I am sad to report that Sokhorn Sem, mother of Monkey Dance film subject Samnang Hor, passed away on October 4 after a long battle with cancer. Services were at the Khmer Temple (Wat Triratanaram) in Chelmsford yesterday and today. A survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide, Sokhorn worked for years at Cambridge Tool and as a wedding planner. She leaves behind a large and loving family, including Samnang, his wife Yary Na, and their daughter Jarronai.
Labor & Dreams Festival
My short video 25th & Mission will show at San Francisco Video Fest Thursday, October 15 at 8pm, at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco (around the corner from where the piece was shot).
And while we're talking about 25th & Mission, here are some pictures of the installation version of this piece, that ran August 4-10 in 25th Street Cleaners:
Capitalism Sold Out
Went to see Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, last night. Amused by the sign we saw upon arrival (luckily, we had bought our tickets online).
Documenting the Struggle for Health Equity
I'm very excited to be working with the Center for Health Equity & Social Justice at the Boston Public Health Commission on a multi-year documentation project of their fantastic work towards eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. We're starting off with filming their New England Health Equity Summit September 23-25, 2009 - a second gathering of community leaders from around the region around this issue.
Video and Pie in a Laundromat
My other upcoming show is an installation of my video 25th and Mission in the laundromat where it was partially filmed: 25th Street Dry Cleaners, 3416 25th Street (at Mission), San Francisco. The show will be up August 4-10, with an opening reception Wednesday, August 5, 5-7pm (when else can you have wine and cheese and Mission Pie pie in a laundromat)?
The piece looks abstractly at what the four delightfully diverse shops on this block have in common: namely, a rootedness in their community and the work of transforming and beautifying surfaces.
The Space Between Hours
I have two shows of new video installations coming up in the next few weeks. The first is The Space Between Hours at Diego Rivera Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco. The show will be up July 26-31, with an opening reception on Tuesday, July 28 from 5-7pm (artist talk at 4:30pm).
The show is with Emily Terhune Korson and Elizabeth Pedinotti. All of the work is autobiographical in some way, and explores our ability or inability to fully experience and remember moments in our lives. My piece Breakfast is the first public installation of an ongoing project to record one minute of my family's breakfast every day. The piece in the Diego Gallery includes five seconds of each day of the first seven months of this year, projected onto a mylar sheet hanging from the gallery's 50-foot ceiling.
I'm not sure how many other opportunities I'll have to show my work in the same gallery as a Diego Rivera mural.
Principals Toolkit Complete
I have just finished producing the DVD for CAYL Institute’s Principals Toolkit, to help school leaders design, implement, and supervise quality early childhood education. We made seven videos and four slideshows covering topics such as Relationships, Environment, Family & Community, District Advocacy, and Supervision.
I really learned a lot about what goes into a high quality education for young children – information that I can use both professionally and personally, as my older daughter enters kindergarten this fall and my younger daughter starts preschool.
The Toolkit will be released at CAYL’s National Principals Conference July 12-15, 2009.