To put on this show, the jury reviewed works by 150 artists who responded to an international call for submissions. In the end, 20 artists were selected: 6 from the Bay Area, 4 additional U.S. artists, and artists from Japan, Kenya, Brazil, the Netherlands, China, India, Iran, and Canada. The subject matter ranges from teen community leaders in Richmond to opera singers in Brazil to seaweed farmers in Zanzibar.
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Seaweed Farmers of Zanzibar, Joanna Lipper
This is an absolutely stunning exhibition. Looking at the gorgeous photographs, I felt as if I were visiting all the countries featured, getting an intimate look at women’s everyday lives while I traveled around the world. You will leave this show inspired and impressed by the strength of these women, and convinced that investing in them will help to change the world.
Here are some stats on the global status of women, dry numbers that these photographs illustrate in a deeply personal way:
Women make up 70% of the world’s poor, those who live on less than $1 a day.
Women work 2/3 of the world’s working hours, yet earn only 10% of the world’s income.
Women are responsible for producing 60 – 80% of the world’s food, yet hold only 1% of the world’s land.
Worldwide, over 60% of people working in family enterprises without pay are women.
The total value of women’s unpaid house and farm work adds 1/3 to the world’s GNP.
One of the winning photographers, Joanna Lipper, along with being a filmmaker, author, and a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the W.E.B Du Bois Institute For African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is also a Fellow of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization I co-founded that trains young women to be leaders and change agents.
www.sfartscommission.org
Seaweed Farmers of Zanzibar, Joanna Lipper
Lipper’s series is Seaweed Farmers in Zanzibar. Her photographs are so serene and beautiful, they look like paintings, evocative of art from past centuries of other women working, like Van Gogh’s Two Peasant Women Digging. The aqua colors of the sea against the horizon are mesmerizing, and the photos have an incredible grace; the women working together and the water’s movement looks like a dance. The lighting in the photos is beautiful, showing the passage of time, is reminiscent of a series like Monet’s haystacks.
Lipper says that her art, and the whole show, presents “photographers as social activists, provoking engagement on an individual level.” Because this is a free exhibition in public space, the nature of the show further underscores the political nature of the art; everyone has access. The show’s existence illustrates not only that art influences politics, but also that we are all interconnected– to each other, to the economy, and to the environment.
Lipper explains that what’s valuable about the seaweed that these farmers work so hard to obtain is the algae it contains. The seaweed is sold to local brokers an then exported to Europe and Asia where the algae is extracted. Not only is the algae used in products like shampoo and mascara, but preserved algae turns out to be one of the best alternative green biofuels and best aborbants of carbon dioxide.
Lipper goes into further detail of the seaweed farmer’s world role on her site:
Zanzibar is at a disadvantage when it comes to profits derived from Seaweed cultivation because the islands lack the large-scale infrastructure and hardware needed to process seaweed and extract valuable algae. Therefore the raw materials are shipped abroad. Without microfinance loans, improved education, and community organization amongst laborers, there can be no further growth for seaweed farming as a cash-generating economically empowering occupation for rural village women and this form of labor runs the risk of becoming obsolete in Zanzibar.
Other incredible photography includes work by Brenda Paik Sunoo who photographed the “diving grannies” Vietnamese women in their eighties who hunt for Octopus. The salt mining pictures were also breathtaking, all black and white, women mining pillars of salt. There was a series of photos of girls in Tehran that made me feel as if I were inside their house and part of their family. There was a moving portrait of a woman soldier from the Middle East.
There is a Community Choice prize you can vote for here. The International Museum of Women is an online art gallery and all of the photos can also be seen here.
Perez Hilton justified the crotch shot he posted to his Twitter feed of Miley Cyrus, claiming he was trying to teach her to act like a lady.
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Perez isn’t the only guy around instructing women on how to behave. Derek Blasberg, a 27 year old from Missouri, recently came out with a modern manners how-to, just for the gentler sex: Classy: Exceptional Advice for the Extremely Modern Lady.
