Artwell Issue 5: Spring 2022

SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5

ARTWELL A FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL PUBLICATION

April Arthop at FAC Gallery featuring artist John Rios's show, "You'll Be Fine"

MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LILIA GONZÁLES CHÁVEZ As we enjoy this temperate spring weather and its refreshing breezy days, I am happy to share the many wonderful things the Fresno Arts Council is tracking and developing. From the premier of Janka the Movie featuring our favorite soprano, Janice Noga, to the unique Cielo Tejido, Woven Sky, to be featured at the 2022 16th of September celebration in downtown, we have a plethora of creative representations of the amazing talent to be found in Fresno County.

We are particularly pleased to announce that after a long search we have selected Network for Culture and Arts Policy (NCAP) as consultant to work with the City of Fresno to develop the Cultural Plan that will guide implementation to the Arts Fund generated by Measure P. We hope everyone will be involved in the important process of identifying a set of priorities for funding arts programs and services in the City of Fresno. Once the plan is complete, we look forward to the development of a robust grants process that will fund many new and existing arts organizations that have as if by magic, engaged and enthralled our senses with creative arts programing with little or no resources.

Poetry continues to be a source of pride with the successful participation of local high school students participating in Poetry Out Loud both locally and representing us in Sacramento. Congratulations to all of the students who participated. Author Anthony Cody also strengthened Fresno’s representation in the literary arts scene after running away with the 2022 Whiting Award for his book, Borderland Apocrypha.

The Shinzen Friendship Garden Plein Air juried show was a great success! One never knows where an idea can go until you put in the work to implement it. The Shinzen Plein Air show started as an idea at an FAC board IMAGINE meeting. It was great to see it come to life. We look forward to next year, as it will surely grow.

Message continued next page

IN THIS ISSUE CULTURAL ARTS CONSULTANT TEAM SELECTED FOR CITY OF FRESNO BOOM OAXACA OPENS AT ARTE AMERICAS FRESNO COUNTY STUDENTS COMPETE IN POETRY OUT LOUD COMPETITION "WOVEN SKY" ART PROJECT PLANNED FOR FULTON STREET FIESTAS PATRIAS CELEBRATION THIS SEPTEMBER

ARTS ALIVE IN AGRICULTURE JURIED EXHIBITION AND RECEPTION MAY 26TH AT RIVER PARKWAY BARN

AUTHOR ANTHONY CODY WINS 2022 WHITING AWARD FOR POETRY

JANKA THE MOVIE PREMIERES AT FRESNO ART MUSEUM CELEBRATING "SPRING IN THE GARDEN" WITH PLEIN AIR PAINTING FESTIVAL AT SHINZEN FRIENDSHIP GARDEN

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ABOUT US The Fresno Arts Council (FAC) is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1979 under the name of “Alliance for the Arts" by local artists, art organizations and interested individuals who wished to create a voice for the Central San Joaquin Valley.

Today, the FAC serves as the official State-Local partner to the California Arts Council, as designated by the county board of supervisors. By Memorandum of Understanding, the FAC serves as the local arts agency for the City of Fresno, tasked to support and promote the arts industry and to Enrich Our Community’s Way of Life Through the Arts, and acts as an umbrella agency for artists and art organizations from all cultures and disciplines through advocacy, education, programs, and services.

We are a non-profit organization managed by a volunteer board of directors. The FAC solicits support from foundations, government, and corporate funders, membership dues, and private donations.

Executive Director's Message, continued

We are located at 1245 Van Ness Avenue in Downtown Fresno, and the office is open to the public during weekdays from 10:00AM to 2:00PM, and by appointment.

Another project that grew from a small seed and was two years in the making, the unique creation of its Fresno based curatorial team, is the “Boom Oaxaca” exhibition now open at Arte Americas. This exhibition is one of three supported by the McClatchy Foundation.

The first was the Stonewall exhibit presented in 2021 at Fresno State.

