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John Lyon Paul: Nagasaki Prayerwheel : "History is an artery through which flows every story in every language. Once in a great while an event so unspeakable occurs that the narrative ruptures . . . and all our words run out. I was born in New York State in 1943, a year-an-a-half after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and two-and-a-half years before the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the spring of 2007, I decided to do something to help us heal from the wounds of the Nuclear Age. In the spring of 2009, exactly two years from the day of my first conceptual drawings, Nagasaki Prayerwheel turned for the first time. It is my intention to have this sculpture become a gift from the people of the United States of America to the people of Japan. Everything about the form of Nagasaki Prayerwheel is meant to support the growth of compassion. The shapes cut through the inner, turning, double-cut drums are, from bottom to top, shapes of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Through the upper "windows" you can see the cycle of the phases of the moon. The ball at the top of the sculpture represents the Sun which shines on all the Earth and her beings. Only after a year of cutting, grinding, and welding the steel was I ready to find the "voice" of Nagasaki Prayerwheel. This process took me all of two months. As the prayerwheel turns, you can hear a ringing, brass carillon whose dominant tones form a G-Major triad. These tones are supported by a hive of overtones and harmonies. Each chime contains a C#, the sound associated with Om, the universal sound. With each rotation, a string attached to the uppoer drum is plucked, and it is the steel itself which resonates. I associated this tone, and each turning, with yet another particular individual whose life has been affected by the shadow of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki. The figure of a child, my dear friend Angelina, is incised in the steel body of the sculpture. This imprint recalls those who were incinerated. This imprint reaches forward with hope. With each turning, the song of Nagasaki Prayerwheel moves into the world. May you have Peace." --- John Lyon Paul For more on the making of the Nagasaki Prayerwheel, visit this site: http://johnlyonpaul.com/NAGASAKI-PRAYERWHEEL-1/Nagasaki-Prayerwheel-1/9620887_zLUxf/1/657920621_UBmsg/Original BIOGRAPHY: John Lyon Paul is married to Katy Gottschalk. They have two grown children, Sarah and Alexander, and a god-daughter, Elizabeth. John and Katy live at Frog Heaven, 27 acres with three ponds and a woods on a hilltop near Ithaca, in the Finger Lakes area of New York State. John has been creating paintings and sculptures for over 35 years. He works in the large studio he built on their property in the late 1980's. In addition to an art gallery and a materials storeroom, the building has three studios which allow him to move freely among projects involving various processes and in different stages of development. Many of his works are displayed on his new website:http://johnlyonpaul.com STATEMENT: "The act of walking has been described as a controlled fall in which we lean forward and out-of-balance in order to initiate motion. Once our inertia is broken, we must either take a step or fall on our faces. Making art is like walking. In involves leaning into the unknown, but with a sense of destination. For me, it is like finding my way home through woods and across streams in the darkness of night. All my senses are engaged, but it is upon my inner compass that I must rely. My path has led me to work in both two and three dimensional forms, and to employ a wide range of materials and processes. Paintings draw us into their worlds. We move through them as in a dream, drawn and released by the pulse of color and the energy of line. Mine grow like crystals. I often think of them as musical. Sculptures take their place among us in the world. We relate to them with our bodies. Mine are magnetized by silence. Their presence witnesses. Their stillness invites us to listen. My artworks come through me and are shaped by me but they are not primarily about me. They are like the paper on which a seismographic needle records the subtlest shimmer of the floating world while assuming a bedrock substantiallity. They are meditations. My creative process is an act of faith." --JLP

John Lyon Paul: Nagasaki Prayerwheel

Jonathan Hyman Documentary Photographer 9/11 memorials :

Jonathan Hyman Documentary Photographer 9/11 memorials

Updated: May 07, 2009 10:41am PST

Jonathan Hyman lecture tour Fall 2008 :

Jonathan Hyman lecture tour Fall 2008

Updated: Nov 10, 2009 10:28am PST

Summer Institute in Sri Lanka 2004 :

Summer Institute in Sri Lanka 2004

Updated: Sep 17, 2008 6:46am PST

My SmugMug :

My SmugMug

Updated: May 07, 2009 10:41am PST

speakers : Visit the Asch Center homepage: www.aschcenter.org.

speakers

Visit the Asch Center homepage: www.aschcenter.org.

Updated: Feb 24, 2009 8:18am PST

Israel wall 2006 by Marc Ross : temporary

Israel wall 2006 by Marc Ross

temporary

Updated: Jul 28, 2009 8:52am PST

seminar visitors : speakers

seminar visitors

speakers

Updated: Apr 07, 2009 11:43am PST

Solomon Asch high resolution photos :

Solomon Asch high resolution photos

Updated: May 07, 2009 9:30am PST

My Smug Mug :

My Smug Mug

Updated: May 07, 2009 10:44am PST

Portraits of VC Exhibitors :

