2010 (Spring) See Change

Ahdanah Beverly Collins-Roberts Clarissa Sligh Genevieve Coutroubis Laureen Griffin Lovella Calica Ruth Naomi Floyd Sandra Andino

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“Transformation is the central theme of this exhibit, which is fitting because art itself has the ability to transform lives. We are pleased to showcase the Leeway Foundation and its impact on making the greater Philadelphia region a better place in which to live.�

-- R. Andrew Swinney, President of The Philadelphia Foundation

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Photographs from the Leeway Foundation

Community Art Gallery The Philadelphia Foundation 1234 Market Street, Suite 1800 Philadelphia, PA 19107 April 28 - October 20, 2010

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

We decided to call the show See Change because the phrase can be read in so many ways. It could refer to a reversal of opinion or fortune, a shift in one’s thinking or way of being, a change of place, or perhaps a change of heart.

See Change is a group exhibition of color and black-and-white photographs from a diverse group of eight artists who received Leeway Foundation grants and awards between 1993-2009.

At Leeway, we hope the artists we support, not only ‘see change’, but that they make it manifest through their practice. These talented photographers are examples of that kind of practice: on the lookout for what’s different, what’s changing, hoping to capture a moment, perhaps “the” moment when change occurs.

Dorothea Lange once said, “As photographers, we turn our attention to the familiarities of which we are a part. So turning, we in our work can speak more than of our subject – we can speak with them; we can more than speak about our subjects – we can speak for them. They, given tongue, will be able to speak with and for us. And in this language will be proposed to the lens that with which, in the end, photography must be concerned – time, and place, and the works of man.”

This show gives us a glimpse of what they see through those lens, these final images their vision manifest.

--Denise M. Brown, April 2010

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Board of Directors Amadee L. Braxton Gretjen Clausing, Treasurer Naima Lowe, Interim President Patience Rage Virginia P. Sikes, Esq.

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Leeway Foundation The Philadelphia Building 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 832 Philadelphia, PA 19107 P 215-545-4078 | F 215-545-4021 info@leeway.org

Staff Denise M. Brown, Executive Director Evelyn Salcedo, Administrative Assistant Hope Steinman-Iacullo, Program Assistant Maori Karmael Holmes, Communications Director Sham-e-Ali al-Jamil, Program Director Exhibit Design and Installation Sean Stoops

www.leeway.org Special thanks to Bia Viera, Libby Walsh and Betsy Anderson!

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see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

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Ahdanah Art and Change Grant, 2009 Window of Opportunity Grant, 2004 Through photography, I document people’s different ways of expressing their need for social change, for justice and for freedom. These images represent the change in everyday activities, wherever I am, as seen through my camera lens.

Ahdanah was born in Mexico City (née Leticia Roa Nixon). Her passion has always been journalism. Likewise, photography became an important tool when she studied communications at Universidad Iberoamericana where she majored in journalism in 1974. In 1985, Ahdanah moved to Philadelphia where she began documenting Latino events since 1988. Her photos have been published in El Hispano, Enfoque Comunal, El Sol Latino, Unidad Latina, El Faro Latino and Impacto Latino. In 1992, Ahdanah joined forces with renowned writer, columnist and poet Iris Violeta Colón Torres and ceramicist Rosa Mercedes Pujols to found the Women in Action Making History Collective, which produced the first Latina exhibit at Philadelphia City Hall commemorating Women’s History Month in March 1992. She has also had her work shown at the Latino Renaissance Gallery.

image credit: Immigration Reform, 2005, Ahdanah

Leeway Transformation Award, 2009 Art and Change Grant, 2009, 2007 Even though I’m considered a documentary photographer, I’m an artist first. I shoot everything as art. I shoot only what interests me. It’s the look in a child’s eyes, the folds in the face of the elders, old structures, empty spaces, the screeching of train wheels, and dilapidated buildings. I love black and white, but I also like to manipulate color images and make them the way I envision them to be. My work is a process. I am rarely satisfied with my work. I have so many versions of the same image. Sometimes it’s hard to decide which one to use.

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Beverly Collins-Roberts

Beverly’s work primarily focuses on documenting the history of African Americans of Camden, New Jersey. In 2002 she first uncovered the story of slavery and plantations in the city and has been lecturing and speaking on the subject since 2005. Her work has been featured in major museums, galleries, and cultural art centers; and she has participated in several juried exhibitions. A retrospective of her work, The Fabric of America Exhibition, will be launched in 2012. Beverly’s documentary The Journey will premiere in June 2010. Past projects include a documentary short entitled UNHUSHED! (2005) co-produced with Scribe Video Center. She has received several awards and honors including the Certificate of Commendation from the City of Camden (2008), Annie Singleton Award from Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity – Nu Lota Chapter at Rowan University (2006), and a Proclamation from the City of Camden (2005).

image credit: The Girls, 2001, Beverly Collins-Roberts

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see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

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Clarissa Sligh Art and Change Grant, 2006 ON THE SUNFLOWER SERIES: These images come out of my personal relationship with the sunflowers that grew in my garden last summer.

