OUTREACH | SOCIAL PRACTICE: (selected projects)

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Throughout my arts career I have tried to creatively apply my unique skills for mentoring and engaging  those less fortunate and support "causes" that I hope lead to a more ethical equitable world.

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Hey, Listen Up! An Urban Eco Literacy Project on Environmental Racism/Justice, Watts/Compton, LA, CA (1997)

This collaborative project — co-produced by Jo Ann Gillerman and Belvie Rooks — was sponsored by Carl Anthony, Urban Habitat Program of Earth Island Institute, San Francisco, California. We developed a curriculum for urban environmental literacy related to South Central Los Angeles region.  I gave hands-on workshops in Multimedia and directed production of Hey, Listen Up! interactive CD-ROM created in part by the participating group of high-school students. On completion of the on-site portion of this project, we sponsored four participating summer interns of this Eco-literacy Project in South Central Los Angeles to Berkeley, California, for a reception and special showing of the Hey, Listen Up! interactive CD-ROM at the African American Studies Program, UC Berkeley.

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ELECTRO-HEALING Interactive Installation (1993)

An interactive Installation, directed by Jo Ann Gillerman/Professor, with a selection of individual works of participating students in the New Media Class, was accepted/exhibited in Tomorrow's Realities Art Show, Siggraph, 1993, Lost Angeles, CA. I traveled with a diverse group of students of the New Media Class to Los Angeles to install and exhibit these works on an international stage in the "real world".  Electro-Healing is a virtual environment that we believe is cross-cultural, deals with some relevant political and social issues in a refreshing way, and is technologically unique and friendly for its participants. (more about Electro-Healing)

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Presentations/Workshops, Astronomy Studies Group, Burckhalter Elementary School, Oakland, California  (2017-2022)

• "Science Night" introducing very young students and their parents to Virtual Reality in an Art/Science context. (2018)

• Presentation on Eclipses (and volcanoes on request of the teacher) to the (after school) K-5 Astronomy Studies Group included hands-on workshops creating "pin-hole" cameras for safe-viewing of the sun, prior to 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, that was partial in California. (2017)

• I continued to work with the K-12 Astronomy Studies Group, students vary each year, who formed the core group for the Art-Pod/nonprofit's collaborative projects: "Our Location in the Universe" (2021-2022)  (more about these projects)

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