In response to the tremendous human toll that cluster munitions have
inflicted in Laos and many other parts of the world, the University YMCA
and First Mennonite Church of Urbana are sponsoring an exhibition
entitled Daily Terror. Titus Peachy's presentation will discuss the
impact of cluster bomb
munitions on civilian populations as well as the work of MCC and others
to advocate for their elimination.
Produced by the Mennonite
Central Committee of the Mennonite Church USA and Canada, this display
presents stories and graphic images of devastation and pain that cluster
bombs
inflict upon civilian populations decades after their deployment in a
conflict. The project also presents the advocacy work and on-the-ground
ordnance clearing efforts that Mennonite Central Committee and other
non governmental agencies have engaged in for many years.
Titus Peachy is the Director
of Peace Education for the Mennonite Central Committee. Titus registered
as a conscientious objector and performed alternative service in
Vietnam from 1970-1973. He and his wife Linda worked with MCC in Laos
from 1980-1985. Titus later returned to Laos to help coordinate the
Cluster
Bomb Removal Project. The MCC Peace Education Program engages in a broad
range of peace advocacy as well as coordinating with other peace
organizations and those engaged in cluster bomb and mine clearance work. Visitors to the exhibit will have the opportunity to join the postcard
campaign in support of the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act.
Daily Terror is a free event and will be on view at the University YMCA from October 23 until October
28, 2011 (9am-9pm daily).
Please note: Titus Peachey can be heard on WILL's Keepin' the Faith hosted by Steve Shoemaker on Sunday, October 23, 5:00pm.
Waveland,
Mississippi was actual ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. It was the
worst hit beach on the Mississippi gulf coast from the BP oil spill.
Historically, natural and human forces have tried to claim it. This
exhibition presents Valerie Oliviero's landscape photographs, part of
her continuing study of transition and intervention in space.
Oliveiro is Singapore-born, self taught photographer. She is now the
resident photographer at
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and before that she was a
freelance Production
Manager and Stage Manager for 14 years. She received an MFA (Yale School
of Drama) in Stage Management and has worked with international
artists in performing arts venues and festivals all around the world.
Her photos have appeared in the New York Times, American Theatre
Magazine and Time Out.
This exhibition will be open at the University YMCA from October 14 -
December 23, 2011 (Monday through Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm each day). Free and open to the public.
Bolokada Conde, master drummer and expert
of Malinke rhythms, will play a free show at the University YMCA on September
16th at 7:00pm with his band, Rhythm Manding.
One of the
world's best djembe players from Kissidougou, Guinea, Bolokada Conde has been living in the
midst of Champaign-Urbana since 2008.
Only a year
after he was awarded immigrant status with extraordinary ability in the arts,
he became a full-time visiting artist at UIUC and gave drumming classes at the University, for the community,
and in public schools (as part of the "World Music and Dance in
the Schools" program).
Bolokada Conde has
traveled all over the world to perform, has created several albums, and has
been featured in the IMAX movie, ‘Pulse: a STOMP Odyssey.’ He is the subject of
an upcoming documentary, ‘Bolokada Conde, Malinke Village Djembefola.’
The
performance is hosted in partnership with the Spurlock Museum. This event is sponsored in part by the Illinois Arts
Council, a state agency.
Only Denny Anderson knew the answer to that question before he spoke at his Art @ the Y exhibition opening. If you're curious about why a treehouse has become an art exhibition, just wait until you come to the Y and see what he has built with the help of his troop and many volunteer. Simply stated, it’s a work of art.
The Treehouse, also called ‘Green 17’ after the troop that built it, is located at Camp Drake. It’s a four season, 15 bunk, 400 square foot piece of heaven. Quite literally, its green efficiency was can be equated to the earth itself. Every aspect of the treehouse’s construction was informed by the three things that sustain life in the face of cold space and the hot sun: Mass, Glass, and Insulation.
Answer: Mass, Glass, and Insulation
Day-to-night and seasonally, the Earth insulates life. Our atmosphere and the mass of the planet keep temperatures from changing as extremely as they do in space. For instance, Denny informed the crowd that astronauts are subject to temperatures changing between -200 degrees while hidden from the sun and +200 degrees in the light of the sun. Fortunately, the insulating qualities of the earth can be applied to spaceships... and houses!
Unfortunately, as Denny is quick to point out, we are practically divorced from our environment, especially in the way we construct houses. In ancient times, people knew that because things get coldest just before dawn, it’s best to have windows pointed not due south, but 15 degrees east toward the morning sun to take advantage of the first warmth from the rising sun.
“This isn’t PhD work,” Denny remarks, “this is the environment.”
The cabin he has built is so super-insulated that even in the dead of winter it doesn’t need a furnace.
When the home inspectors asked him, “What’s your heat source?” Denny replied, “Boys.”
Because his ceiling is R-100, walls are R-60, and floors are R-40 (three times the normal insulation installed in a house), only 1 BTU is needed to heat the entire place to a comfortable temperature. 15 boyscouts provide a good deal more than 1 BTU of heat.
“But what about in the summertime?” asked a member of the audience, “15 boys also produce a lot of heat when it’s hot out...”
Denny answered, “The easiest way to keep a building cool is not to let it get hot.”
He described the treehouse’s ventilation system, equipped with a radiant attic barrier, vented from top to bottom and cooled through ridge vents. The air conditioning system is also composed of screens and shade. One mature oak is equivalent to 10 tons of A/C and the structure is built solidly among and between tall trees. The best way to keep a place cool in the summer is to open it up at night and close it during the day. If it’s insulated properly, that’s the coolest way to be. In that way, Denny compares modern construction to motorboats, when really we should be building houses more like sailboats, as he has done.