At first they were just tall flowers. But without me being aware of it, I began to connect with them on another level and they became personifications of my self.

Clarissa became the lead plaintiff in a 1955 school desegregation case in Virginia when she was 15. From that moment forward, her work has taken into account change, transformation, and complication: themes that relate to her experiences fostering social justice. Clarissa’s work illustrates the power of art to transform a life through combinations of photographs, drawings, and text that weave together the personal and the political in text-based installations, alternative photographic processes, and artist’s books. A recipient of the ICP Annual Infinity Award (1995) and fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts in photography (1988 and 2000) and for artist’s books (2005), the National Endowment for the Arts in photography (1988), and Anonymous Was a Woman (2001), Sligh’s images are in collections including the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The author of nine artists’ books, she is represented by Vamp and Tramp Booksellers in Alabama and by the Ellen Sragow Gallery in New York. For more info visit www.clarissasligh.com.

image credits (l-r): Sunflower #1, 2010, Sunflower #3, 2010, and Sunflower #5, 2010, Clarissa Sligh

Window of Opportunity Grant, 2002 My photographs recognize and document the fluidity of culture and day-to-day experiences within Greece. By building a series of photographs that balance “traditional” Greece and the Greece that is less frequently observed, I depict how life within any given culture is not static. In a rapidly globalizing world, Greece, like many of its European counterparts, is struggling with its identity. Too often, the concept of a “true way of life” is utilized to exclude individuals who are not “Greek” by ethnicity or those individuals who somehow break from perceived traditions. Through a series of portraits and street photographs I portray Greece as the diverse society it is.

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Genevieve Coutroubis

Genevieve is a bi-lingual, dual-citizen of Greece and the United States.

She received her B.S. in Photojournalism from Boston University and a M.S. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Through her work as a documentary photographer and during her graduate studies, Genevieve has focused on and pursued social change through art. Genevieve has extensively exhibited her photography nationally and internationally. She has also worked with various non-profit organizations to help bring art to underserved communities in the city of Philadelphia. In addition to exhibiting her own photographs, Genevieve currently works with emerging artists and the community through her position as the Director of The Regional Community Arts Program at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists. For more info visit www.coutroubis.com.

image credits (lr): Athens Market IV, 2008, and Athens Market I, 2008, Genevieve Coutroubis

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see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Laureen Griffin Leeway Transformation Award, 2007 Art and Change Grant, 2005 Laureen looks at how culture is preserved through symbolic gesture.

How a sense of security is established as we recognize symbolic language and social coding that uphold our values. And how we are conditioned to associate material display in our homes and on our person with a sense of belonging. Laureen looks at the establishment of social hierarchies through materialism and uses symbolic devices of adornment as commentary on American material culture and social structures. Specifically, Laureen challenges aesthetics of femaleness through commentary on personal and historical devices of ornament used in portraiture and home decoration.

Laureen Griffin’s artistic renditions of female-beauty and community practices have won her awards and recognition within Philadelphia and the United States including: 5-County Arts Fund and an artist-inresidency at 40th St. AIRSPACE. This year, she was awarded a two-year Center For Emerging Visual Artists Career Development Fellowship. In 2009, Laureen was invited to the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY to print large-scale fabrics as part her Beauty Revisited series.

Laureen co-founded the transgression artist collective in 2006. Since 2002 she has been leading video and photography projects with diverse participants such as families in transitional housing and youth in Camden City, West Philadelphia, North East Philadelphia, and Radnor.

Laureen has exhibited in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. In 1996, she received her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art and in 1986 her B.F.A. from Syracuse University.

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image credits (l-r): Portrait of Laura, 2007, and Portrait of Nayyirah, 2008, Laureen Griffin

Leeway Transformation Award, 2009 Art and Change Grant, 2007, 2006 I create because I must. In our creation we can find truth, beauty, life and a connection to each and every other. I use words, photographs, and captured sound to re-create moments and people so that they can be explored further. Grandmothers, strangers, hands, children, veterans, communities, trees, and shadows find their way into my work because they are woven into my veins as I am woven into their branches and wrinkles. I attempt to show the real faces and colors of pain while also documenting and creating the honest joy of smiles and community.

