Bio:
Donna Sherman worked as a licensed clinical social worker (MSW,LCSW) and integrative therapist in hospitals, mental health clinics, universities and private practice. She is longtime teacher of Yoga, Mindfulness Meditation, Mindfulness -Based Interventions and guided Yoga Nidra. She is also the host of the Sparks In Action Podcast.
Street Heroines is a feature-length documentary celebrating the courage and creativity of women who despite their lack of recognition have been an integral part of the graffiti and street art movement since the beginning. Authentic vérité storytelling woven between an interview-driven narrative, Street Heroines juxtaposes the personal experiences of three emerging Latina artists from New York City, Mexico City, and São Paulo as they navigate a male-dominated subculture to establish artistic identities within chaotic urban landscapes.
Punctuated by historical anecdotes from pioneering artists Lady Pink, Claw Money, Nina Pandolfo, Swoon, Lady Aiko, iconic graffiti photographer Martha Cooper, and others, Street Heroines is the first-of-its-kind documentary to capture the collective outcry of female street artists from around the world, shining a light on their mission for creative expression and their endeavors overcome sexism through art.
While numerous graffiti genre documentaries feature familiar names such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey, Street Heroines infiltrates this masculine space by legitimizing women’s voices within an unquestionably important movement that symbolizes far more than the sum of its parts. Now, in the wake of #MeToo and Time’s Up, which have had astounding repercussions for women’s justice, there is no time more relevant for a film that exposes the struggles of female artists worldwide and situates them within the global conversation. Street Heroines is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and was funded through a combination of crowdfunding and private donations.
Director | Producer // Alexandra Henry is an award-winning creative producer and director based in New York City. Her personal and commercial work in film and branded content production has taken her to over 15 countries across four continents. Focused on making impactful and culturally relevant work, Alexandra believes that visual communication is the most effective tool in amplifying messages that inspire social change. Her passion for art, music, and language is evident in her photography, music videos, and documentaries. Alexandra has been twice recognized as a CurateNYC Emerging Artist and she was recently selected as one of 32 filmmakers by SHOOT Magazine for their New Directors Showcase 2019.
Executive Producer // Zahra Sherzad is the founder of Noorvision LLC, an NYC-based independent production company, and has been involved in the contemporary art world for 20+ years curating and producing art shows with recognized artists, musicians, DJs, filmmakers, and creatives who have gone on to define street culture as a whole. Currently, Zahra is the Head of Visual Art and an Impact Producer for Level Forward, an entertainment company that develops, produces, and finances entertainment with Oscar, Emmy, and Tony-winning producers. Clients have included: Zappos, Amazon Music, Rockstar Games, AK Worldwide, No Commission Art Fair (Swizz Beats), Moniker Art Fair, Times Square Arts Alliance, and Creative Time.
Producer // Jordan Noël Hawkes has produced documentaries, cultural events, and art-based education programs, and worked on feature film and commercial crews in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and the US. For Street Heroines, Jordan started as a conceptual advisor and fundraiser helping to lead the successful Kickstarter campaign, and then traveled on shoots to record sound in Mexico City and São Paulo. She is the former Director of Treefort Music Fest’s Filmfort and former Director of Education for The Family of Woman Film Festival. Jordan lives in New York City where she manages award-winning documentary company Lovett Stories + Strategies, and non-profit A Closer Look, promoting awareness on matters of health and social justice through the production of film and outreach campaigns.
Editor // Simone Cassas is an award-winning, Brazilian-born and New York City-based film and video editor with a strong background in motion graphics and post-production, and over two decades of experience in various formats, genres, and styles including television promos, PSA’s, commercials, corporate videos, documentaries, and broadcast news. Her work has screened in festivals internationally, and she directed and edited two feature documentaries – Everything is Brazil and Trilogy of the Body – which both aired on Brazil’s TV Cultura and Canal Brasil.
Director of Photography // Diana Eliazov is rooted in New York City photojournalism yet broke from photography for five years while photo editor at Sports Illustrated before returning to the camera. Her strong visual sensibilities evolved into commercial, narrative, and documentary filmmaking. Her desire to create social change through art has led her to worldwide projects on immigration, women in art, and maternal healthcare.
The D.R.A.W. (The Department of Regional Art Workers) is the arts education program of Kingston Midtown Arts District. The D.R.A.W. provides arts education programs for people of all ages, professional and creative development for local artists and a well-established youth workforce development program based in the arts called PUGG. The D.R.A.W. and PUGG were founded by and are led by Education Director Lara Giordano.
Lara Giordano, Founder/Education Director is an arts advocate, teacher, artist and community member. A retired Kingston High School teacher, she was instrumental in the design and implementation of arts driven interdisciplinary curriculum. As the Founder of the Dept. of Regional Art Workers (The D.R.A.W.) and of PUGG, she is at the center of expanding access to arts education for all in Kingston. Giordano has served on the Board of Women’s Studio Workshop, the City of Kingston Arts Commission and more and is on the Kingston Midtown Arts District Board of Directors.