How it was built
Serendipitously. And with great skill. And with a ton of eager volunteers.
At every turn, Denny encountered just what he was looking for at 90% off or donated by a vendor who said “I don’t really know why we kept this around, but you can have it,” and then handed over a well-insulated window or door that fit the cabin perfectly.
On the other hand, what Denny calls serendipity also appears to be shrewd and persistent sense for what local vendors can provide if you know what to ask for. He got a thousand dollar granite cooktop for free because it was cracked. He cut a hole in it, put in a cutting board, and now it’s ready to be a home for propane-powered boyscout cookstoves. But largely, Denny is incredibly grateful for the generosity of all those people who gave materials and discounts, helping to make the construction possible.
Apparently, it was a heck of a lot of fun to build too! Denny says, “Volunteers would call on a Thursday to see if they could help out over the weekend.” Scouting is supposed to be fun, “and you can’t even say ‘treehouse’ without having some fun.”
The skill of the construction and adaptability demonstrated in the use of assorted materials can really only be understood by visiting the cabin or coming by the Y to check out all the photos and materials we have on exhibition. It’s worth a trip.
“I see this as a live-in laboratory, not just for kids but for the adults who come in there.”
Denny laughs and tells us that “even the carmudgeons will say ‘Can I go out to the balcony?’”
The boys who go through the cabin for a week or a weekend come out with a totally different perspective on green building and having a lifestyle that works hand in hand with the environment around us. It’s wheelchair accessible from one side, so really anyone can experience what the treehouse has to offer, and should.
After all, as Denny says, “You get more education by living in it than reading about it.”
What next?
Denny wants other people to build treehouses that also become platforms for learning (and fun). He describes the possibilities, “My hope is that other individuals and units will get involved and do treehouses... I can see them doing a Mirror House that is impossible to find without directions, or an Ewok Village - there’s no limit.”
EXHIBITION OPEN UNTIL OCTOBER 5TH, 2011. M-F 9am-5pm . Murphy Gallery
Designer, builder and Scoutmaster, Denny Anderson has created a living laboratory of green construction and technology for the Boy Scouts of Camp Drake. His treehouse cabin is built from cast off, donated, reused or repurposed materials and is powered by a passive solar system with a bicycle back-up.
The triangular cabin is built at the edge of a ravine with one of the three cantilevering points touching ground level to provide wheelchair access. Fifteen bunk beds, a loft, food prep and storage spaces provide a compact functional space. Area Boy Scouts will soon be learning about more than knots, tents and campfire building.
This exhibition will be open at the University YMCA from August 19th through early October. Images, blueprints, and materials on display guide visitors through the design and construction of the completely off-the-grid sustainable project that will help to school a new generation of environmentally aware, active and competent young people.
On Saturday, July 9, 2011, Aaron Johnson-Ortiz shared his work with local friends at his open studio in his home. Aaron is the Y's Community Engagement Coordinator through AmeriCorps, but is also a photographer, artist, and is working on an accompanying creative non-fiction novel to this exhibit.
He describes "Exile & Utopia" as:
...a semi-fictional illustrated novel that traces the journey of a group of exiled Mexican journalists in the early twentieth century. The journalists escape repression through the American South and Midwest, connect with local organizers in St. Louis, Missouri, flee to Canada on the railroad through Champaign, and attempt to launch an ultimately failed revolution in Mexico from El Paso, Texas. A century later, "Exile & Utopia" retraces this failed precursor of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 with photographs of the erased historic sites where the group hid and worked, a narrative based on intercepted correspondence and private detective notes, and abstract drawings that chart the growth and constriction of the movement.
His home exhibition was an extension of his persona in a way that normal gallery shows can't accomplish, lending a realness and visceral quality to the body of black and white artwork. Trees and a brick chimney were the only visible color against the walls of the room, and that only appearing as a backdrop through glass windows. The painted walls and floor had a nonchalant, white-washed effect that framed each printed work with age, texture, and grace. The black line drawings over many-veined city and railroad maps were mitochondrial and organic while also displaying the type of entrapment that was clear in the text of the art's direct political message. The large-scale photograph prints were grainy like newsprint, interspersed with the hand drawn maps. The works were numbered so any viewer might experience the flow of artworks much as Aaron experienced the journey along the same path as the journalists he trailed. Even if viewers of the exhibit were three times removed from the original event, there was just as much a sense of primary source, gritty voyeurism (through photographs of the locations where the journalists lived or died) as abstract sense of a larger voyage in which anyone can participate by walking, watching, or simply being surrounded in that white room. I can't wait to read the book.
Aaron grew up shuttling between southern Mexico, where he worked as a volunteer artist with Zapatista cooperatives, and the American Midwest, where he participates in immigrant rights' movements. His work retracing the exiled precursors of the Mexican Revolution in the United States was born of a desire to retell and reactivate the long but erased history of solidarity and common struggle between the two regions.
At the Y, he works with student groups like La Colectiva to support immigrant and undocumented rights. Among many other projects and workshops, he has organized ACT LAB (Activist Laboratory), a pilot program held in the spring semester of 2011 that introduced emerging student leaders to methodologies and traditions of activism. ACT LAB workshops emphasized interactivity rather than lecturing, and engaged students in a wide range of social justice and environmental issues. He has also organized and arrange the Immigrant Helpline (217-417-5897) to assist local Spanish-speaking immigrant with translation and help finding resources.
A Flickr photoset of Aaron's open studio show is available here.