“Boom Oaxaca” is the second exhibition; it runs from March -August of 2022. The third will be “A Queen Within” opening at the Fresno Art Museum July 30, 2022. This has been a generous investment of resources from The McClatchy Fresno Arts Endowment of The James B. McClatchy Foundation. We appreciate the support these funds have given, at one of the most challenging times for our arts community because of COVID. It is with an exuberance for all that we have to offer through the arts in Fresno that I invite you to attend Arts Alive in Agriculture at the River Parkway Barn Thursday May 26th featuring the recently named Fulbright Scholar, Benjamin Boone. This annual exhibition speaks to the heart of the Central Valley economy. FAC is also preparing an impactful showing of the work created by the students we work with in California State correctional institutions through our Arts in Corrections program. Scheduled for July 7th at Fresno City Hall, this show provides a window to the important role art plays in touching our humanity. Please plan to attend.

Revel in the arts,

John Rios (right) discusses his art during April Arthop

Lilia Gonzáles Chávez

FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL STAFF LILIA GONZÁLES CHÁVEZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SULIANA CALDWELL, OPERATIONS MANAGER ELISA FLORES, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT ERIC MARTINEZ, PROGRAM COORDINATOR ANDREA MELE, PROGRAM COORDINATOR CARMEN MOORE, FINANCE ASSISTANT HARPREET GILL, ACCOUNTANT

FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL

(559) 237-9734 1245 VAN NESS, FRESNO, CA HTTPS://FRESNOARTSCOUNCIL.ORG

SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5 HISTORY In 1980, the FAC received a grant from the California Arts Council (CAC) to provide technical and administrative assistance to various arts groups in Fresno County. Within a year, the purpose of the FAC expanded to sponsoring and encouraging cultural education and creative activities, as well as serving as the umbrella unit for all county arts organizations, in such areas as legislation, education, and community awareness of the arts.

March Arthop at FAC Gallery featuring artist Daniel Van Gerpen's show, "Early Riser"

OUR WORK The Fresno Arts Council provides and advocates for local arts programming and services as well as employment opportunities for working artists to both teach and create original artworks in the Fresno County area.

The Arts in Corrections program transitioned into modified programming using educational correspondence packets and creating original content, produced in part with teaching artists, for instructional videos. Lessons are completed remotely by students at some of the six facilities hosting our Arts in Corrections programming and returned to our arts providers at the end of the month for review; other facilities have returned, or plan to return soon, to in-person arts instruction. For more information, contact Eric Martinez, Program Coordinator.

Fresno Arts Council provides Arts in Education programming for county K-8 schools. In 2022, the program will grow, training and certifying several new teaching artists to work with Fresno County students, helping them to meet Common Core and recently launched Arts Education standards through arts education programming. This training is scheduled for June 2022. Each year, Fresno County’s Poetry Out Loud™ contest selects a winning student to represent area high schools at the California State Poetry Out Loud competition.

For more information, contact Andrea Mele, Program Coordinator.

Please visit https://fresnoartscouncil.org for updates and announcements.

In addition, the FAC coordinated and disseminated information concerning the arts: Beginning in 1991, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the FAC hired folklorist, Amy Kitchener, who developed our program of folk arts locally and created performances and exhibits with local communities. The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) was formed under our guidance as its own organization, under the leadership of Kitchener.

In the mid-1990s, the City of Fresno passed Arts to Zoo, a measure collecting .001% of sales tax for cultural organizations. The money was distributed for a year and a half before the tax was declared illegal. In 1998, the remaining money was given to the FAC and the Fresno Regional Foundation for distribution. In 2010, the FAC completed redistributing those funds annually to arts and cultural organizations. In 2015, with support from former Assemblyman Henry T. Perea, the FAC established the Rural Access Fund.

Today, the FAC continues to innovate new grantmaking opportunities for local artists, including the Fresno Arts Safety Net Fund (FASNF) and FAC Cares, both in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that started in Spring 2020.