When I saw this at a bookstore, I thought it was a joke. Alas no, Blasberg sold his wisdom to a publisher, and it’s fast on it’s way to becoming a best-seller. In the intro Blasberg writes: “I can categorize the young women I’ve met through my trials and travails into two groups: ladies and tramps.”
It’s 2010– can we please stop recycling this age old virgin/ whore dichotomy? And while we’re at it, stop slut-shaming Miley Cyrus already, criticizing her clothing, her dancing, and her song lyrics in an endless 24 hour media cycle. Cyrus doesn’t need the media telling her how to behave anymore than women need advice from Blasberg on how to be classy.
No woman, in her twenties no less, would ever get way with writing a condescending tome like Blasberg’s and be recognized as some kind of witty authority on how a man can act like a man. But maybe she ought to. Here’s something for her first chapter: Don’t take and publish crotch shots. It’s not gentlemanly.
Carly Fiorina, doing what she can to set back the cause of women in politics: The California Republican nominee for the Senate refused to apologize to Senator Barbara Boxer after she was caught on camera mocking her hair. Asked about the incident by Greta Van Susteren, Fiorina said, “I was quoting a friend of mine. My goodness, my hair’s been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory.” She then brought up her battle with cancer, saying, “Especially when you don’t have any. As you remember, I started out with none.”
Carly Fiorina
So Fiorina’s friend said the hair comment first and that makes it OK?
Then Fiorina says that she’s been made fun of before, so she’s allowed to make fun of other people? Um, Carly: two wrongs don’t make a right.
Next: It “goes with the territory?” Meaning it’s just fine to make fun of women in power for the way they look? After all, everybody does it.
The point of getting women into power positions is to change that dynamic, not perpetuate it. (Not to mention lead, not follow.)
And finally, Fiorina attempts to switch the issue in a bid for sympathy, playing the cancer card.
Maybe I’ll invite Fiorina over for a playdate, hoping some better manners rub off on her. But I won’t be voting for her for California senator. Who wants mean girls in political office?
Yesterday, The New York Times reported on an exciting, potential political candidate with a stellar resume. Which of these two photos do you think appeared on the paper’s front page?
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Diana Taylor
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Diana Taylor’s career began as an investment banker with Smith Barney; she then became superintendent of banking under Gov Pataki, emerging as a prescient watchdog who predicted the mortgage crisis; she was chair of Action, a leading microfinance lender which has distributed more than 23 million worldwide, and since last July, has been a member of the board of directors of Citigroup.
But New York Times readers don’t learn any of this information about Taylor’s credentials on the front page of the paper. Reading through this muddled article, whenever I found an actual fact on Taylor’s career, I felt the kind of joy of discovery I see my on my kids faces during a scavenger hunt.
It’s not only the cover photo of Taylor in evening wear with her boyfriend, the Mayor of New York, along with the late placement of her substantial qualifications, but the language of the article that continually sexualizes and trivializes Taylor’s ambition and her candidacy.
The headline reads: “She has the Mayor by her Side, But Politics is Wooing Her, Too.” When has politics ever “wooed” a male candidate? When considering a senatorial bid a few years ago, this dreamy lady “muses” what kind of “relationship” she’d have with then senator Chuck Schumer. Bill Paxon, former congressman, recalls a “previously undisclosed meeting…at the Ritz Carlton hotel,” but details of Taylor’s “flirtation” with the senate run have “remained hidden.” Is this a story about a tryst or a political career?
When The Times finally gets to reporting on Taylor’s professional history, page A-3, she “mixes” with global leaders, sounding as if she were flitting about various soirees. Describing her position as chair of Action, there is no quote from Taylor from that time, but instead rockstar, Bono, saying: “Diana, you know how I feel about you. But don’t tell the mayor.”
Isn’t the New York Times supposed to be a bastion of the liberal media elite and sensitive to sexism? I guess when it comes to reporting on women, the only party that matters is the kind you dress up for and running for office is just like dating.
