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Our education and outreach program moves forward with the understanding that art can change lives: changing the lives of the art maker, the art appreciator, and rippling throughout the community as a whole to change and challenge cultural values and norms.

We build relationships between professional artists and youth, and instigate conversations about community, culture and politics allowing young people to explore themselves and the world we live in through the arts.

We recognize that young people are smart and perceptive, and that their contributions to society are important, and work to amplify their voices out into the community through art making and exhibition.

We teach investigation and communication through the arts in a variety of artistic practices, including writing, drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, spoken word poetry, graffiti art, silk screening, and music production and more. We work both in the Santa Fe Public Middle and High Schools in academic and art classes, and outside of schools, partnering with a variety of social service and support organizations.

Every semester we have a multitude of programs happening simultaneously, and 2009 will be no exception. Contact us to find out how you can be involved.

B.R.E.A.T.H. | El Otro Lado | Graffitti Mentorship | Free Walls | Contemporary Artists in a Classroom | PROJECT! | Paul Rivers Bailey

What was and how! - WORKSHOPS fall 2008

B.R.E.A.T.H.
Building a Revolution of Expression and Action Through Heartwork

Breath, necessary for life. Breath, a workshop introducing poetry and performance to the incarcerated youth of the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center (YDDC) in Albuquerque, NM.

During the month of October 2007, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Cynthia Ruffin visited both the male and female populations at YDDC while on the statewide tour of “BAGGAGE”, a play that deals with the issue of domestic violence and women of color in New Mexico. In the discussions that followed both shows the youth expressed their strong interest in writing and their desire for a program that would allow them to write and share their own personal stories. “BREATH” was birthed out of these discussions.

In the beginning of February 2008, Jessie Workman (local poet), Cynthia Ruffin (local playwright and poet), and Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski (local performance poet) began the B.R.E.A.T.H workshops with a group of 20 young men and 20 young women at YDDC. With the support of YDDC administration staff Mr. Arturo Ramirez, Mrs. Brenda Perry and SFAI, the workshops have flourished and grown over the past 10 months.

In each workshop the BREATH team builds a creative and supportive environment through games, music, film, sharing, and writing exercises. The intention of these workshops is to create a space where the youth feel welcome in building on the creative strengths that already exist within them, to break down pre conceived notions of what an artist or poet is supposed to be in order to recreate an image of “poet” that they see themselves in, to demonstrate a valuable coping skill that they are able to use in their lives either inside or outside of the system, and to inspire and actively create beauty in the face of obstacle.

The first 4-month program ended in a huge celebration of their accomplishments in the workshops. We had a spoken work festival at the facility, where participating youth were able to invite their families to watch them perform the phenomenal poems they had created in the program. We were also allowed to invite certain outside members of the community, and many of the staff and other youth at the facility were able to attend. We had a barbeque, DJ’s and a great time. The youth were so excited, and still talk about what an amazing day it was for them.

In addition to that time, we created with the group of about 40 youth a self-published chapbook titled “Inside Out”. This was a written collection of all of the incredible poetry written in the BREATH workshops. Their poetry and artwork have also been displayed at two very successful art shows at Backroads Pizza in Santa Fe, and at the Santa Fe Art Institute.

We are continuing the BREATH workshops at YDDC, still with some of the core students we have been consistently working with for almost a year now, but also with many new young writers at the facility. For the completion of this section of the program, we are working with publisher Douglas Boullis to create a poetry anthology of the youths work from the program. This anthology will be a huge accomplishment for both the youth and SFAI, and will be distributed locally and nationally. We hope to publish this anthology “Spitting Bars” by the end of January 2009!!

El Otro Lado: The Other Side
El Otro Lado: The Other Side is a series of workshops lead by artist Chrissie Orr exploring journey and migration.

Chrissie Orr, originally from Scotland, migrated to New Mexico 25 years ago, and has been engaging with issues of journey, immigration and the idea of “home” ever since.

