Reflections of Healing (2014)

Reflections of Healing

2014 | Oakland, CA

PROJECT PARTNERS:

Eastside Arts Alliance
Oakland Asian Cultural Center
YMCA of the East Bay
Oakland Museum of California
Oakland’s Life is Living festival
Youthspeaks
The Downtown Oakland Association
Friends of DeFremery Park
City of Oakland’s Parks and Recreation and Cultural Arts & Marketing Division

Life is Living (LIL) is an initiative that actively adopts alternatives to enhance the quality of life for community residents through partnerships between diverse and under-resourced communities, green action agencies, and the contemporary arts world. Since 2008, LIL has been hoted annually as an eight-hour interdisciplinary, intergenerational, eco-equity performance event at DeFremery Park in West Oakland together with Youth Speaks Inc./the Living Word Project, the Friends of DeFremery Park, Hood Games, the Estria Foundation, the Oakland Public Library, and others. LIL serves as: (1) a means to continue a conversation focused on empowering community and (2) a catalyst to foster collaborations and partnerships throughout the year in the service of youth and arts in Oakland.

A cornerstone of LIL is the Reflections of Healing project (ROH) that combines wellness, community engagement, and art making into a participatory framework for reducing disparities and supporting the attainment of full health potential. Since 2011, the ROH project celebrated community through the collection, preservation, and communication of local anecdotes of healing with public installations and participatory art activities in non-commercial venues. Prominent Oakland residents were selected as models of healing, pictured as adolescents in public artworks to emphasize the collective potential of youth in the creation of loving community. These portraits were showcased in highly utilized public spaces including city parks, downtown storefronts, the Oakland Museum of California, and branches of the Oakland Public Library. As collaborative multimedia displays, the project engaged new populations, including younger and widely diverse participants.

Fieldworks: Reflections of Healing

Film by RAVA Films
From A Blade of Grass on Vimeo.

A short documentary film that provides a window into Reflections of Healing, Cook's interdisciplinary practice, and a beloved festival that continues to anchor healing and community power in Oakland, CA.

ROH 2014: Process

Click to view the PATH EDvance Evaluation Report

ROH Healer Kathy Ahoy source portrait

Nine prominent Oakland-based healers were selected with help from the Eastside Arts Alliance, the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, the YMCA of the East Bay, and organizers from Oakland's Life is Living Festival. The healers were chosen to represent diverse roles in the community such as educator, public health worker, immigrant rights activist, journalist, printmaker, and performance artist.

They were pictured as adolescents to emphasize the collective potential of youth in the creation of a loving and healthy community.

ROH 2014: Process

ROH interview process

Each model was invited to generate a question about healing, which was combined into an interview sheet that served as the basis for each all of the interviews. By combining questions, participants collectively defined the parameters of the dialogue with freedom to answer questions as broadly or specifically as they wished.

ROH 2014: Process

Kathy Ahoy by Brett Cook Ink on Prepared Polyester. 11” X 14,” 2014.

The healers are pictured as adolescents in the work, emphasizing the collective potential of youth. Using photographs chosen by each subject, meticulous line drawings were made that are map-like markings where dark and light values meet. Sometimes the borders are obvious, like the edge of a shirt collar, or the curve of a cheekbone. Other times, the gradation from dark to light is subtle, even invisible, so the drawings become abstract documents of the portrait terrain.

ROH 2014: Process

Community members and the healers themselves came to the DeFremery Park Social Hall to assist in the large-scale projection of the original drawings. The projections were 8’H X 12’W each, and were examples of reflection and action, dialogue and meditation.

ROH 2014: Process

Traci Bartlow in process with models, family members, OMCA staff, cinematographers and community members at Defremery/Little Bobby Hutton Park, June 2014.

ROH 2014: Process

Working with the collaborative drawings, Cook uses the lines made by members of the community to inspire broader strokes of color and light. The project celebrates past, present, and future models of healing in an inclusive conversation between Cook, the portrait subjects, their support networks, and the larger community.

ROH 2014: Process

DeFremery/Little Bobby Hutton Park, October 2014

ROH portraits were installed as participatory sites for reflection and action throughout DeFremery/Little Bobby Hutton Park at the 2014 Life is Living Festival. Chalkboard process walls invited festival attendees to meditate on the models’ interview questions and share their own reflections on the installation. Other elements included a wellness clinic providing workshops, healing services, movement classes and consultations.