Arts programs and cultural activities attract industry and other businesses to a community, resulting in growth and economic progress—but it takes support from private and public sectors, and people like you, to create and foster this creative activity.

We rely on individual, organization and business membership dues, as well as event sponsorships as an integral part of our funding. Be an advocate for the arts in Fresno County by becoming a member of the Fresno Arts Council today.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELLEN ARMOUR, PRESIDENT LAURA E. WARD, VICE PRESIDENT OLGA GUTIERREZ DE NUÑEZ, TREASURER KAREN TAKEDA SIMPSON, SECRETARY

SHIRIN ASSEMI JULIA COPELAND HARPREET GILL ZIANG HER BRUCE KALKOWSKI SAL LUCATERO

TIFFANY MANGUM JEFF MEACHUM JULIAN RAMOS JOLENE TELLES THOMAS WHIT ELLIS

ADVISORY BOARD JOYCE AIKEN COKE HALLOWELL JULIE LINXWILER JERRY PALLADINO JEFFREY T. ROBERTS QUENTIN E. SANFORD

SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5

CULTURAL ARTS PLAN CONSULTANT TEAM SELECTED FOR CITY OF FRESNO Network for Culture and Arts Policy (NCAP) will partner with Fresno Arts Council and Parks, Arts, and Recreation Commission to develop Cultural Arts Plan for City of Fresno

On Thursday, April 28th, Fresno City Council confirmed selection of Network for Culture and Arts Policy (NCAP) as the consultant group who will develop the Cultural Arts Plan for the City of Fresno as required by Measure P. The Measure P Ordinance stipulates that twelve percent of the funds generated from the sales tax of 0.375% “shall be made available on an annual basis to invest in competitive grants for nonprofit organizations that support and expand access to arts and cultural programming.” Fresno Arts Council will partner with the Parks, Arts, and Recreation Commission to implement grants funded by the ordinance, which could total four to five million dollars annually. Prior to this implementation, however, a Cultural Arts Plan for the City of Fresno must be developed.

The City of Fresno will enter a $150,000 service agreement with NCAP, who will conduct wide-ranging research, community outreach, and stakeholder interviews to identify Fresno’s cultural assets and needs and subsequently develop a Cultural Arts Plan for the City of Fresno, which will guide the priorities for distributing Arts funds generated by the Measure P sales tax. The timeline for this consultancy begins in May 2022 with foundational research. Community engagement, stakeholder interviews, and public meetings will occur this Fall, with research presentations and Cultural Arts Plan development to follow. The Cultural Arts Plan will be completed in March 2023.

Fresno Arts Council will work with Network for Culture and Arts Policy (NCAP) and the Commission to facilitate a community-engaged process with multiple public meetings and discussions with local arts and cultural stakeholders to “identify needs in the arts and cultural community; prioritize outcomes and investments; and develop a vision and goals for the future of Fresno arts and cultural programs that are reflective of the cultural, demographic, and geographic diversity of Fresno,” as required by Measure P. NCAP’s proposal states they “will look to design a plan that reflects the cultural, demographic, and geographic diversity of Fresno by creating opportunities that organically bring artists, entrepreneurs, residents, and visitors together to celebrate community and culture.”

Fresno Arts Council’s Executive Director, Lilia Gonzáles Chávez, said, “This is an exciting time for Fresno and the Arts ecosystem. The development of the Cultural Arts Plan is the first step in imagining the wonderful opportunity for new works, programs and long-awaited support to Fresno’s arts organizations and artists.”

Please direct questions to Executive Director, Lilia Gonzáles Chávez at lilia@fresnoartscouncil.org.