Advanced Painting and Mythology classes at Kingston High School (KHS) worked collaboratively to consider and create art informed by each other for this year’s O+ Festival. Using mythology and oxygen to help generate and build on ideas, our sophomores, juniors, and seniors created original art and writing pieces that communicate this essential element’s role in everything from the origin of the world to the air that sustains us. Instructors: Jenn Brannigan-Tyler and Sarah Shomo
Brevity has often been the soul of Magnetic Fields composer Stephin Merritt’s wit. Though his most celebrated work—the 1999 milestone 69 Love Songs, the more recent 50 Song Memoir—has been epic in conceptual scope, the individual pieces of each have most often been beautifully crafted, slyly funny miniatures. The Magnetic Fields most recent album, Quickies, presents his most consistently miniscule miniatures of all, with the longest track, a reimagining of a Shaker hymn called “Come, Life, Shaker Life,” clocking in at 2:35 and the shortest, the no-minced-words “Death Pact (Let’s Make A)”, at seventeen breezy seconds.
Quickies, released in May, 2020 not only describes the format of this collection, presented in as five vinyl singles, but in many ways its contents too: short bursts of melody and lyrics sketching in dreams and desires, erotic reveries, and wishful thinking. Merritt’s approach is epitomized by “Bathroom Quickie,” forty-seven seconds of carnal craving sweetly voiced by longtime Magnetic Fields singer Shirley Simms. Merritt says; “Just as ‘The Book of Love’ has become the manifesto of 69 Love Songs, ‘Bathroom Quickie’ is the fulcrum of Quickies.” In it, consummation is just one restroom stall away, if only a discreet and available one could be found. Similarly, much of Quickies addresses longing, both real and fanciful: to find a safe and welcoming place to hang out (“Favorite Bar”); to sport vestigial appurtenances (“I Want Fangs and a Tail”); to wear black leather and ride a motorcycle (“I Want To Join a Biker Gang”); to indulge in nostalgie de la boue (“I Want To Be A Prostitute Again”). On the merry “The Day the Politicians Died,” Merritt seems to be channeling nothing less than the unspoken but fervent hopes of America’s teeming masses.
The idea for Quickies developed While Merritt was recording 50 Song Memoir—Magnetic Fields’ 2017 five-disc collection of fifty tracks, each one addressing a year of Stephin’s life up to the age of fifty. The 50 Song tracks had been composed prior to Merritt entering the studio, so Merritt had time to work on something new: “I didn’t have anything to do at night, so I doodled essentially and wrote a lot of short things that seemed complete on their own.”
Merritt recorded Quickies in Brooklyn, Boston, and San Francisco with his familiar cast of Magnetic Fields characters. Shirley Simms shares lead vocal duties with him, essaying racy scenarios with squeaky-clean aplomb, as Merritt notes: “I love having Shirley sing sexy lyrics in her Catholic school-girl voice. I never sound innocent no matter how innocent I am. But she does, while being in fact no more innocent than I am.”
The other players include Magnetic Fields stalwarts like Claudia Gonson (on one-hand piano, percussion, lead vocals, and harmonies), Sam Davol (on cello), and John Woo (unamplified electric guitar) plus Chris Ewen (mellotron), Pinky Weitzman (violin), and Merritt’s friend and literary/musical collaborator David Handler (accordion).
Quickies is the twelfth Magnetic Fields album, the fifth recorded for Nonesuch, in a career spanning three decades. In addition to Merritt’s acclaimed work with the band, he has composed original music and lyrics for several music theater pieces, including an Off-Broadway adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of National Public Radio’s This American Life. Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. Upon the release of 50 Song Memoir, New York magazine called the box set “a celebration of Merritt’s sky-high range as a writer and a player, through the exploration of the circumstances that helped cultivate it … a delightful flip through the untold back pages of one of rock’s most singular voices, and, all in all, the best damned Magnetic Fields album in the last ten years.”
In contrast to 50 Song Memoir, Merritt states: “I should emphasize that although that last album was non-fiction, this album is definitely fiction and I do not in fact wish that I had fangs and a tail. I do not in fact wish I was in a biker gang. Well, hmmm. I sometimes wish I were in a biker gang, but not that particular kind. I was not actually a prostitute, but I have two friends who have literally said to me, ‘I wish I were a prostitute again.’”
—Michael Hill
ExplO+re Class: Dance with Plants
Dance With Plants is a new Conscious dance party that brings together meditation, music + dance, live performances, interactive art and plant based living into one epic experience.