Joran Van der Sloot, the alleged killer of Natalee Holloway, the co-ed who disappeared in Aruba in 2005, was captured tonight in Chile. He’s under suspicion for the stabbing death of 21 year old Peruvian Stephany Flores. On June 2, Flores’s body was found in Lima, Peru in a hotel room registered to Van Der Sloot.
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Joran Van der Sloot, Natalee Holloway
Van der Sloot was arrested twice for Holloway’s killing. He was released twice due to lack of evidence. Part of the “lack of evidence” included Van der Sloot talking on video about Holloway’s death and how her body was taken out to sea. This video “did not incriminate” Van der Sloot because he claimed he was just trying to “impress a drug dealer.”
Violence against women is epidemic, but perpetrators like Van der Sloot, too often don’t get punished and become repeat offenders. There is little public awareness of the ubiquity of the crimes, and insufficient funding for education, prevention, prosecution, or protection for women.
When the media covers stories about victims like Natalee Holloway, it’s usually in the most sensationalistic, ineffective way. If the women are attractive, white, and middle class, as she was, networks endlessly recycle former cheerleading or prom photos. But rarely do Larry King, Greta van Susteren, or Bill O’Reilly and co. accompany these horrific stories with facts about how widespread violence against women is, featuring direct service workers, experts in the field, who can educate the public with real statistics and solutions.
Today, in the Bay Area, Roselyne Swig, founder of Partners Ending Domestic Abuse took a step towards helping to stop the violence in a more effective way. Swig convened a summit in San Francisco with leaders from Bay Area organizations committed to ending violence against women. Swig’s hope is that these Bay Area organizations will collaborate, providing a leadership position, bringing public awareness to this widespread issue, taking action to end it.
JaMel Perkins, Board President of Partners, opened the summit by sharing terrifying statistics including some of these:
31% of American women report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend.
Around the world, 1 in 3 women are beaten, coerced into sex or physically abused.
Women of all races and ethnicities are equally vulnerable to violence by a domestic partner.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women.
77% of those deaths occur in the first trimester.
Abused women are 60% more likely to require hospitalization while pregnant.
90% of our homeless population are victims of abuse.
The health-related costs of rape, physical assault, stalking and Homicide committed by domestic partners exceed $5.8 Billion each year. Nearly $4.1 billion of this is spent on direct medical and mental health care services.
1 in 5 female high school students reports being physically or sexually abused by a dating partner.
The summit was attended by representatives from Bay Area organizations including SF Child Abuse Center, Blue Shield Against Violence (the leading private DV funder in the state), La Casa de la Madres, the police department and DA’s office who convened to network and collaborate.
“Domestic violence is something we should all be concerned about,” said Swig. “We need to create a collaborative voice.”
Marcia Smolens of HMS Associates, a local lobbying group, urged advocates to use social media to bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence to create change.
Judy Patrick, President and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California, said that the goal of her foundation is to ensure that women and families are safe, healthy, and economically secure.
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Stephany Flores
Marj Plumb of the Women’s Policy Institute trains women leaders who work in direct service to affect change in Sacramento. Women working on the front lines need the skills to lobby legislators to make policy that will help women and prevent violence.
Plumb had the women at the summit break into groups and identify problems and solutions to eradicate violence. Most groups felt that education was key, including curriculum for kids at middle school level, educating families, cultural awareness, and men.
I wish the media was a better educator. It’s such a missed opportunity. Domestic violence, and all violence against women, should be renamed as “gender crimes,” receiving the elevated level of attention and punishment that hate crimes do. The word “domestic” has always softened the crime for me, a crime that’s already not taken nearly seriously enough. Too often, crimes against women are written off as cultural issues, a misunderstanding, a married woman can’t possibly be raped by her husband or alcohol was involved so no one is to blame, or she’s to blame, or the guy who said he raped her was “just bragging.”