PROGRAMS AND SERVICES ARTS IN CORRECTIONS ARTS IN EDUCATION ARTHOP TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE WORKSHOPS CITY AND COUNTY CONSULTANT FOR PUBLIC ART

HORIZON AWARDS ARTS ALIVE IN AGRICULTURE JURIED EXHIBITION FISCAL RECEIVERSHIP CITY OF FRESNO POET LAUREATE POETRY OUT LOUD

SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5

TLACOLULOKOS, LOW RIDER, 2021, ACRYLIC PAINT ON COTTON CANVAS, ARTE AMÉRICAS. COMMISSIONED FOR BOOM OAXACA WITH A GRANT FROM THE MCCLATCHY FRESNO ARTS ENDOWMENT OF THE JAMES B. MCCLATCHY FOUNDATION. © 2021, TLACOLULOKOS. PHOTO COURTESY OF ARTE AMÉRICAS

BOOM OAXACA OPENS AT ARTE AMÉRICAS Arte Américas and the Centro Binacional para el Desarollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO) present Boom Oaxaca: Conversaciones de Campo a Campo, an exhibition and programming series made possible by a grant from The McClatchy Fresno Arts Endowment of The James B. McClatchy Foundation.

The exhibit opened with a public reception on March 5th, co-hosted by CBDIO, with an opportunity to meet artist Narsiso Martinez. On Saturday, April 23, the Plaza at Arte Américas hosted Tianguis, an open-air market featuring local artists vendors, performers, food and kids’ activities and family art-making workshops. The event was co-hosted by local arts collective, Dulce Upfront. Upcoming events include workshops the first Saturday each month, a fooodways panel on May 28th, and a Virtual Talk featuring artist collective, Tlacolulokos, on July 16th.

Boom Oaxaca is an "invitation to participate in local and transnational conversations around food sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignty as issues that uniquely converge in the Central Valley’s Oaxaqueño community. Boom Oaxaca is guided by the work of Narsiso Martinez and Tlacolulokos, who use selfrepresentation and visibility as an act of political rebellion, and as an autonomous approach to an ownership of culture. Grounded in the context of both Oaxaca and California, these artists create images of often invisibilized spaces, and in turn demand attention and humanize the experiences of their community. This exhibition is not just about representation, but about acknowledging communities that are reimagining their own futures, through art and cultural practices which are deeply rooted in the preservation of history and culture." (https://boomoaxaca.com).

Boom Oaxaca was developed by a curatorial team at Arte Américas including Lilia Chavez, Executive Director of the Fresno Arts Council and President of the California Arts Council. “We wanted to bring artists to Fresno that were willing to work with our local community,” Chavez said. “ These internationally known artists provided us with an opportunity to create an exhibition unique to Fresno and the issues that impact us directly.” Boom Oaxaca runs through August 14, 2022.

NARSISO MARTINEZ, WEED SPRAYER, 2020, INK, GOUACHE, AND CHARCOAL ON PRODUCE CARDBOARD, BETH RUDIN DEWOODY COLLECTION. © 2020, NARSISO MARTINEZ. PHOTO COURTESY OF ARTE AMÉRICAS

FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL SPONSORS

SPRING 2022

ISSUE 5

FRESNO STUDENTS COMPETE IN POETRY OUT LOUD CONTEST AT CITY HALL.

Fresno County first place winner, Charlotte Burks, reciting "Art vs Trade" by James Weldon Johnson

Fresno County finalists, Clare Nadores, Charlotte Burks, and Spencer Douangphouxay with their awards certificates

Washington Union High School students with their teacher, Gabi Cruz-Brittsan (fourth from left)

Carina Ibarra of WUHS performs "Nowhere Else to Go" by Linda Sue Park

Washington Union High School students before the competition

San Joaquin Memorial High School participants, with their teachers Joseph Olivares (far left) and Carlie Frye (far right)

County Winner Charlotte Burks Named Runner-Up in State "Poetry Ourselves" Competition

Poetry Out Loud, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and The Poetry Foundation, is an annual national poetry recitation contest with county and state competitions preceding National Finals. California Arts Council facilitates and sponsors these county competitions and hosts each year’s California state contest.

