years ago, long before the first black president ran on courage and hope and a wave of joy and relief washed over us as we thought, finally the healing can begin! But out in the suburbs and deep in the countryside the seeds of discontent were being sewn, quietly at first, and then triumphantly blooming in back gardens and subsistence farms and even large commercial plantations. And they surprised us all! That tickle in the throat had become the full-blown disease we feared most, it's bright angry blossoms now deep-rooted and blooming in that briny sea of dissatisfaction, and for us it seemed like it happened overnight. But it was a long time coming.

I see angry men and women yelling at the camera, screaming at the press, they are yelling racial slurs and anti-Semitic chants, and sexist rants and calls to violence. When did this happen? How did this happen? Were we sleeping? Were we busy liking each other on Facebook and Instagram? Where were we and how did this happen? This blinding lightning rage. It must have started long ago. Before the first black president. Before the women’s movement. Before the civil rights movement. Before the civil war. Before Christopher Columbus. Before the first European king sent ships and swords to conquer distant lands, before the first Chinese Emperor built the Great Wall, before the first Pharaoh enslaved the first Israelites, before the Aztecs fought the Maya with their great war machine capturing the enemy: men, women and children.

Or maybe it started before that. Somewhere in the murky cosmic brew before the first humans. I don’t want to believe it. But maybe it’s always been there, waiting, hard to swallow, tickling the back of our throats.

Standardized Assesments in the House of Love

I saw this mural the last time I was in Philadelphia.

It's on the corner of Baltimore and 50th. I passed it a few times before I noticed it, but once I saw it, the longer I looked the more I was moved. To me this represents teaching and the work of caring better than any image I've seen. It shows  how the caretakers heart is strengthened by those it nourishes, and how for the child, the caretaker is her world.

I went to a Story-Collider a few months ago and saw a local neonatologist, Nitin Ron, talk about saving babies 'no bigger than your iphone.' He spoke about the complex ethics of neonatal medicine, and how the scientific advancements that save younger and younger lives also create weighty moral dilemmas. He spoke about meditating in Tibet to find answers, and returning to Brooklyn to see a girl on the street with severe physical and cognitive impairments stop and thank him after her mother said, "That's him. That's the man who saved you." 

He spoke about how in Vietnam the word for hospital, nha thuong, means 'house of love', and how medicine is the intersection between science and love. He spoke about how without love, there could be no medicine, and the tragedy that we have so many metrics in medicine, and no metric for love. I approached him afterwards and told him that I thought the practice of teaching was also a marriage between best practices and love, and that until we came up with a true metric for love, there was no sense in any standardized assessment.

Tank Tops

Last year my female students staged a rebellion against the dress code.

Specifically, against the ban on tank tops. In a meeting with their teachers and the principal, they were able to clearly articulate their concerns that the rule was sexist, femme-phobic, and body-shaming. I found their words and actions to be inspiring and they encouraged me to further educate myself on the subject: 

New York Times (May 2016):

Researchers asked girls how they would prefer to receive breast information — via website, app, leaflet or private session with a nurse — the overwhelming majority replied that they wanted a girls-only session with a female teacher.

"It’s hard to be in the zone, focusing on athletic movement, on what your body can do, if you’re thinking about what others think your body looks like."

The Atlantic (October 2015):

One of the key concerns is the implication that women should be hypercognizant about their physical identity and how the world responds to it.

“The dress code makes girls feel self-conscious, ashamed, and uncomfortable in their own bodies,"

The prevalence and convergence of today’s protests suggest that schools not only need to update their policies—they also have to recognize and address the latent biases that go into creating them.

NPRed (September 2015):

Increasingly, the words "gender-neutral dress code" are popping up on school board agendas and at PTA meetings.

"It's a phrase I'm learning about," says Michael Allison, president of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "I think we'll be seeing a lot of changes at schools around the country in the next few years."

The dress code Burmeister created a few years ago, when he was a principal, was gender-neutral. It listed five simple "norms" for students, starting with the most important: "All students must be covered from mid-thigh to top of chest in non-see-through materials.

Time (May 2015):

"..the very act of teachers calling young girls out for their attire projects an adult sexual perception onto an outfit or body part that may not have been intended or perceived as such by the student herself. It can be disturbing and distressing for students to be perceived in this way and there is often a strong element of shame involved."

Shame: A Documentary (May 2015)

I haven't watched this yet, but am impressed that it's by a 16 year old filmmaker.

The Nation (August 2014):

Young women around the country are arguing that the school’s reaction to a woman’s appearance is more distracting than her appearance itself.

Focusing so much attention on a young woman’s sexuality—the visibility of her legs, her bra straps or midriff—teaches her that these things are of major importance to others.

New York Times (June 2014):

It turns out that modern middle school parents from San Francisco to New York have been forced to break out the ruler. Are those inseams too short? How wide are those tank top shoulders?

So where does that leave schools? With a mandate to educate — not stigmatize — students. Telling girls to “cover up” just as puberty hits teaches them that their bodies are inappropriate, dangerous, violable, subject to constant scrutiny and judgment, including by the adults they trust. Nor does it help them understand the culture’s role in their wardrobe choices.

The Success Academy Video

It took me a while to understand my reaction to the Success Academy Charter School video, and it took me even longer to sort through my reaction to the public's reaction (here, and here, and here).

I was confused by the wide-spread surprise that a teacher might have momentary loss of control. Anyone who works with (or near) children knows that every parent and educator experiences flashes of discomposure, embarrassingly lashing out at children in fear, disappointment, desperation, or anger from time to time. So why the widespread shock?

I believe it was precisely because the video did not depict a loss of control. I did not see an exasperated lapse in judgment. Nor did I see a sadistic temperament. I also did not see an insidious outcropping of deeper systemic inequalities that teach privileged children to question and poor children to submit, although I believe such inequalities exist. Instead I saw something far more obvious and distressing:

The video shows a skillful and exacting technician confidently and deftly carrying out a direct mandate that came from each and every one of us: to raise every child’s standardized test scores at any cost. Because evaluating and compensating teachers and schools based on raising children’s performance on arbitrary, non-differentiated, developmentally inappropriate metrics leads necessarily to cruelty. It is the patent end to a goal we have collectively set in motion: to have each child reach inflexible standards that are incongruous with current research about how young and varied minds grow and develop. It certainly can be done. As circus animals can be made to do tricks with extreme enough systems of reward and punishment, so too can children of all ages be coerced into performing.

I believe that the collective alarm and discomfort that the video arose in the public was unjustifiably misdirected towards an individual teacher. To me she seemed to be an exceedingly competent educator, masterfully carrying out the task we asked her to execute. I believe the outrage was also misdirected at Success Academy, the charter school system as a whole, and even the widespread inequities in education. Instead, I believe the reaction of mass shock and discomfort that the video inspired was the horrified gasp of us realizing what we - all of us - have done. Because this is what standardized expectations of children look like: cruel and unusual.