MCC DV Awareness Conference

Last Wed, October 24th, Mesa Community College had a Domestic Violence Awareness Conference with a series of wonderful speakers and workshops. I met a lot of really great people. It was my first experience promoting the portrait project, and I found the whole event very rewarding.

I was really amazed at how many resources there are for this issue. Although I have been looking for organizations to approach about the project, I had never heard of several of the groups represented at the conference. In one way it's wonderful how much service there is; in another way it's not so wonderful how obscure they are. At least they are available and the web really helps to get the word out, but there is always more that can be done.

Venues

I've received a lot of enthusiasm about this project from all kinds of people. It seems to be a good idea, but I've run into a significant snag. Where to have the exhibit.

To date there are six volunteers for the project and I just completed the first one in pastel. I'm very excited to present the portrait and give the copy to her. Having enough pieces for a show doesn't seem to be a problem at this point, which counters previous questions on "who will volunteer." Now, who will provide space for the show?

I thought 12 months in advance was enough time to approach venues; however, I'm finding most places are already booked past October, 2008. I've spent many hours on the phone talking to people, networking to find a suitable venue, but nothing so far.

There are so many great artists out there all competing for the same spaces, so the difficulty of scheduling a show in the right place is not so surprising. But then, there's the Internet. Could an online gallery and fundraiser be the answer? (feel free to email me personally on this post if you like)

Video for Future Thought

I came across this website, Women Against Domestic Violence. The organization has a really great site and reaches across to women all over the world. They have a memory page for deceased victims, a survivor forum, Myspace layouts as well as the standard info on domestic violence. They cover people from all walks of life. If you visit the site, you must at least see the video on the main page.

Whoever came up with and executed the idea did a fabulous job. The clip is the perfect visual of children learning by example. A lot of parents know that kids are observant and pick up things from them, but if they could really see their child mimicking an exact behavior, good or bad, I think they'd be surprised at how much adults influence the future generation. In many cases, I bet they wouldn't like it one bit.

I personally don't have kids (just kitties and a tortoise), but I try to watch what I say and do when I'm around my nieces and nephews or my friend's children. Sometimes another person's kid is more willing to talk to me about school, or boys, or whatever than she or he is with a parent. That means, I'm probably being watched for monkey do acts, which makes sense since a lot of stuff is learned from watching people on TV. It all goes back to learning by example.

Introductions

When I tell people about my plans for this portrait project. The first question they ask is, "why do you want to do this?" and "Why domestic violence?" Good questions! As a budding artist, I enjoy making cool and pretty things, but... what if I could use visual arts for education? Yes, there are photos and computer technology, however, there is something special about a handmade portrait, don't you think? Cameras are great, but impersonal, and when you consider the subject of domestic violence, that's pretty darn personal.

How about the fact that one in three women are victims of abuse worldwide. According to the CDC, 5.3 million incidents of Intimate Partner Violence occur against women in the US every year along with 3.2 incidents against men. That's just the reported cases. Wow. Like most people, I didn't realise. I could go on and on, but what really struck me was that, in Phoenix metro, thousands of women are turned away each year from shelters because there aren't enough beds. That's pretty sad.

Through visual art, with enough people, I can share stories of domestic violence using portraiture to raise awareness on the issue, and just mabe, sell them to raise funds or collect donations at the exhibit. The question now is "who will volunteer to share their story?". As of this post, I have two beautiful and wonderful volunteers with very surprising and different stories to share. In its beginning, this journey has already blown my own preconceived notions about domestic violence. Now that's pretty exciting.