If the Taliban had been named worldwide for what it was– gender apartheid– maybe there would have been the universal outrage against it that people felt for South Africa’s racist government. Instead, most Americans, even good old San Francisco liberals, looked away, ignoring a regime where women were beaten and murdered, daily by their husbands and fathers as part of “cultural ritual.”
This year Yale student Annie Le was murdered and stuffed into a wall; UVA star Lacrosse player, Yeardley Love was murdered by fellow lacrosse player, George Hughley; Bruce Beresford-Redmond, a producer of the show “Survivor” is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, Monica Beresford-Redmond, who was found dead in Mexico.
All of these killings received media attention, because these women were young, attractive, or middle class. Would we know about Peruvian Stephany Flores if Natalee Holloway hadn’t been killed by the same suspect? Maybe, her father is wealthy, but she’s got a strike against her: she’s not white. How many gender crimes happened today worldwide that we don’t know about? How many are happening right now?
Statistics say that in America 3 women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends every day.
The book is an adaptation for kids of a small segment (the story of building the first school) of Mortensens’s original book for grown ups, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace, a book that sold millions of copies chronicling his experience building schools, mostly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is an interview with the talented and prolific Susan L. Roth. (Full disclosure: Susan Roth is my godmother. She has never given me any spiritual guidance.)
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How did you come to partner with Greg Mortensen to write Listen to the Wind?
Actually, through a big collaboration with my dear friend from California high school days at Tamalpais High School. Julia Bergman, President Emeritus of Greg’s organization, the Central Asia Institute (also recently retired librarian of City College of San Francisco) carried the first library to the first school in Korphe, Baltisan, Pakistan, practically on her back!
I was in California one time about 14 years ago. We had breakfast together, and I asked her what she had been doing lately that was exciting. She told me all about her trip to Pakistan, activities with the Central Asia Institute and especially this school. She started with a description of the 24 different varieties of apricots that grow in the high valleys in Northern Pakistan and her images were so vivid that I could just see them in a collage in that moment. The story was compelling, too, and I said I wanted to write and illustrate a book about it, She said, “Do it!” And so I began. Incredibly, it took 12 years to find a publisher who was willing to take the chance to publish it.
By the time I was ready to start the illustrations, it was too dangerous for me to travel to Pakistan, but Julia supplied me with essential photographs, books, artifacts, stories, and primary sources, all of which enabled me to create the book without actually traveling there. I still want desperately to go there, of course, and I shall as soon as it is a little safer.
Greg helped too, with his first-hand reporting and his great knowledge of social and religious customs there. It is difficult to be aware of the subtleties of culture that are so very important when writing any book, especially one for children. I needed to be respectful and I needed to be accurate! With his and other’s help I think (hope!) I was able to be both.
Did you know Listen to the Wind would be a best-seller?
Absolutely not. No one can predict things like that.
Why do you think made the book so popular?
My gorgeous pictures? That’s a joke, Margot. Maybe my pictures helped a little, but surely the extraordinary success of the original book was the main reason. A close second was the brilliant merchandising of the three versions of the original story: grown-up, middle aged children’s, and picture book versions all were published together and inspired communities all over the country to do ‘whole town reads.’The result is the chance for book club type readings for whole families. It is interesting, uplifting, inspirational, an activity for everyone to do together.
Was it difficult to translate a book for adults into the kind of story kids could understand and relate to?
Not really. The story I tell is a very small piece of the whole, and I think it’s accessible to children since it’s about other children. They are different but essentially the same: kids and school.
Speaking of full disclosure, very good seller. Not best as in New York Times…
I heard Dolly Parton bought hundreds of copies and gave it to everyone she knew.
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No, much nicer and better. Dolly Parton is a major philanthropist with an intelligent, great and sensitive heart. She has a huge organization that provides books for children who otherwise might not be able to own them, all over the country. And she presents these books in a beautiful way to these children, by mailing them individually to their homes. I am a fierce admirer of Dolly Parton.
Is it a surprise to you when a book becomes popular…
Always!!
Or something you know is going to happen?
Never!
What do you think makes a book a hit with kids?
If only I could predict that.
