Thu, Apr 18, 2019
5 Local Santa Cruz Artists Featured in We're Still Here Exhibition
What does loneliness feel like? How does it sound? What would it look like as a dance?
In the new exhibition We’re Still Here: Stories of Seniors and Social Isolation, five local artists helped translate these feelings into works of art.
Over the course of seven months, the MAH connected a group of 186 seniors, advocates, and organizations with Santa Cruz-based artists. They built relationships with the seniors, understood their stories, and transformed them into visual, audio, and performative experiences for the exhibition.
1. Listen to Senior Words of Wisdom by Wes Modes
"Working with these engaged and active seniors has been eye-opening... I felt like I'd met friends from whom I had a lot to learn."
When is the last time you picked up the phone to listen to an elder? Wes Modes met with seniors from across Santa Cruz County to record their words of wisdom. You can hear their stories by picking up any one of the seven telephones in this gallery.
2. Explore Powerful Portraits by Gina Orlando
“I've spent hours listening to seniors open up ... and I really connected with them. They feel like family and I care so much about what happens to them after this exhibition.”
What does a portrait of social isolation look like? Gina Orlando collaborated with local seniors to share their experiences with social isolation. She captured their portraits, and gave them each a camera and worked with them one on one to capture words and images from their daily lives.
3. Get Hands-On With Prints by Ry Faraola
“The C3 process has pushed me to experience closer forms of collaboration. To put trusted elder’s ideas first. To listen to the process and create artwork that reflects what we’ve learned together.“
Ry Faraola uses art to create empathy. For this project, Ry worked with seniors to design an interactive Game of Life. These prints explore some of the challenges and triumphs seniors experience each day.
Moving Through Loneliness: Cid Pearlman (Lead Artist/Concept Design/Choreographer), Kate Edmunds, (Collaborator/Installation Design), and Mara Milam, (Collaborator/Filmmaker)
4. Move Through Rooms of Loneliness with Cid Pearlman
“The senior cohort created a deep pool of material to draw from, material rooted in the body and lived experience.”
Choreographer Cid Pearlman asked seniors to describe what social isolation looked like to them. Inspired by their imagery, she created three rooms. A bedroom, a kitchen, and a "room of the mind." During this exhibition, dancers will be activating these rooms with movement.
5. Stitch Together a More Intergenerational Santa Cruz with Pajaro Valley Quilting Association
What would a world without loneliness look like?
We asked seniors and advocates this question at the first C3 meeting. We worked with the Pajaro Valley Quilting Association to turn their responses into a community quilting project.
Help us imagine a world without loneliness by adding your vision to the quilt. With your help we can stitch together a more inclusive and inter-generational Santa Cruz County.
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