This year, Fresno County’s competition was held in Fresno City Council Chambers at Fresno City Hall on Wednesday, February 9th.

Fourteen students from two local high schools—Washington Union High School and San Joaquin Memorial High School—performed poems chosen from the Poetry Out Loud database. Students selected, memorized, and rehearsed poems with guidance from their teachers, Carlie Frye (SJMHS), Gabi Cruz-Brittsan (WUHS), and Joseph Olivares (SJMHS) and coach, poet Bryan Medina. Medina also emceed the event. Poets Megan Anderson Bohigian, Lee Herrick, and Liz Scheid served as judges, adhering to Poetry Out Loud’s scoring criteria and guidance.

Each participant received a certificate of achievement and monetary awards were presented to the top three scorers, all from San Joaquin Memorial High School. Spencer Douangphouxay was second runnerup for his performance of “To Have Without Holding” by Marge Piercy. Clare Nadores was runner-up with “Backdrop Addresses Cowboy” by Margaret Atwood, and first prize went to Charlotte Burks for her recitation of “Art vs Trade” by James Weldon Johnson.

Charlotte Burks advanced to California’s virtual Poetry Out Loud competition, held March 7. State finals are normally held at the Capitol in Sacramento, but were conducted virtually for safety reasons related to the pandemic. Burks submitted three distinct video recitations, as well as an original composition, “Mama’s Porcelain,” in the Poetry Ourselves writing competition, available only to County winners. Burks’s original poem was selected as runner-up and is published on California Arts Council’s Poetry Out Loud website.

Of the experience, Charlotte said, “I’m honored to have been chosen for State Poetry Out Loud. I greatly enjoyed participating in Fresno Poetry Out Loud. Everybody who participated was absolutely amazing, and the exposure all the students involved experienced to the arts is priceless.”

Students, emcee, and judges gather after the contest

National semi-finals and finals will also be held virtually and streamed May 5th and June 1st, respectively. Congratulations to all of our Fresno County students who participated, and thank you to their teachers, coaches, and judges who volunteered their time to make this event a success. If you are interested in bringing Poetry Out Loud

Photo: 2021 Arts Alive Reception by Karen Takeda Simpson

FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL PRESENTS 9TH ANNUAL ARTS ALIVE IN AGRICULTURE JURIED EXHIBITION Fresno Arts Council presents the ninth annual Arts Alive in Agriculture Juried Exhibition on Thursday, May 26th, 2022.

Please join us at “the Barn” at the San Joaquin Parkway Trust River Center at 5:30PM for public art viewing, live entertainment, refreshments, and an awards ceremony.

Arts Alive in Agriculture is a celebration of our agricultural industry through the visual arts with the intent to promote and encourage creative perspectives on our intimate relationships with food-production here in the Central Valley.

Thirty-one artists will present sixty pieces across six categories, and prizes will be awarded for first place, second place, and honorable mention in each category: Agricultural Landscapes, People and Agriculture, Machines and Technology, Documentary Photography, Manipulated Photography, and Sculpture, Assemblage, and Found Objects.

Three judges—local arts experts Virginia Patterson, William Raines, and Elena Harvey Collins—will award a Best in Show prize to one piece from any category, and event sponsors will select the Farm Favorite award.

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Photo: Miguel Arias via The Business Journal

"TEJIDO EN EL CIELO" ART INSTALLATION PLANNED FOR FULTON STREET FIESTAS PATRIAS CELEBRATION THIS SEPTEMBER Councilmember Miguel Arias partners with local organizations and artists from Etzatlán, Jalisco to bring colorful woven canopy to annual Downtown Fresno festival Community members will enjoy local food vendors, entertainment, and festivities under a brightly colored, crocheted canopy imported and installed by artists from Etzatlán, Jalisco at the annual Fiestas Patrias celebration in downtown Fresno this September. The event celebrates Latino history, culture, and art during Mexican Independence Day festivities on September 1617 and will culminate in a parade and a concert in Chukchansi Park.