Having lead public arts workshops all over the world, Chrissie recently turned her focus back to Santa Fe in order to explore an issue close to her own heart, that of Santa Fe and around the world: immigration. Thus El Otro Lado: the Other Side was born in January 2008 as part of SFAI’s Outsider: Tourism, Migration and Exile series, in collaboration with the Academy for the Love of Learning and with support from the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission. Throughout the spring and summer Chrissie Orr lead visual art, writing, and audio recording workshops with over 120 students from local public high schools, and is continuing theses workshops into the fall with a group of 15 high school students from Charter School 37.

El Otro Lado: The Other Side breaks down borders within the polarized political debate around immigration by sharing the individual stories of people living here in Santa Fe. We hope the project will allow us to begin to explore and understand the complex web of community in which we live.

In these workshops with Chrissie Orr - assisted by David Gordon and Melissa Stevens-Briceno of the Academy for the Love of Learning, Johanna Kohout and Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski of the Santa Fe Art Institute and with sound artist Pablo Ancona - students talk, write, paint, take pictures and audio record their stories. It is an opportunity for the students to look at their own relationships with place and culture, and to learn about the power of public art, and the power of their own voices within the larger community context. In May, the students artwork work was exhibited at SFAI in our yearly youth art exhibition Sounds Of Change, and in October more artwork was presented at SFAI as part of Outsider/El Otro exhibition, and some of the students artwork is now displayed on the Santa Fe Trails public busses and on the outside of the SFAI.

El Otro Lado: The Other Side on the City Buses!!

During the summer session of El Otro Lado, the seven students combined their visual artwork and writing into complex and beautiful digital images. Each student created four full color panels describing their personal journeys: for some students their journeys crossed international borders, and for others they told of finding their way through adolescence here in Santa Fe.

Working with sound artist Pablo Ancona, students edited their audio histories into concise and powerful statements about the complexities of journey and migration. The audio pieces created during the summer session can be heard via a cell phone service Guide By Cell, and the telephone numbers to access these stories accompany each image.

The work that these teenagers created is now on the Santa Fe Trails city buses!! Three years ago, the SFAI began Art In Transit/Arte en Transito, a bilingual public art program expanding our audience and bringing contemporary art and writing into the city buses, on bus shelters, bus benches, and even as a full bus wrap.

The buses containing El Otro Lado images are bus numbers 2107, 2108, 2110, 2112, 2113, 2116, and 2117. If you normally ride the Santa Fe Trails then we hope the students artwork enhances your ride across town! If you don’t normally ride the bus, this is the perfect opportunity to begin.

Another very important skill that is learned in the mentorship is to be free. Graffiti as a part of the five elements of Hip Hop which include B-boying (break dancing), MCing (Rapping), Djing (Mixing music), Writing (graffiti art), and knowledge (expanding the mind) shows that all “writers” should have knowledge of self, and what’s going on around them. They should also not be confined to what they are given, to seek their own truth, live life as positive people making a difference, and express themselves the way they know how.

For the past year this mentorship has been growing steady with the number of people attending as well as the students skill level. It has built confidence in these artists in a medium that is controversial in the fact that it is associated majority of the time with illegal vandalism. Since graffiti is usually the only way that young underprivileged artists are able to share their work with the world, the Santa Fe Art Institute supports their creativity, their voices, and their art.

There are many young people who are being punished for doing graffiti art. This punishment gives a negative representation of that person and sometimes also the community they come from. Santa Fe being a city that supports many types of art, is the perfect place to support these young artists and their expression. This support will give the young artists pride in the work that they are doing, and also bring the community together. When members of the community work with these artists they can create a beautiful atmosphere that represents both in a positive way, and the way the community wishes to be seen.

FREE WALLS
Here at the SFAI we are working with the City of Santa Fe and the Anti Graffiti Task Force to address the issue of youth incarceration for graffiti vandalism.

We propose that a series of free walls be given to the public as legal places for graffiti artists to work, and that as a city we need to support young peoples creative fire with arts programs that enhance their lives instead of a simply punative system.