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Lovella Calica

Lovella is on an adventure to transform her life and the spinning galaxy. Exchanging computer screens for more face-to-face interactions, building deeper connections with loved ones to inspire healthier, creative rituals, beliefs and bodies. Catch her if you can writing on walls, clicking at courage and dreaming of distant lands. Gathering community in the sun, kitchens and art spaces around the planet, she is excited to be exploring more art forms. Lovella has received two Art and Change Leeway grants and also was also honored with the Leeway Transformation Award in 2009. She published her first chapbook of poetry Makibaka: Beautifully Brave in 2006 and is currently releasing her second book Huwag Matakot: Do Not Be Afraid in several parts. She is the founder and catalyst of the Warrior Writers Project, a creative community for veterans articulating their experiences. Lovella is a cofounder of the Pilipino-American artist collective, Tatlo Mestiz@s.

image credit: Watch Those Rooftops!, 2007, Lovella Calica

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see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Ruth Naomi Floyd Leeway Transformation Award, 2006 Window of Opportunity Grant, 2003 Honorable Mention - Photography, 1996 I choose the medium of black and white photography because it allows me to express the brightest white to the deepest black and the vivid gray shades that fall in between. In the language of silence and stillness, we are led to places where we may discover the stirring of mystery and the calm of peace, the pull of memory, and the struggle to balance communion with others and with oneself in the space of vulnerability. My art trusts in the hope of discovery. I humbly accept the process of creating art as a gift from God. These images are the product of that gift.

Ruth is fascinated by the human face and finds joy in creating portraits that are etched in her mind and soul. She uses silver based films with 35mm and 4 x 5-inch view cameras to capture her images. Ruth uses traditional wet darkroom technology as well as digital printing on archival papers to produce her final images. Ruth has completed and exhibited three photographic series, “Passage Through the Soul,” “Reflection: Woman and the Veil” and “The Veil Series”. Ruth lectures and conducts workshops and seminars on topics that explore faith, social justice and the arts. Ruth has received awards and grants for her photographic images and her work is included in permanent and private collections. Ruth’s photographic images have been published in and on the covers of magazines, brochures and music compact discs.

Ruth is represented by Whitestone Gallery in Philadelphia.

image credits (l-r): Acceptance, 2010, and Surrounded, 2009, Ruth Naomi Floyd

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Art and Change Grant, 2005 Early in my career I started taking pictures of bodies of water, sometimes serendipitously and at other times very deliberately. For many reasons, I’m drawn to this subject because it symbolically represents for me “cleansing” or “washing away”, “reflection”, “movement”, “giver of life”, “transformation”, “calmness” or “high energy”. These are some of the emotions water evokes for me as I contemplate it and intend to capture it in photos. Water has been a constant subject in my work and when I review the moments and places of these images through time I see an evolution of my state of mind.

see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

Sandra Andino

Born in Long Island, NY to Puerto Rican parents Sandra Andino was later raised from the age of 4 in Puerto Rico. She formally studied black and white photography in college and in 1985 was awarded a photography scholarship from the Arts League in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In 1988 Sandra moved to Philadelphia to pursue graduate studies at Temple University. While completing research for her doctoral dissertation in anthropology she landed her first solo show at Taller Puertorriqueño, entitled Keeping It Real, a showcase of North Philadelphiabased graffiti writers in 1995. In 2003 she opened her second solo show at Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas, a review of the history of her work. In 2005 she was awarded the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant that culminated in the photo project entitled Manos Labradoras/Laboring Hands, an exhibit that examined Puerto Rican culinary and horticultural traditions by women in the Latino community of North Philadelphia. Her work has been shown at the School District of Philadelphia, Gettysburg College, The Philadelphia Foundation, PECO, and other venues.

image credit: Water Series #4, 2002, Sandra Andino

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see change: photographs from the leeway foundation

AHdanah

Genevieve Coutroubis

Change We Need (Barack Obama), 8 x 10 in. (framed 11 x 14 in.), not for sale

Athens Market I, 2008, 10 x 10 in (framed 15 x 15 in.), archival pigment print, $450

Crack Vials in Playground, 11 x 14 in., not for sale Immigration Reform, 11 x 14 in., not for sale Safe Schools, 8 x 12 in. (framed 11 x 14 in.), not for sale

Athens Market III, 2008, 10 x 10 in. (framed 15 x 15 in.), archival pigment print, $450

A Stronger America, 11 x 14 in., not for sale

Athens Market IV, 2008, 10 x 10 in. (framed 15 x 15 in.), archival pigment print, $450