Over two hundred artists, all women but one, contributed to the nearly 100,000 square foot woven canopy, knitted from synthetic fiber beginning in 2017.

The installation, dubbed “Tejido en el Cielo,” or Woven in the Sky, was declared the largest of its kind by The Guinness Book of World Records in 2019 and displayed at Dubai’s World Expo in March. Ten of the project’s primary artists will fly to Fresno to install a portion of the piece on Fulton over two blocks from Fresno to Tulare streets for the Fiestas Patrias celebration.

Photo: Miguel Arias via The Business Journal

Councilmember Miguel Arias wants to celebrate and represent various regions in Mexico during the festival, and has partnered with several local organizations, in addition to visiting Etzatlán to meet the artists and secure the installation of the canopy, to make this community celebration a success.

FAC OPEN CALLS UPCOMING FAC EVENTS

FAC GALLERY: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BEING AN ARTHOP FEATURED ARTIST IN OUR GALLERY IN 2023, PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM AND SEND SAMPLES OF YOUR WORK TO ELISA.FLORES@FRESNOARTSCOUNCIL.ORG ARTHOP AT CITY HALL: THE FRESNO ARTS COUNCIL IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FRESNO CITY HALL, IS NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS FROM ARTISTS, ART GROUPS AND ART ORGANIZATIONS TO EXHIBIT ARTWORK AT ONE OF TWO FLOORS FROM JANUARY 1, 2023 TO DEC. 31, 2023.

REVIEW GUIDELINES AND SUBMIT BY OCTOBER 31, 2022

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ISSUE 5

ANTHONY CODY WINS 2022 WHITING AWARD FOR POETRY Poet and Fresno State Alumnus Receives Top Literary Prize for Emerging Writers

Photo: The Whiting Foundation

Author and Fresno State alumnus, Anthony Cody, has been awarded a 2022 Whiting Award for poetry. Since 1985, The Whiting Foundation, a New York-based humanities organization, has given the $50,000 prize annually to ten emerging writers of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama. The award is “based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.” Cody’s debut book, Borderland Apocrypha, won the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest and was published in April 2020.

“With boldness and formal dexterity,” the selection committee notes, “Cody assembles his spectral poems from official records, guidebooks, works of history, maps, laws and edicts, and the traces of bitter and bloody memory. In this invigorating work, Cody has enlarged what’s possible for American poetry.”

Cody is the most highly awarded graduate of Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in its twenty-five year history.

Previous honors include the 2021 American Book Award, 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, and 2020 Southwest Book Award. Cody was a 2021 finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry for Borderland Apocrypha, the California Book Award for Poetry, and the PEN America/Jean Stein Award. The book was also longlisted for The Believer Editor’s Award.

A 2020 graduate of Fresno State’s MFA program, Cody’s thesis and yet unpublished second book, The Rendering, won the Western Association of Graduate Schools Proquest Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award in the creative, visual, and performing arts; it was the first Fresno State graduate student thesis to receive this honor. Cody was also selected as the 2020 Graduate Dean’s Medalist for The College of Arts and Humanities. A CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, California, he has lineage in the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl. He collaborates with Juan Felipe Herrera and the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio and serves as an associate poetry editor for Noemi Press and a poetry editor for Omnidawn.

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/The Whiting Foundation

Cody accepted the award at a ceremony hosted by MacArthur Fellow, Maggie Nelson, in New York City on April 6.