You came out with A Dog’s New York, a sweet story about two dogs who keep each other company as they see Manhattan’s greatest sites. You rewrote the book after 9/11, re-titling it, It’s Still a Dog’s New York, transforming it into a book to help kids deal with the sadness, fear, and other repercussions of the attacks. How do you think being a New Yorker influences you as a writer?
Maybe I am a “writer of place.” Or at least an “illustrator of place.” I think I definitely am that– it’s sort of visual collage or inspirational collage– I paint, so to speak, what I see, maybe? Even the pictures in my book My Love for You All Year Round was sort of a New York book. the pictures were inspired by my own garden and the river I see from my back yard.
Did the stories you wanted to write about besides A Dog’s New York change at all after 9/11?
I don’t know. Do you think they did? Maybe I’m getting meatier, more serious I mean, in my old age. I really would like everyone to appreciate other cultures as I do, and to love their children and other people’s children and to have no wars. But I think I always believed and tried to express this sentimental but reasonable stuff. I’m a softie with exotic appreciations, I always have been. I have an web site/ art project that kids can do to help teach these ideas. Also, or anyway, I have to cover both fronts. When I wrote It’s a Dog’s New York, I had just moved here and New York was still exotic and foreign to me then, another country, really. The original version was really the story of my first New York neighbor, stereotypically very bossy and New Yorky, but well-meaning.
I started my blog ReelGirl, because I have three young daughters and was so frustrated with the lack of girls in starring roles in kids’ books and movies. Sometimes I feel like female authors don’t get it at all. Like why didn’t J. K. Rowling just make Harry Potter a girl?
You will not get many people questioning her choices of anything in those books from the point of view of publishing success!
The recently released movie hit “How to Train Your Dragon” was also based on a book by a woman with males in the leads. Then I wonder if my feminism is autocratic and stifling to creativity.
My mother had the same frustration when she was a kid about the lame plots for girls. She went to the Little Red Schoolhouse in New York City and one of her teachers, Mimi Levy, wrote and published a book called Corrie and the Yankee about a slave girl who escapes from the Deep South.
On the back of the book, Levy said my mom inspired her to write the story: “While she was teaching a fifth grade class, Jill, one of her pupils,complained that in books of adventure, it was almost always a boy who did anything of importance. Miss Levy promised Jill she would write a story about a girl doing lots of brave and stirring things.”Levy’s book came out in 1959, and here I am in 2010 blogging about the same issue!
One of my favorite of your books is Hard Hat Area, about a real life iron worker, the only female among many men.
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You know that all the background photographs were taken from the balcony of your mother’s apartment in New York City, right? And that even she has a cameo appearance in the montage, somewhere! Collages of place!
Another great feminist story you wrote is Brave Martha and the Dragon, about a girl who saves her town from a monster
Oh, this is funny, speaking of your mamma. On the way back from researching that book, I used to stop in Paris to see your mother, every time. I had forgotten that until this minute. And also, Brave Martha’s model is my daughter who came with me on several of those French trips. I do paint what I see!
I hear a lot of writers with girl protagonists featured in their books say they were inspired by their daughters. I love that!
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You also have a book called Princess, the illustrations are beautiful as usual but this protagonist talks a lot about her shoes and her gown. My mom told me you signed one of the original illustrations for my daughter, by mom never gave it to me because she said I wouldn’t like it. I feel bad about that!
She may just have been in one of her more acquisitive moods. I’ll make her give it back.
OK,its in the downstairs kids room. Though if you have any Brave Martha or Hard Hat Area, I might trade her! I wouldn’t have an issue with the whole princess thing if she was one character among many…
At least my princess was sort of naughty, and even though her mother finally made her go to school (you can’t really fault a mother for pushing education) Princess certainly tried to or at least imagines her rebellion first. And I guarantee that her mother would have made her brother, the Prince, get up and go to school too. If he had been the naughty one and if he had existed.