Santa Fe has both a problem and a creative opportunity with its young artists. As one of UNESCOS Creative Cities, Santa Fe can harness the creative energy of its youth and work toward a thoughtful engagement to enhance our stature within creative boundaries and decriminalize creativity.

Too many young people are incarcerated each year because of aesthetic vandalism charges. Each year the City of Santa Fe spends thousands of dollars painting over (buffing) tags on city and private property and chasing down lawbreakers. Homeowners are frustrated and feel violated when their personal property is damaged, creating a divide between young people and the adult community. Owners of small businesses are hurt economically when they pay for their buildings to be buffed. Santa Fe’s economic foundation is tourism and our economy suffers when the streets are either tagged or “cleaned up” with off color buff paints.

We have a diverse community of young people who are inherently creative, and often are leaders in their own communities. They want to make their mark on the world. Young people, without alternative means of creative engagement, turn to vandalism. If we incarcerate our youth for tagging, we turn creative youth into criminals, and waste tax dollars doing it.

We believe it is in our best interest as a community to support these young people and to give them the tools they need to really make a mark on the world: to become respected artists, to become responsible citizens, to become the scientists and creative thinkers our society desperately needs in order to have hope for the future.

We at the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Anti Graffiti Task Force’s creative solutions sub committee believe that “Free Walls” - walls designated as places where people can paint legally - in addition to the mural painting and illegal graffiti clean-up team, will help to alleviate the illegal tagging and vandalism rampant throughout our city. We propose a two-year test period, wherein the walls are opened to legal art production, and the areas around those walls are monitored for increase or decrease of illegal tagging. We believe, as has been demonstrated in many cities in the US and abroad, that a supportive graffiti program will decrease illegal tagging because young artists will take pride in the free walls program.

Contemporary Artists in the Classroom
One of SFAI’s primary areas of programming our visiting artist lecture and workshop series brings world renowned contemporary artists to Santa Fe to give public lectures and workshops. Recently we began to connect these artists with Santa Fe youth, bridging the gap between world famous contemporary artists and Santa Fe’s teens.

Guy Tillim
A photojournalist from South Africa, Guy Tillim met with a group of students from Charter School 37, and another group from the Santa Fe Indian School. He presented his work, and talked with the students about the role of the arts in the world. Reflecting on his own process as an artist, Tillim inspired the students with his personal story of growing up as a white man in South Africa during Apartheid, and how he has used photography to communicate across social and political boundaries.

Fazal Sheik
A photographer and activist from New York City, Fazal met with a small group of students from the Santa Fe Indian School, showed his work and talked with them about the power of art to change the way we see ourselves and each other. Specifically focused on displaced people driven out of their homelands by civil wars, drought and famine, Fazal brought stories of the struggles of lives so hard, it made the teenagers put their own lives in perspective.

Julian Cardona and Michael Berman
During a four-hour workshop, Julian Cardona, from Juarez and Michael Berman from southern Arizona met with a small group of high school students to explore photography as a means to instigate important conversations about the world. Very different photographers, Berman and Cardona’s work connects at their interest in the life at the border of the USA and Mexico. They challenged students to ask why art is important, and what role art has in changing the culture in which we live.

Hamid Naficy
A film scholar and professor of what he calls “Accented Cinema” Hamid Naficy met with two English classes at Charter School 37. The students had previously viewed “El Norte” by Gregory Nava, a film about a family and their migration from Guatemala to the USA. This story, familiar to the stories of many of the students at CS37, was inspiring to students and Hamid encouraged them to use film as a medium to tell their own stories to the world.

Paul Rivers Bailey Music Production
In a two-week workshop over the summer a group of 5 talented teens worked with Hip Hop/Soul artist Paul Rivers Bailey to write, perform and record an original song. We hope to continue these workshops and create a full length CD!

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We will be continuing this work into 2009, with our programs focusing on MEMORY: Shadow & Light – Art as individual/ collective memory.

We are always in need of support from the community – if you have time, money or art supplies that might help us out, please don’t hesitate to give us a call!!

Contact Johanna Kohout for information:
(505) 424-5050 or jkohout@sfai.org.