We have live drums, saxophone and violin freestyle with a DJ who plays a mix of music from deep house, tribal house and tech house.
We bring real plants to the dance floor to create a unique dance setting, incorporate CBD into every event. We also have a wonderful community of artists who create interactive art for our events.
Connie DaSilva founded Whole Clarity in 2013 as a plant based skincare line. Since then, Whole Clarity has expanded the brand into a creative agency producing plant and nature focused interior design and experiential events. Dance With Plants launched in January 2018 at BSP and the community has flourished ever since.
Her experience includes producing alongside Daybreaker, Oprah, Weight Watchers, Kaplow Communications, and Revolver Productions at incredible venues such as the World Trade Center, Woolworth Building, Metropolitan Pavilion/Altman Building, and Horn Blower Cruise Lines in New York and One Culver in Los Angeles.
Five Dynamic Elements:
Water
Wood
Fire
Earth
Metal
These five archetypical agents influence our perceptions of the world. They help us see pathways and direct us to rediscover our core natures, our pre-ordained destiny. Collectively, the elements teach us agency and design. They have accompanied human evolution for thousands of years. Five colossal energies that assist, in the re-patterning of our neuro-pathways and the healing of trauma. Nature is the ultimate teacher.
The five elements are messengers, systems, voices, images, sounds, and olfactory sensations. Together they offer us a salient way to use our inner laboratories of consciousness and effect change, promote resilience and embodiment . The five elements, natural forces that make up a powerful energy. They live within us and surround us, constructing a web of life. We can simplify the extraordinary, invite the elements to help us sort the clutter, and get to the root. It does not matter if the work we entertain is physical, emotional/psychological or spiritual, the elements operate on a continuum.
This material is perennially useful in all matters of health and personal interaction.
I will be sprinkling in a bit of Five Element Facial Diagnosis as well, so much fun and so useful. This class will be an introduction to all things Five Element and how that relates to our health. Prepare for an interactive experience.
Jipala R. Kagan founded Transpersonal Acupuncture in 2004. She is a licensed acupuncturist, writer, teacher and mother. Her practice focuses on emotional and physical wellbeing and spiritual healing.
Transpersonal Acupuncture
transpersonalacupuncture@gmail.com
ExplO+re Class: Qigong Breathing
Breath is the root of life. The Daoist saying, “One can live for weeks without food, and for days without water, but only minutes without air,” emphasizes the importance of breath work to life and well being. Breath is the foundation of Qi, and the bridge to relaxation and enlightenment. In this workshop the mechanics of Daoist breathing will be taught and how they can transform your sitting, standing or movement based practice and life.
JJesse Thundermoon is a certified instructor, a top student of Grandmaster C.K. Chu. and a daily practitioner since 1998. He has taught hundreds of students Tai Chi & Qigong in New York City at C.K. Chu Tai Chi and the Tai Chi Chuan Center of New York. He was a founding instructor of the popular Bryant Park Tai Chi program, and a 2019 Baguazhang Silver Medalist and 2005 Tai Chi Push Hands Bronze Medalist in the International Kuoshu competition.
For more information: http://www.completerealitytaichi.com
– or – jesse@completerealitytaichi.com
ExplO+re Class: Speaking into the Air: Exploring the Creative Potential of Gibberish
During this workshop we’ll discover, through fun exercises and vocal experiments, how to unlock the imagination and the voice by playing with indecipherable language. You’ll learn how to allow your voice and heart to move without the constraints of tongue regimentation or pressure to be understood. You’ll get to discover what the secret, intimate sounds your body enjoys hearing. Speaking no-sense is a healing and liberatory practice that helps the mind find equilibrium between structure and flow. Self-created language is a tool that can be used to self-soothe, diminish over-active thought patterns, and release constraints in the throat and heart chakras.
Jaguar Mary X is a glossolalia vocalist and ritual performance artist based in Kingston. Their healing work explores the visible and invisible realms through sound and meditation. They make hand-crafted incense from mugwort and believe that plant scents and wisps of smoke open portals to deeper intuition.
Photo by https://pamtaylormultimedia.com/
Artemisia Negra, LLC
ExplO+re Class: The Science and Art of Sound Healing
Gill will be facilitating intentional conversation about sound and music as well as guiding attendees through in a sound bath. Opening up with a few facts about the science behind sound healing, the conversation will then shift to how attendees use their own voice and relate to the sounds around them. Using crystal singing bowls and chimes, the attendees will experience a sound bath and will return, refreshed and ready to engage in some post-meditation thoughts. This class is suitable for those who love their daily meditation and those who have never formally meditated before!
Gill with the G is a proud female-identifying musician, audio engineer, and sound healing facilitator. Her practices intertwine self awareness and expression using sound as the canvas. She is a recovering perfectionist moving towards presence one breath and sound wave at a time.