…OK, but it’s the princess’s dominance in girlworld that drives me bats. Maybe that’s true with you– you’ve written forty books about all kinds of people and creatures, one just happens to be a princess. Very long prelude to my big question here: do you think about gender when you write?
I surely did with Hard Hat Area— but the story presented itself pretty much as it is. Although the Princess-like heroine in real life is truly beautiful and even college educated English major (might as well get into class and education while we’re discussing) Kristen Doyle, her real name, decided she wanted to become an iron worker like all the boys in her family before her, at least 4 generations of them, and she still is a very good iron worker, too. I do not think I’d like to force the issue. Some people are boys. Some are white. Some people are rich. Some people are educated. What can you do? I want to tell the best stories I can write.
Most of your books are illustrated with collages. They are so beautiful and unique, I can easily recognize them passing quickly by a bookstore window.
Thank you, dear God-daughter!!
Your very first books were illustrated with woodblocking prints such as The Butterfly Kiss and also Patchwork Tales. Is collage your favorite form?
Yes, yes, yes!
What do you like about it?
It’s spontaneous, immediate, and fast!!!
Do you still do woodblocks?
No, but I still love looking at woodcuts in museums and books and walls.
What other kinds of materials do you use?
I use anything if it’s not edible i.e. rot-able or bug-attracting or too fragile, but I only work in collage.
You and my mother, who is a hand bookbinder, collaborated on The Christmas Story, a story about adoption featuring cats. The story has original handwritten manuscripts by you and is bound with needlepoint by my mother. It’s incredibly beautiful and was sold by the the great Paris bookdealer, Pierre Beres, for $50,000. The Catholic League was apparently offended that the cats had halos.
They were very well behaved cats, even if not too religious. Besides, the story happened on Christmas Eve and it was a little bit holy by default.
Do you think you’ll make a work of art like that again?
If your mother could be pulled out of retirement, I’d do one in a minute. I still have a whole set of collages left over from our second book that I never could quite get around to finishing before she moved away from Paris.
What are you working on now?
Answering your questions! And also, illustrating a book about the Watts Towers in Los Angeles on a tight deadline.
And another, about an incredible, amazing scientist who has begun to solve some of the problems of world hunger by creating forests on the coast of Eritrea.
And then ten small books for an e-publisher in Korea featuring my own grandchildren, against, what else, a background of New York City. Books of Place.
We recently discovered ReelGirl, a blog by writer and commentator Margot Magowan. She also co-founded the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, which provides professional training for young women. We decided to pick her brain about raising three daughters, her favorite blogs, and why dieting bored her to tears.
How do you instill a healthy body image in your daughters?
I tell my daughters they’re beautiful “on the inside and the outside,” all the time. It’s kind of cheesy but I think it works, and it’s true! I also tell them how smart and strong they are. When I hear them ask each other what pet, animal or creature in a book illustration is the “cutest” or “prettiest” I interrupt and say, “But what does she do? Is she smart? Is she strong? Does she have fun? Is she happy?” Whenever possible, I try to take the emphasis off of appearances. I try not to say disparaging things about how I look or the way other women look, even positive stuff, actually, like comment on the hair or make up or outfits of women on TV or in magazines. I hide my Us Weekly!
You wear a lot of hats–writer, speaker, mom, wife–what do you do when you need to recharge?
My kids go to bed at 7 p.m. I get dates confused, I’m often late for appointments, but those kids are on a schedule and that schedule hardly changes! That way, I know when it’s my time. I love spending that time with my husband, reading, hanging out with friends, or seeing a movie. I love to walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I’d love to say I wake up at five a.m. and meditate, but I don’t. It’s on my list.
What do you see as some of the greatest internal or self imposed barriers that keep women from succeeding professionally?
I think a lot of women for one reason or another have bought into a split (that men aren’t subject to at all) that they have to choose between being a “good mom” or being successful professionally. I don’t feel that division emotionally. Having kids has made me more ambitious and much more financially responsible. I’m a better mother and more present for my kids when I spend time away from them in other ways that fulfill me.
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Carly Fiorina
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