Healing through Art, Imagination, and Community Collaboration
Saturday, May 4, 2024
12:00 – 5:00PM
Agenda
12:00PM – 12:55PM
Registration/ Check-in
Location: Sanctuary Room
Lunch and networking
Location: Outside and Peacock Room
Art Activity with Ted Hinman
1:00PM – 4:15PM
ValleyCreates Celebration
Location: Sanctuary Room
Art Bursts
Connection/resource sharing activity
Presentation of The Kent Alexander Award
Recognition of Rosemary Tracy Woods
Coffee/stretch break
Conversation with Clyde Valentin, Co-Artistic Director One Nation/One Project, a National Arts & Wellness Initiative and co-Founder of Hip Hop Theater Festival
Closing
4:15PM – 5:00PM
Networking, Social Time
Location: Outside, Peacock Room, and Sanctuary Room
ART BURSTS & ARTISTIC OFFERINGS
Sunny Allis
Sunny, a trans non-binary multidisciplinary artist, creates projects centered around community and connection through play and storytelling. Their award-winning animations have been showcased internationally, from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to the Linoleum Festival in Moscow. Sunny’s latest endeavor involves the release of a gender-inclusive, bilingual children’s book titled “Hooray, What A Day!/¡Viva, Qué Día!” and the development of a multimedia, inclusive kids TV show.
Michelle Falcón Fontánez
Michelle is a multimedia storyteller with a focus on social justice issues such as women’s rights, colonialism, and Puerto Rican concerns. Her work aims to amplify marginalized voices and instigate change.
Fabeyon
Fabeyon is a talented artist hailing from Springfield, MA, specifically from the Hungry Hill area. He is known for infusing his music with a soulful and lyrical essence, creating a unique sound that resonates with his listeners. While he initially gained recognition in his hometown, Fabeyon has successfully expanded his reach and appeared on various platforms, including MTV and Shade 45.
Magdalena Gómez
Ms. Gómez, an award-winning performance poet, playwright, and teaching artist, is the co-founder of Teatro V!da, Springfield’s first Latin theater, and founder of the Ferocious Women’s Group, amplifying women and girls’ voices through writing and performance. Additionally, she serves as a New England Public Radio commentator and national speaker, contributing columns to the Point of View Newspaper.
Ted Hinman
Since 1998, Ted has been innovating and creating a wide variety of art, tools, blades, and methods to teach metal smithing. Ted is driven by his profound respect for people, nature, and creativity, as well as the liberating sense of connection he finds. His works have graced galleries across KY, MA, NYC, PA, and VT, including prestigious venues like the Outsider Art Fair and the MA Statehouse.
Mark Guglielmo
Inspired by his grandmother Grace, who raised 11 children, Mark delves into figurative art, intertwining current events, Western art, and social history to scrutinize themes of race, class, migration, and power. Through mixed-media pieces, he explores the price Italian immigrants and their descendants have paid to assimilate into whiteness in America, sparking dialogues on structural racism and the construction of race in the United States.
LESN101
Immersed in the rhythms of hip-hop and the raw energy of graffiti, LESN101 channels vibrant hues and bold lines to dismantle emotional barriers and cultural divides. Through their work, viewers are invited to explore the depths of their psyche, as each stroke serves as a conduit, channeling hidden emotions of trauma, fear, and doubt into expressions of empowerment and healing. LESN101 challenges societal norms, urging observers to question and evolve as their art becomes a catalyst for personal transformation and the realization of hidden potential.
The Performance Project
The Performance Project is a community of many ages and ancestries that engages young people in intensive artistic training, intergenerational mentoring, leadership development, and community building through
the arts.
Emilio Pereira-Tosado
NAGO makes music for ghosts. A sample-based hip-hop musician, NAGO collages audio into introspective sonic cinemas. Rooted in his upbringing in Springfield, NAGO explores themes of family, solitude, classism, racism, and generational cycles. With an emphasis on the technology he uses, NAGO blurs time by shifting between rigid, computer-led patterns and soaring, abstract passages. NAGO is heavily influenced by both the foundations and future of hip-hop, describing his work as an “abandoned factory machine learning to play jazz.”
Malaika Ross
Ross, a Caribbean-American visual artist, paints and draws nature as a black woman for liberation, environmental stewardship, and anti-oppression. Trained at RISD, SFAI, and Marchutz, she studied sustainable farming and Hawaiian ethnobotany at UH Hilo. Inspired by her childhood in St. Croix, she honors the healing power of plants.
I-Shea Shakily
I-SHEA teaches at the Community Music School in Springfield, is part of the Leadership Team and Collective Member and Outreach/Publicity Manager at Survivor Theatre Project, and Associate Artist at The Performance Project.