Stephen Pitters currently has eleven titles of poetry on Amazon and Kindle. The latest is “Aftermath”. He hosts the Spokane Open Poetry Program on Thin Air Community Radio, www.KYRS.ORG 88.1/92.3 fm for 14 years. He directs “Poetry Rising” a poetry, prose, music event at the South Hill Library. He holds Masters degrees in Clinical Social Work and Public Health.
Artist Statement
I use poetry as a means of self-expression and community involvement, encouragement, and collaboration for all ages.
Stephen Marc is a Professor of Art in the Herberger Institute’s School of Art at Arizona State University, an ASU Evelyn Smith Endowed Professor of Art (2021-22), and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. Marc began teaching at ASU in 1998, following 20 years at Columbia College Chicago. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA; and his BA from Pomona College in Claremont, CA.
Marc’s most recent book: American/True Colors (2020) addresses who we are as Americans in a polarized country with changing demographics, from an African American perspective. It was a 2021 IPPY Gold Medalist for best book in the Photography category. Marc’s three earlier books include: Urban Notions (1983), addressing the three Illinois communities where he had family ties; The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (1992); and Passage on the Underground Railroad (2009), digital composites that provide insight into the historic sites, and the institution of slavery. His Passage on the Underground Railroad is registered as Arizona’s first and only Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom division of the National Park Service.
Artist Statement
As a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist, my focus is on politically and culturally relevant gatherings, as part of my ongoing work that collectively addresses who we are as Americans. Since 2019, I have been creating a series of digital “street story montages” along with photographs of public space events and everyday life that explore what is proving to be pivotal time in this country’s history.
American identity is a cultural combination of reality, idealism and myth. How we shape our environment, define ourselves and recognize each other as Americans is culturally complex, socially charged, historically layered, and constantly in flux. As a photographer, I am interested in the photograph as an interpretative document; and as a digital montage artist, exploring the ways and reasons to combine photographs to extend the visual narrative, considering the constructive nature of memory as an informed witness.
This selection of work focuses on the African American community, where most of the photographs come from my recent book: American/True Colors.
Ruben Trejo (1937–2009) was born in a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad yard in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father, a mixed Tarascan Indian and Hispanic from Michoacán, Mexico, and his mother, from Ixtlan in the same Mexican province, had found a home for the family in a boxcar while his father worked for the railroad. Trejo became the first in his family to graduate from college, and in 1973 he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he began a thirty-year association with Eastern Washington University as teacher and artist.
His isolation from major centers of Chicano culture led him to search for self-identity through his art. Influenced and inspired by such writers and artists as Octavio Paz and Guillermo Gómez-Pena, he explored a dynamic, multidimensional worldview through his sculpture and mixed-media pieces and created a body of work that deftly limns his identity as an artist and a Chicano. Throughout his long teaching career, he worked tirelessly to create opportunities for young Chicanos through tutoring and mentoring.
Artist Statement
“Multiple backgrounds can form such two- and three-dimensional ideas that they take you to the brink of lunacy, but I have used this rich background and ethnic landscape for creating art. As a student at the University of Minnesota, I often wondered what the study of Russian history, Shakespeare, English literature, or Freud . . . had to do with cleaning onions in Hollandale, Minnesota, picking potatoes in Hoople, North Dakota, or visiting relatives in Michoacán. This diversity of ideas can produce a three-headed monster or an artist, and I chose the latter.” -Ruben Trejo
Robert Lloyd worked for CORE and SCLC in Chicago from 1962-1967. After working at Menlo-Atherton High School and Stanford University, in 1974 he completed an MFA in Design and Photography at California Institute of the Arts and began teaching photography at Eastern Washington University.
He founded, directed, and curated The Grand Photography Gallery at Eastern Washington University and The Lloyd Gallery at 123 Arts. From 1996-2000 he founded and published a community newspaper, the Spokane African American Voice. He retired from Eastern Washington University in 2004 after 30 years of teaching photography and digital imaging. After his retirement he photographed in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, China and Japan. He can be reached at rdlloyd@comcast.net and website 4comculture.com.
Artist Statement
In 2020, the slogan was heard around the world: Black Lives Matter. I found it absurd that Black people were on a mission to get White Americans to accept the fact that Black lives matter. It is my belief that Black lives have always mattered. We only need to listen to the song as we sang it in the Civil Rights Movement, taking off from Paul Robeson’s lyrics “That’s why darkies were born”: Somebody had to pick the cotton, somebody had to plant the corn, somebody had to build a great nation, that’s why darkies were born.
