Archive | July, 2009

ArtSpring Program featured on WLRN

9 Jul

We are pleased to share with you a link to the NPR/WLRN radio piece that aired on June 29, 2009. The spot highlighted the ArtSpring program facilitated by Amy Carol Webb and Lela Lombardo at Broward Correctional Institution.

Please follow this link and scroll down to June 29, 2009 to hear the recorded program. The audio report by Chris DiMattei is listed under the heading “Local performing artists use song writing to help women living behind bars.”

Artspring gratefully acknowledges Public Domain Foundation, Puffin Foundation and Seminole Tribe of Florida for supporting this project.

Thank you for your continued support and interest in ArtSpring. We hope you are having a great summer!

Words of Realness

7 Jul

Stefan Säfsten, a Swedish composer, has written two choral suites whose text
is the poems of Spoon Jackson (who is serving life without possibility of
parole in California). The church choir, Järva Röster, has performed the
songs in Europe and the United States. Cds of the work — Freedom for the
Prisoners and the recent Words of Realness — can be purchased at:
http://www.nosag.se/catalogue163.html

Spoon played Pozzo in San Quentin’s 1988 production of “Waiting for Godot,”
has published widely, and has won awards from the PEN Prison Writing
program. He is writing a two-person memoir with Judith Tannenbaum, his
poetry teacher at San Quentin; “By Heart” will be out in May, 2010.

Stefan has been a church musician in Kista parish outside of Stockholm since 1983, and was educated at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm. He has worked with choirs spanning all age groups in the Kista parish. Stefan has conducted and led many different ensembles and choirs even before he began working in Kista. Stefan has a wide experience within most musical styles, and is as happy performing sacred music and chamber music as he is playing jazz, pop, and dance music. He has played in big bands, brass bands, and rock bands. He has also performed quite a bit of chamber music.

Stefan has also composed and arranged much music for different types of ensembles. During 2002 and 2003 he toured Germany and the Czech Republic with his choir, Järva Röster, performing the mass “Leva i världen” (Live in the World, nosag CD 057), which Stefan wrote in 1998.

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Prison Art Show at Queens Museum

5 Jul

Artwork is on display at the Queens Museum from artists incarcerated on Rikers Island. The New York Times ran the following story about the exhibit. Be sure to scroll through the images in the article to view the artwork:

At Queens Museum, Inmates’ Artistic Visions

By SEWELL CHAN

They fell into trouble with the law, but now they are making art as they pursue their studies.

A variety of artwork — paintings, drawings, poems, plays and even pocketbooks made from newspapers — will be on view at the Queens Museum of Art tomorrow through July 5. The works were created by jail inmates at Rikers Island and juvenile delinquents participating in city-run programs for youthful offenders.

The participants in the show are working toward high school diplomas or General Educational Development high school equivalency diplomas, at the Austin H. MacCormick Island Academy and the Horizons Academy, on Rikers Island, and the Passages Academy, which works with juvenile delinquents in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

For legal and privacy reasons, the artists are identified only by their first names and last initials. The organizers of the art show wrote in a short catalog accompanying the exhibition:

During the three years in which we have produced this joint art show, we have learned that to underestimate the creative potential of young minds is to waste an opportunity to witness the ability of the human spirit. These students continue to thrive under extreme and exceptional circumstances. The creative potential is unlocked by the commitment and relentless determination of great teachers.

The title of the exhibition, “Underestimate Me…No More,” was inspired by a poem by one young artist, Antoine B. The poem states, in part:

I will show you my worth
Show you my value
Underestimate me
Doubt me

Never
No More
I will rise
I will rise 2 every occasion
And I will continue to rise
Even when u think I’m falling

And when the dust settles
And you c me again!
You’ll underestimate this man
Never more!!!

NY1 also ran a story on the exhibit. Check out this video clip to hear interviews with family members of the artists and see some of the art displayed at the gallery.

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