UPCOMING FAC EVENTS ARTHOP: FIRST AND THIRD THURSDAYS EACH MONTH THURSDAY, MAY 26 5:30PM: ARTS ALIVE IN AGRICULTURE AT "THE BARN" AT SAN JOAQUIN PARKWAY TRUST RIVER CENTER THURSDAY, JULY 7: ARTS IN CORRECTIONS SHOW AT FRESNO CITY HALL SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16: HORIZON AWARDS AT THE FRESNO ART MUSEUM, BONNER AUDITORIUM

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THE JANKA PROJECT: PRESERVING A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR'S STORY ON STAGE AND SCREEN JANKA, DIRECTED BY OSCAR SPEACE AND STARRING JANICE NOGA, PREMIERES AT THE FRESNO ART MUSEUM APRIL 1, 2022.

Note: This is an excerpt of a forthcoming article in California Arts Council’s DREAM Magazine.

Read more about The Janka Project in the full article on the Fresno Arts Council website.

JANICE NOGA AND OSCAR SPEACE AT THE FRESNO ART MUSEUM PREMIERE OF JANKA ON APRIL 1, 2022.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OSCAR SPEACE.

Janice Noga and Oscar Speace have been touring the play, Janka: A Holocaust Survivor From Sighet to Auschwitz to America, for twenty years, and when I ask them for a bit of background on how this play came to be the film Janka, which premiered at the Fresno Art Museum April 1st and 2nd, 2022, they take me back to the beginning—or, beginnings—of Janka’s story, of the play’s conception, development, and evolution over the years, of Janice and Oscar’s relationship and each of their relationships with Janka, Oscar’s mother, and of how this play ultimately became a film, created under pandemic constraints.

Oscar Speace and Janice Noga share their favorite booth at Irene’s, their favorite “independent” diner in Fresno’s Tower District as they relay the story they have told many times and in many ways. Their devotion to Janka as a project and to telling Janka’s story of survival is clear as they carefully describe the journey that has brought them to this moment, in which they feel certain that her story will continue to be told to new audiences through the film.

Noga and Speace are married creative partners who each have a deep background in their craft and their connection to the Central Valley’s cultural arts. Speace is an Emmy-winning television producer, writer and director. For more than 30 years, he has produced and directed a wide range of television and radio programming for local stations, KVPT-TV (PBS) and ABC 30 (ABC-TV). Speace’s screenwriting, directing, and producing credits include many programs highlighting arts activities and creative communities in the San Joaquin Valley. Janice Noga has been an active member of the Central Valley theatre community for several decades. She was an original Good Company Players member, performing in its opening season at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theatre in Fresno’s historic Tower District, and was additionally a starring member of The Fourth Wall Theatre in Visalia and a founding partner of Valley Women’s Theatre. Noga and Speace’s combined talents and personal investment in this project are evident not only in the passion with which they talk about Janka, but in the film itself, as well as in the community support it receives.

The Fresno Arts Council, State-Local Partner to the California Arts Council, acts as the fiscal receiver for The Janka Project, through which contributions are processed. Fresno theatre professionals and patrons have supported The Janka Project from its inception—from providing theatre space to promoting shows and fundraising for its various tours, including its month-long run at the June Havoc Theatre in New York in 2015. Janice credits arts journalist, Donald Munro, and Good Company Players founder, Dan Pessano, as the two men who have made their twenty-year project possible. Pessano donated use of Good Company Players’ Second Space Theatre while Munro covered and promoted their shows. The community who showed up for Janka, purchasing $50 tickets to fund performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for example, returned to support and celebrate the film premiere at The Fresno Art Museum over two nights in April, 2022.

Adapted from a sixty-page handwritten letter, written shortly after Janka and her siblings, Betty and Sandy, were liberated in Germany in 1945, Janka tells the story of the Nazi internment of Romanian Jews at Auschwitz and Dachau beginning in 1944 through a first-person narrative delivered by Janice Noga playing Janka Festinger Speace.