Rachel Doležal has twenty years of experience as an exhibiting artist and art educator. Her works have been featured in The Artist’s Magazine, shown in 14 states, and displayed at the United Nations’ Headquarters in New York. She majored in art at Belhaven College (BA) and in sculpture & painting at Howard University (MFA). Her art is in the permanent collections of Tougaloo College, Howard University, Belhaven College and numerous private collections. Doležal synthesizes history and cultural studies in her art and believes that the creative process is part of what makes us human and shapes our identity in the world. Doležal instructed art as a graduate student at Howard University and helped launch the Howard University Young Artist’s Academy (HUYAA) in 2001, winning numerous awards for her talent. She taught in the Art Departments at North Idaho College and Eastern Washington University. Awards in Art include: Visitor’s Choice Award, Best of Show, Experimental Media Award, and many other gallery awards for her drawing, painting, printmaking and collage work.
Artist Statement
“Anthology I” acrylic on distressed canvas, 24×36” This distress-textured word painting begins with “Emmett Till” and lists 54 names of individuals killed by police brutality or neighborhood vigilantes in the United States. Every 13th name is the name of a female victim, which symbolizes the lesser attention that Black women often receive in media and society than men in similar circumstances. An anthology is a collection of stories, and as we “say their names,” may we also remember the life story represented by each person who was taken from us.
“Anthology II” acrylic on distressed canvas, 24×36” This distress-textured word painting begins with “George Floyd” and is an unfortunate sequel to “Anthology I” as a remembrance of 53 more names of individuals killed by police brutality or neighborhood vigilantes in the United States. Every 13th name is the name of a female victim, which symbolizes the lesser attention that Black women often receive in media and society than men in similar circumstances. An anthology is a collection of stories, and as we “say their names,” may we also remember the life story represented by each person who was taken from us. (Spokane’s own Lorenzo Hayes is included in this piece).
With high intentions to go fishing, Pok Chi Lau has traveled to 36 countries, and he has ended up with more photographs than fish at the end of his fishing poles. Through the years, he has come to the realization that in the history of China, stretching from around 1700 to 1950, her poor coastal fishing villagers experienced some of the first Diasporas to different parts of the world, especially Southeast Asia.
He was born in British Hong Kong in 1950. Since 1967, Pok Chi Lau 劉博智, has been a documentary photographer. His work on migration focuses on the Chinese Diaspora in the Americas, Cuba, and Malaysia and now Myanmar. For a decade, he also documented the Diaspora within China, where rural peasants/migrants from all over China moved to seek factory work in coastal Made-in-China regions.
Pok Chi Lau is Professor Emeritus of PhotoMedia in the Department of Design at the University of Kansas, which has provided him with numerous international research opportunities, and through which his work has been exhibited and published broadly. Besides his work as a documentary photographer, Lau’s work as a poet and essayist has led him to collaborate with professionals in East Asian studies, journalism, ethnic studies, anthropology and social science.
Olivia Evans is a grant-awarded, multidisciplinary visual artist based in Spokane, WA, working in video, photography, drawing, and film. In 2018, she graduated from Eastern Washington University with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art and a minor in film. Her work is heavily influenced by motherhood, the subconscious, nature, and social events — intertwining traditional and digital media to create narratives of the self. All these influences echo her eclectic cultural experiences of growing up in an economically challenged home with her Italian mother and in 2007 (once parents remarried), being reunited with her African American/Native American father.
Olivia is working with The Alliance for Media, Arts, & Culture as a local producer and social media manager. She co-produced the documentary film series Monday Movies at the Magic Lantern Theater, Native Arts & Film Events, and co-curates numerous events in the Pacific Northwest region. She actively participates in the Alliance National Youth Media Network activities and within her art community in Spokane. Her work has been featured in several student exhibitions, Saturate, a city-wide arts event in Spokane, at the Kress Gallery, Terrain 12 (2019), a large exhibition that features over 200+ artists in the PNW.
Artist Statement
As a mother, I have come to terms with having two living bodies develop inside me, feed off my nutrients, and be cut out of my stomach. What was once the essence of myself was now in physical form, staring at me and looking at me for answers, while I was still collecting what remained. It can be easy for people to hide behind their physical form.
In my work, I investigate our relationship with our subconscious, as well as the significance of movement relative to these fragmented states of mind. Within cultural elements, personal experiences, and recognition of gestural transitions are attached. For instance, the gestural use of walking that offers a meditative bind between the walker’s mind and body. Walking is a recurring theme in most indigenous cultures.
In my video work, I use frame by frame stop motion animations and drawing to create narratives based on personal situations and contemplations. Using inanimate objects, drawings, photographs, and silhouettes to help aid these ideas gives me freedom to choose a route that fits within the situation. In film, I comment on cultural and social meaning, and the sometimes clash of the two. In my still photography projects, I elaborate more on the misconception of memories, our reliance on subconscious thought, and the relevance of the people who we hold dear in our lives.