Beverly Collins-Roberts

Arcadia-Athens Market, 2008, 20 x 20 in. (framed 33 x 33 in.), archival pigment print, $1,200

The Girls, 2001, 30 x 40 in., giclée on canvas, $8,500 Evolution of the Journey, 2000, 30 x 40 in., giclée on canvas, $10,000 Cape Coast Boat, 2008, 30 x 40 in., giclée on canvas, $8,500 Waiting, 1979, 30 x 40 in., giclée on canvas, $15,000 Clarissa Sligh Sunflower #1, 2010, 8 1/2 x 11 in., digital pigment ink on Hahnemuhle FineArt Pearl paper, $750 Sunflower #2, 2010, 8 1/2 x 11 in., digital pigment ink on Hahnemuhle FineArt Pearl paper, $750 Sunflower #3, 2010, 8 1/2 x 11 in., digital pigment ink on Hahnemuhle FineArt Pearl paper, $750 Sunflower #4, 2010, 8 1/2 x 11 in., digital pigment ink on Hahnemuhle FineArt Pearl paper, $750 Sunflower #5, 2010, 8 1/2 x 11 in., digital pigment ink on Hahnemuhle FineArt Pearl paper, $750

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Athens Market II, 2008, 10 x 10 in. (framed 15 x 15 in.), archival pigment print, $450

Note: Clarissa’s works are signed on back, matted, and framed. The entire set of 5 can be purchased for $2,500.

Laureen Griffin Anonymous Portrait, 2008, 8 x 10 in. (framed 13.5 x 16.5 in.), framed digital print w/archival pigment ink on Hahnemuhle German Etch, not for sale Portrait of Jardyn, 2008, 8 x 10 in. (framed 13.5 x 16.5 in.), framed digital print w/archival pigment ink on Hahnemuhle German Etch, $125 Portrait of Kay, 2008, 16 x 20 in. (framed 19 x 23 in.), framed digital print w/archival pigment ink on Hahnemuhle German Etch, $450 Portrait of Laura, 2007, 12 x 16 in. (framed 14 x 18 in.), framed digital print w/archival pigment ink on Hahnemuhle German Etch, $300 Portrait of Nayyirah, 2008, 12 x 16 in. (framed 14 x 18 in.), framed digital print w/archival pigment ink on Hahnemuhle German Etch, $300

Lovella Calica Don’t Move!, 2007, 12 x 16 in., $120 Put Your Hands Behind Your Back!, 2007, 12 x 16 in., $120 Watch Those Rooftops!, 2007, 12 x 16 in., $120 Robynn’s Stories, 2008, 12 x 16 in., $120 Re-making a Flag, 2007, 12 x 16 in., $120 Ruth Naomi Floyd Surrounded, 2009, 16 x 20 in., pigment print on black & white archival, 5/25, $425 Silent Devotion, 2010, 11 x 14 in., pigment print on black & white archival, 3/25, $300 Direction, 2009, 20 x 16 in., pigment print on black & white archival, 4/25, $375 Acceptance, 2010, 16 x 20 in., pigment print on black & white archival, 7/25, $400 Still Here, 2010, 11 x 14 in., pigment print on black & white archival, 4/25, $350 Sandra Andino Water Series #1, 1989, 8 x 10 in., silver gelatin print, $100 Water Series #2, 1987, 8 x 10 in., silver gelatin print, $100 Water Series #3, 2002, 8 x 10 in., silver gelatin print, $100 Water Series #4, 2002, 8 x 10 in., silver gelatin print, $100 Water Series #5, 2002, 8 x 10 in., silver gelatin print, $100

images at right (top to bottom): Crack Vials in Playground, Ahdanah; Cape Coast Boat, 2008, Beverly Collins-Roberts; Sunflower #3, 2010, Clarissa Sligh; Athens Market III, 2008, Genevieve Coutroubis; Portrait of Kay, 2008, Laureen Griffin; Robynn’s Stories, 2008, Lovella Calica; Direction, 2009, Ruth Naomi Floyd; Water Series #5, 2002, Sandra Andino

Support for individual artists is at the core of Leeway’s mission. The Foundation serves as an important resource for women and transgender artists who often struggle to find funding for their work and it hopes to grow the way its resources can support social change through supporting art and culture.

Our grant programs, the Art and Change Grant and the Leeway Transformation Award, are open to women and transgender artists living in the Philadelphia region working in any medium of art, including traditional and non-traditional as well as multimedia and experimental forms. Creating change must be integral to the ideas, beliefs, and goals that are woven throughout the work and the process of creating and sharing the work.

www.leeway.org

on the cover: Athens Market III, 2008, Genevieve Coutroubis