View allAll Photos Tagged Hunger
...
Untitled (Hunger 19), 1996, 7" x 7" x 4", tempera on ceramic bowl, private collection.
This painting is from a series of 21 paintings on the bottom surface of traditional Korean bowls - done for an exhibition I had in Seoul, Korea in 1997. Recently, as I was writing some thoughts on my work to a colleague, it occurred that I had not explained publicly my thinking about and reason for making this work. This seems pretty important given the problematic territory that this work wanders into. What follows is an excerpt from my correspondence:
Around 1995 the “special needs” school that our daughter Temma had been attending for 6 years – Lakeview Learning Center – was preparing to close. I was working at the school on a large painting (titled Big Picture) of the classroom for “severely and profoundly disabled” children that Temma was part of. While working on this large painting I was given a collection of miscellaneous photographs documenting the students in their daily life at the school. Also around this time I was offered an exhibition with a gallery in South Korea, the country where I grew up (my parents were medical missionaries). I decided to make work for this show based on the photographs that I had been given of students from Lakeview Learning Center as a way of making present a population that was largely invisible / marginalized in Korea at that time. My goal in making these paintings was to select photographs that (for me) most powerfully expressed the humanity of these children. In making the paintings my intent was to try to represent them as best as I could in accordance to how I perceived them via the photographs: that is, as completely and compellingly human. Despite my ambivalence about using other people’s photographs as sources for paintings, these photographs – apparently taken by the staff of the school - offered a kind of “objective” perspective on the children somewhat fitting for my relative distance from them personally. That said, to the extent that these children were part of a community of which my daughter was a part I felt it was appropriate to make paintings based representing them.
This latter point is important in relation to the fundamental intent of this project. While I was attempting to portray the children in all their individuality evident in the photographic sources, I was doing so with the primary goal of presenting them as a community: a community as evidently diverse and complex (in various respects) as any other.
There is a well-known (in Korea) poem by the Korean Catholic “Minjung” writer Kim Chi Ha that has an essentially Eucharistic refrain: “God is rice”. In allusion to that poem I decided to do a series of 21 paintings on Korean rice bowls (a very commonly used kind of bowl). More specifically, as an allusion to the marginalization of this population I made the paintings on the bottom / underside (typically unseen) surface of the bowls. In using the rice bowl I not only wanted to draw a connection to Kim Chi Ha’s poem, but further to the movement of Minjung Art that had grown in vitality at the ending period of Korea’s long dictatorship (the early ‘80s). The Minjung Art movement (which, especially in the person of the artist Im Ok Sang, had been very influential for me) made the empowerment of the poor and the marginalized their priority. My hope was to situate the subject of the work I was making – at that time still a largely marginalized community - in the context of the Minjung political imperative.
In this work I was attempting to represent these children as faithfully as I could. It might be helpful to unpack my thinking “representation” a bit: Painting, particularly realistic / representational painting is frequently thought of / received in relation to the convention of “mastery”. That is, when one makes a realistic painting it might be understood as an artists’ claim of mastery and, implicitly, as their claim to an authority over the subject represented. I do not have any interest in that way of approaching painting. I am interested in painting that is a kind of conversation with the material used to make it (as opposed to painting as about control or domination of the material). No less importantly, I’m interested in painting as a regarding of the subject in humility: an attempt to represent the subject as honestly, accurately and respectfully as possible. Put another way: painting for me is learning how to make this painting in relation to trying to understand and represent this subject.
Taking that word representation a bit further: it is of course a reasonable question to ask whether one has the right to represent (make or take a picture of) another person – particularly someone who is not able to give consent. And it is reasonable to question whether I – even as the parent of a member of that community and trusted by the staff of that community – have the right to represent the students. But no less important is the other side of this question: the right of each person to be represented (both literally, in the sense of being pictured, and - via metaphoric implication - politically). In the case of this particular population and the particular context in which these paintings were being shown my intention was to make and show these representational paintings of these children as a claim to their right (authority) to be represented: Particularly towards the goal of advocating the presence of members of this population as they existed in that country at that time.
Park Soo Jin's essay on this and other work included in an exhibition at Art Space Seoul in Seoul, South Korea in 1997.
St. Anthony of Padua Church participated in the 30th annual Atlanta Hunger Walk.
Over 15,000 people participated in the March 9 fundraiser.
The Reading Railroad's headhouse was designed in 1891 by Francis H. Kimball, and the train shed by Wilson Brothers & Company and opened in 1893. The rails were elevated to reach the train shed platform built over top of the new consolidated market. The entire Reading Terminal is on the National Register of Historic Places #72001170, and also a National Historic Landmark.
Help End Child Hunger poster by Action Against Hunger, Bristol, October 2010. It promoted their "Fight Hunger Eat Out" campaign in September-October 2010 in which participating restaurants help raise funds for the charity.
Lucky the llama was ready for a night full of close-ups.
2015 Beyond Hunger: A Place at the Table
September 18, 2015
Photo by Lacey West, courtesy of Heifer International
On the green carpet: Jessica Ford, Global Communications Manager at Heifer International
2015 Beyond Hunger: A Place at the Table
September 18, 2015
Photo by Lacey West, courtesy of Heifer International
Today, over 49 million Americans live in food insecure households. There are believed to be three main causes of poverty in the United States: poverty in the world; the operation of the political and economic system in the United States which has tended to keep people from poor families poor, and actual physical mental and behavioral issues among some people who are poor. More than 16 million, or almost one in five, American children are at risk of hunger. Preschool and school-age children who experience severe hunger have higher levels of chronic illness, anxiety and depression, and behavior problems than children with no hunger. Children and adults often rely on food banks to relieve hunger. Although there is no end in sight, many companies like ConAgra Foods and the Food Network are taking great strides against the the fight on hunger in the United States.
Approximately 40,000 people are reliant on food aid in Wolayita. Distribution cards like this are used to make sure that every family get’s a fair share, according to their needs. Here, a beneficiary presses his index finger on blue ink to "sign" for having received the monthly food ration for his family.
Photo: Andrei Engstrand-Neacsu/International Federation (p17833).
To find out more, go to www.ifrc.org/what/disasters/recovering/food-security.asp.
Executive Summary for the State of Oklahoma
The Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, the “Oklahoma Food Banks,” are the largest private hunger-relief organizations in the state. Food Banks are the single most important source of food for Oklahoma's hunger relief agencies. Volunteers are the backbone of our work and one of our most valuable resources in the fight against hunger.
This report provides a comprehensive look at hunger in Oklahoma and how the Oklahoma Food Banks and their partner agencies are working together to understand and address the needs of Oklahomans who find themselves in need of food assistance. The information found in this report includes results from Hunger in America 2014, a nation-wide study conducted by Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief charity in the United States. Additional data was provided by state and national reports on poverty and hunger. The information is used to help guide the development of programs and solutions that improve food security for individuals and their households and inform public awareness and policy development for addressing hunger in Oklahoma.
Bob Bloom, Chief Financial Officer of Heifer International, and his wife, Jill Bloom taking advantage of a photo opp with Lucky the llama.
2015 Beyond Hunger: A Place at the Table
September 18, 2015
Photo by Lacey West, courtesy of Heifer International
It's been a good year and a half since I read a good book. I absolutely love to read. I have found myself with a little more free time recently so a friend let me take her Hunger Games series with me on vacation. Seej and I read the first one together. I am completely hooked. I'm on to number two, but I have a new food photography book that also just arrived and the two are competing for my time. I have both of them to get through not to mention number 3 in the Hunger Games series. It's comforting knowing I have good books waiting at my bedside.