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ISSUE 5 JANKA, CONTINUED

SHINZEN FRIENDSHIP GARDEN CELEBRATES SPRING WITH PLEIN AIR EXHIBITION AND CULTURAL FESTIVAL

ABOVE: GARDEN GUESTS VIEW PLEIN AIR ART GALLERY

Fresno Arts Council was a proud sponsor of Shinzen Friendship Garden’s “Spring in the Garden” festival on Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10 in Woodward Park. On Saturday, artists gathered in the Japanese garden to paint scenes from the garden with a variety of media “en plein air,” and on Sunday displayed their artwork for the public.

Artist awards were presented to Chieko Delgado (First Place), Patrena Witt (Second Place), Elowyn Dickerson (Third Place), and David Hembree (Honorable Mention).

The day also included docent-led tours of the garden and the Clark Bonsai collection, and cultural ceremonies and demonstrations, such as bonsai-making, Koto performance, and a Tea Ceremony. Food and artisan craft vendors, children’s craft activities, and community group performances contributed to the family-friendly atmosphere and cultural significance of this event.

The film begins with Janka in her living room. She has just said goodbye to her son, Oscar, who while visiting, could not keep from asking his mother about her experience in the Holocaust. Janice plays an aging Janka who putters around her house, alternating between sharing memories of her life in America and telling her tragic story of being taken from her home with her family, living in the ghettos of Sighet, Romania for weeks, getting separated from her family and transported to Auschwitz via cattle car, and enduring and witnessing a year of horrible torture at the hands of Nazi soldiers and representatives.

As Janka presents the story of her four lives— “my life in Romania before Hitler, my life because of Hitler, my life with my husband, Bob, and my life after Bob died,” she is surrounded by photographs and mementos of her family. Though Janka distinguishes between these lives, they are not presented in succession, and the memories from each phase call up the others, creating the effect—along with closeups of the photos, occasional hard cuts, and flashes between scenes— that these memories overlap and intertwine in ways that render both the remembering and the retelling alternately painful and joyful.

Janka and her sister, Betty, were in Auschwitz through September of 1944, where they were eventually reunited with their oldest sister.

Their barracks of 2,000 Jewish women were then taken to slave labor in Germany. The film chronicles Betty and Janka’s experience in the camps, their reunion with Gizi, her sickness and death just weeks before liberation, and the siblings’ journey to the United States.

Some details of this harrowing experience—sleeping fifteen to a bunk, thousands dying of hunger, thirst, Typhus, and more, if not shot or cremated first—are perhaps familiar to an audience for whom the Holocaust is a touchstone personal or cultural memory. That doesn’t make these details less effective. However, it is the details of one woman’s lived experience—in the slave labor camp finding Gizi, whose own four-year-old daughter had been murdered upon arrival to Auschwitz, tied to a fence and left for dead in the snow overnight, then having to see her sister’s body every time she went to use the bathroom for the next seven days—that renders this heartbreaking story individual and essential.

Janka reflects: “Somehow, we found happiness. The American Dream —we lived it,” and though the narrative Janka presents offers plenty of evidence of this happiness, Janka’s suffering did not end upon liberation; she suffered devastating miscarriages, her husband’s cancer and death, memories of the Holocaust and continued grief over the loss of her family. As the film ends, Janka says, “You want me to tell Oscar. I can see it in your face. My family’s history will die with me if I don’t tell him. I pray I will find the strength. He will bear witness. He will know the story somehow. I pray, I pray, I pray.

Thank you.” Though Janka was never able to tell her son the story directly, her written account has made it possible for Speace and Noga to bear witness each time they perform the play or screen the film; Janka’s family history survives through the art with which they honor it.

Read the full article.

RIGHT: JANKA IN GERMANY, 1945; BOTTOM RIGHT: FIVE FESTINGER CHILDREN IN SIGHET; BOTTOM LEFT: BOB AND JANKA WITH TWIN BOYS, DAVID AND OSCAR SPEACE.

PLEIN AIR ARTISTS WITH THEIR AWARDS (L-R): CHIEKO DELGADO, PATRENA WITT, ELOWYN DICKERSON, AND DAVID HEMBREE