Our upbringing and cultural background are a huge factor in this. When entering the subconscious, one runs into their innermost desires and memories that convey an intense feeling of nostalgia. We attach these events constantly to our lives to assure ourselves that change is or is not happening – a comfort food to fuel our future endeavors. It’s natural to want to turn back time and relive certain snippets of the past. Is it possible to fully regain that sense of clarity, or is the inevitability of change going to constantly keep us on our toes?
I am Nicholas Sironka, (I go by Sironka) a Maasai batik artist, with a God given talent. I was born and raised in Kenya, a country in East Africa. We have 42 different tribes in Kenya. Each tribe speaks a distinctively different language from the other. There is however a national language that helps all these tribes communicate with each other – Kiswahili. (Remember ‘Hakuna matte” in the movie Lion King?). I am Maasai, a small pastoralist tribe living mostly in the southern plains of Kenya known as the Rift Valley.
In the year 2000, I was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence Award from the U. S. Government to com teach batik art and Maasai culture at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington.
Ever since childhood I was always fascinated by my Maasai culture, a culture that was very much misinterpreted and misunderstood. It is then that I made it my life’s ambition to find a way to tell the truth about my people and to do so with dignity and truth. With my God given talent I determined that batik was the medium I would use to make good of this quest.
Today I sell my original art and enjoy teaching batik art classes and also continue to hold lectures on the Maasai culture whenever I am invited to do so.
My passion to speak on the facets of my culture portrayed in my pieces has many times been impactful emotionally for those buying my art or simply coming and listening to my explanations of deeper meaning for the paintings. Many asked if I was a counselor, and after much thought, I decided to go to school. I am happy to say that today I hold a degree as a certified substance abuse counselor!
My philosophy: “If I can use my talents to touch another life, and make it better, then I will be fulfilling the purpose for which God put me on this Earth!”
Miguel is an American born artist from San Antonio, TX currently living in Spokane, WA. He’s a Chicano photographer documenting the bicultural lifestyle of living in a monocultural world.
The illustrated people of color are drawn onto the photograph to resemble a memory, and the yellow circles represent the indigenous heritage. His indigenous ancestry is symbolized as sunbeams guiding the person in the image. They are known as the people of the sun of the Yanaguana river. This land is now known as San Antonio, TX. Drawing colorful people is symbolic of how people of color are vibrantly expressive as they navigate an ethnocentric world, and at times still struggling to connect their internal mixed colonized family history. Mixing film photography and digital illustration represents the mixing of American and Mexican cultures. Balancing the existence between multiple languages, social practices, and at times a conflicting self identity. As each generation develops there is a language loss, and disconnection from ancestral ties. The Chicano arte (art) of Miguel Maltos Gonzales hopes to reconnect Mexican culture, American upbringing, and honor the indigenous heritage from pre colonization in each composition for future generations to know they will always be connected to their ancestors. Somos de aquí y de allá (I am from here and there).
Film photography captures the beauty in the land, and preserves the world we all share for generations to come. Each photograph is a finished image derived from a trusty fifty year old 35mm camera. The illustrated people of color are drawn on to the photographs to resemble a memory. Drawing colorful people is symbolic of how people of color are vibrantly expressive as they navigate an ethnocentric world, and at times still struggling to connect their internal mixed colonized family history. Balancing the existence between multiple languages, social practices, and at times a conflicting self identity. As each generation develops there is a language loss, and disconnection from ancestral ties. The Chicano arte (art) of Miguel Maltos Gonzales hopes to reconnect Mexican culture, American upbringing, and honor the indigenous heritage from pre colonization in each composition for future generations. In the Pacific Northwest, Miguel is developing ¡Taller Firme! to express his arte y cultura.
Joel Gaytan is a Mexican artist who is a BFA graduate from Eastern Washington University (2018). He has been a practicing artist from a young age. More recently his work consisted of 2d figurative artworks such as drawings and paintings. Joel’s artwork portrays familiar scenes and experiences from his upbringing, as he feels that Latinx voices or perspectives are often dismissed within the mainstream. In his work he creates scenes within the lives of his subjects often giving his art a candid or voyeuristic approach. Creating familiarity with the viewer is an important motivation for Joel’s art and equally it is essential to produce a more inclusive space for a variety of experiences.
Artist Statement
The works from this body of work are meant to bring recognition to the Latinx community within Walla Walla, Washington. The images represent the strength of a community that is in many ways a seminal part of this city, and yet is often underrepresented. Flipping through the pages of a publication such as Walla Walla Lifestyles might give you a slight indication that there is a lively Latinx community that resides here, why is that? It is extremely frustrating being part of a community where the social construct fails to acknowledge the work of a minority community, yet willing to reap all the rewards for said work. The drawings in this series are meant to symbolize people, stories, and experiences that I have seen, heard, and lived. There is more to this town than the renowned, superficial wineries, and the posh downtown will lead you to believe. I would like the Latinx community to know that their participation in the Walla Walla valley is valued, appreciated, and an integral part to the growth of this city.