Portraits of VC Exhibitors

Updated: Nov 10, 2009 10:28am PST

Muriel Hasbun Photographer : I began investigating my family’s history in the early 1990’s, in an effort to confront the "Other" within me. Through my photo-based work, I explore notions of territory, memory, and home. I collect the voices buried deep within my diasporic self, and I confront the resulting amalgam of my identity. Through an intergenerational, transnational and transcultural lens, I craft a language that expresses a shared humanity, while erasing the borders that maintain our "Otherness." My work is an embodied response to the ripple effect of violence in the world, through four generations of my now plural, diasporic family. Faced with the outbreak of war, persecution, and/or religious intolerance, my family members either were caught (and murdered), hid from danger, and/or fled their countries of origin. Daughter of a Palestinian/Salvadoran Christian and a Polish/French Jew, and now living in the United States, I rescue the otherwise silent voices of my family and I try to understand the emotional repercussions of events that I myself did not live but unquestionably carry within. The unspoken lessons of surviving the Holocaust as well as the loss of a homeland in Palestine echoed on the walls of my house as I grew up in tension-filled El Salvador. With Santos y sombras/Saints and Shadows, I trace my family’s various exiles and diasporas. The Palestinian desert and Eastern European ash sift, shift and blend in the volcanic sands of El Salvador, to form the texture of the path on which I define and express my experience. Muriel Hasbun is a 2006-08 Fulbright Scholar and Associate Professor and Coordinator of Fine Art Photography at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. She is the recipient of numerous distinctions and awards, including a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Media (2008) and the Corcoran’s Outstanding Creative Research Faculty Award (2007). Hasbun’s photo-based work has been exhibited at the American University Museum (2008), NYU’s Hemispheric Institute’s “Encuentro” at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires (2007); the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego (2007); Houston’s FotoFest (2006), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (2004); the 50th Venice Biennale (2003); the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City (1999); and at the 29ème Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (1998). Her photographs are in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Museum of the Americas, Lehigh University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. http://www.murielhasbun.com

Muriel Hasbun Photographer

Melanie Blanding: Women in War Zones : In August 2005, Melanie Blanding was part of a humanitarian needs assessment team that was looking for ways to respond to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan and the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Because national media was heavily covering circumstances in Darfur at the time, Blanding was prepared for what she saw when the team arrived in Sudan. However scant news coverage had been dedicated to the DRC and the violence women were being subjected to there was shocking. Blanding returned to Western Kentucky University for her senior year committed to finding a way to return to the DRC and use photography to raise awareness about the gross human rights violations openly taking place with impunity against women. Through self-funding, support from family and friends, and grants from the Alexia Foundation, the Virginia Press Photographers Association and Western Kentucky University, Blanding was able to return to Bukavu, Congo for two months during the summer of 2006. Two filmmakers, Blanding’s brother Scott and his friend Brad LaBriola, returned with her to produce a documentary on the same subject. The three lived within the gates of Panzi Hospital allowing them to develop close friendships with the women being treated there. Since completing her project in the DRC Blanding has been traveling to deliver lectures about her work and has attended conferences to promote awareness and encourage an end to the violence in Congo. Blanding and the two film makers formed an organization called “Made Known”, an entity that serves to distribute their work and host the “Wamu Fund “ – a literacy aid program in memory of one of the women featured in Made Known’s film, Women in War Zones. The National Press Photographers Association awarded the Congo portrait series of scarred women 3rd place in its annual International Best of Photography contest. The series was also included in a portfolio for which Blanding was awarded Kentucky College Photographer of the Year in 2007. Blanding recently lectured at the Monmouth Museum in New Jersey, presented at the Americans for Informed Democracy conference in London, and has met with high school and university students in Kentucky and Virginia. Additionally she has shared her work with photography clubs and women’s and missions groups at churches in Virginia. Blanding has exhibited her work at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, VA, Western Kentucky University, Syracuse University London Program, and in Philadelphia, PA to promote awareness and encourage an end to the violence in Congo. Recently she began master’s degree work in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, England. Upon completing her degree, she plans to continue humanitarian photography. Melanie Blanding is affiliated with Made Known, LLC (www.womeninwarzones.org).

Melanie Blanding: Women in War Zones

Kelly Creedon:Freeport Flag Ladies : “The “Freeport Flag Ladies” Since September 11, 2001 Elaine Greene, Joann Miller, and Carmen Footer have lived and breathed the American flag, reshaping their lives as a direct response to the September 11th attacks. Each Tuesday morning, they take their patriotic message to the corner of School and Main Streets in Freeport, Maine where they wave flags and greet passing cars with a smile. Over the past seven years, their mission has expanded to include other activities, such as greeting troop flights at Bangor International Airport and Pease International Trade Port, sending care packages to service men and women overseas, and attending local military and veterans’ functions. These three retired, divorced women have lived together since 1993, essentially becoming a family through the years. Their work with the troops, supported almost entirely through their own financial resources, has evolved into an all-consuming endeavor, with the women even dressing exclusively in red, white, and blue. Documentary photographer Kelly Creedon met the “Freeport Flag Ladies” during her semester at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. Creedon was intrigued by the ideas of patriotism and trauma, collective and personal. In her inquiries with various local veterans’ organization she came across the “Freeport Flag Ladies”. Working with a fellow Salt student, Creedon spent winter and spring of 2008 documenting the life and mission of the Flag Ladies. Excerpts from the project were first exhibited as part of the group show “Reverb” at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine, in May of 2008. Ms. Creedon completed the graduate study program in documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, where she was awarded first prize in the Institute’s photography competition and received a scholarship to fund her studies. Her recent work has focused on issues of immigration, labor, and economic and social justice, and her clients and partner organizations include the Christian Science Monitor, the Portland Press Herald, SEIU Local 615, City Life/Vida Urbana, and WBUR’s Radio Boston. She was recently awarded a Puffin Foundation grant for emerging artists to continue her work documenting communities affected by the foreclosure crisis in the greater Boston area. For more of her work, please visit her website: www.kellycreedon.com. These photos are displayed courtesy of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Kelly Creedon:Freeport Flag Ladies

“The “Freeport Flag Ladies” Since September 11, 2001 Elaine G ...

Updated: Apr 27, 2009 5:10am PST