Facing East
DiverseArts Production Group, in partnership with Tommy
Wyatt and The Villager , will host the opening reception for
"Facing East: 48 Hours in the Life of East Austin"
on April 4, 2002 at 7:00 pm. This exhibition, the first of
its kind in Austin , will feature the work of 10 photographers,
chosen by a panel of judges as the best of submissions received.
All work was to have been shot in Central Austin during the
48 hour period between March 9 and 10. The exhibition will
feature images reflecting diverse views of Central East Austin,
as seen through the eyes of various artists.
"Facing East" is a continuation of DiverseArts
Production
Group's effort to increase the amount of collected archival
materials documenting the personal lives, neighborhoods and
institutions found East of I-35. This work began in 1989,
when
Harold McMillan founded the Austin Blues Family Tree Project,
a library of oral histories and recorded performances of musicians
from pre-integration era East Austin. The mission of Facing
East
is to enlist the help of local photographers in documenting
this
culture rich community and to provide a showcase for
exceptional local talent.
DiverseArts Production group gratefully acknowledges and
appreciates The Villager's support as community host for this
event.
Winner of the photography exhibition was Laura Ochoa's series
"Le Gente."
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Mirta Toledo's Summarized Resume
Mirta Toledo is a native of Argentina who moved to the States
in 1988. She holds a M.F.A
in Painting and Sculpture from Prilidiano
Pueyrredon University of Fine Arts in Buenos
Aires. She has exhibited her artwork in Argentina,
Brazil, Hawaii and the United State of America.
She has won 21 awards for her drawings and sculptures in
her native country.
Since 1993, she has lectured about celebrating the diversity
of beliefs, languages, traditions, races and lifestyles, the
greatest treasure of Humankind in facing the future.
The conferences were called Pure Diversity: A Quest for Identity,
and they took place at Barnard College in New York, University
of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, University of Maryland-College
Park; Duke University, Texas Woman's University, among others.
Since 1994 she has served as a juror for the National PTA
Reflections Program in Literature for the Fort Worth Independent
School District Linguafest; for Nuestra Herencia Art Competition
hold by the Mexican-American Educational Advisory Committee;
for the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival, and the Austin's
Italian Chalk Art Festival, among others.
Toledo has authored the following books: La Semilla
Elemental,Vinciguerra, Argentina, 1993 and Dulce
de Leche, Torremozas, Spain, 1996. Her short stories
were published in literary magazines on the United States of America, Argentina,
Spain, Canada and Brazil and in anthologies like Ellas
Tambien Cuentan, Spain, 1995, and Cruel Fictions,
Cruel Realities. Short Stories by Latin American Writers,î
Latin American Literary Review Press, Pennsylvania, 1997.
In 1996, her short story "A Century After" was
finalist in the VIII "Ana Maria Matute Award"
in Literature, in Madrid, Spain.
In 1997 she was recognized as Outstanding Woman in the Arts
and was honored with the Estrella Award by the Hispanic Women's
Network of Texas, Fort Worth Chapter.
She also has secured the covers for several books and magazines.
Some of them are the following:"ìCalling all Heroes"
for Plover Press, Hawaii; "Creole Presence in The Caribbean
and Latin America" for Iberoamerica, Spain; "The
Americas Review" for the University of Houston and the
"Translation Review" for the University of Texas
in Dallas.
From 1994-1995 she was co-editor of Grafemas,
a publication of the Asociacion de Literatura
Femenina Hispanica, at Davidson College, North Carolina.
From 1995-1996 she was a reporter for the Fort Worth Star
Telegram's "La Estrella."
She lives in Austin since April 2000. And for the first time
since she left Argentina, she feels finally, "at home."
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Sharp
DiverseArts Little Gallery presents "Sharp," images
of the jazz scene by Austin-based photographer Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon.
Originally from Chile, Sanhueza-Lyon has lived in the United
States for many years and is currently pursuing a graduate
degree in Documentary Photography from the University of Texas.
For years, he has been a great fan of John Coltrane and Roy
DeCarava, and has often photographed Coltrane in the past.
Sharp is Sanhueza-Lyon's first showing of these new works,
which he likes to think of as "jazzscapes".
Sharp opens on October 3rd at 7pm, giving a taste of what
is to come on October 20 in the DiverseArts presentation of
Katz's Austin Jazz and Arts Festival at Symphony Square.
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Artist Statement
A still photograph is only that. It serves to capture a brief
and often fleeting moment in time. With some luck and a little
technical skill, a photographer can sometimes capture the
essence of the collaboration that takes place in these fleeting
moments. In these photographs I have attempted to do just
that.
I have always been fascinated by Jazz. There is something
magical that takes place between a Jazz musician and his/her
audience. How I wish that as a child I had picked up a trumpet
and fell in love with that instead of a camera. To this day,
I have never performed a trumpet solo, I have never strummed
a stand up bass. I have never sat in front a drum kit. But
the performances that are depicted in these images still mesmerized
me. In photographing them I have come as close to the essence
of what it is that drives these musicians to push the medium
that so inspires them. In emulating their drive to explore
jazz, I have done the same with the photographic process.
I hope that these images, my interpretations of Jazz, capture
even a fraction of the beauty that I am trying to depict.
Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon
2002
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