Category Archives: Amazing Women

Women I have met who are an inspiration

Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman, and women

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“But I was a better man with you, as a woman… than I ever was with a woman, as a man. You know what I mean?”
– Michael Dorsey to Julie Nichols, from the movie Tootsie

Dress like a tall, strong woman. Platforms help, as do hand weights to keep strong arms toned.

Dress like a tall, strong woman. Platforms help, as do hand weights to keep strong arms toned.

In 1983, the movies Tootsie and Gandhi were both up for Best Actor awards. Ben Kingsley won over Dustin Hoffman. I saw both movies, and while I greatly admired Kingsley’s performance and the movie – and how could you not give an Oscar to Gandhi – I thought Hoffman’s dual performance of portraying volatile actor Michael Dorsey and actress Dorothy Michaels was a tour de force and worthy of the coveted statue. You could feel Hoffman getting into and understanding his female role. Tootsie has remained one of my favorite movies ever since.

I thought about Tootsie recently when a few Facebook friends posted a clip of part of a Hoffman interview from a few years ago that recently went viral. He talked about the premise of the movie coming from a discussion between him and his long-time friend Murray Schisgal, an American playwright and screenwriter, when the latter wondered how a man would be different if he were born a woman – not what is it like to be a woman. Hoffman thought the make-up team should be able to make him a beautiful woman because he considered himself an interesting woman and therefore expected to be beautiful on the outside as well.

You should watch the clip yourself, but basically he talked about how he had missed out on meeting too many interesting women in his life because they didn’t possess the physical beauty that was his – and society’s – measuring stick for approaching or wanting to know these women. He called it a “brainwashing,” and the clip ends with an emotional Hoffman proclaiming that Tootsie was never a comedy for him. No wonder it went viral! First of all, for me, I adore Dustin Hoffman. I think he’s a great actor. You can feel the intensity and integrity in all the characters he portrays on film. It was touching and refreshing, respectively, to see him so moved and to admit to what many men do – determine whether they want to get to know a woman based on her looks. It’s great that he understands the loss of not knowing so many interesting women in the world.

Silver pops against black: Lava 9 earrings (Berkeley, CA), Carmela Rose bangles and Asian Art Museum flower bracelet (San Francisco), and Kate Peterson necklace (El Cerrito, CA).

Silver pops against black: Lava 9 earrings (Berkeley, CA), Carmela Rose bangles and Asian Art Museum flower bracelet (San Francisco), Kate Peterson necklace (El Cerrito, CA), and Museum of Modern Art ring (NYC).

While I congratulate Hoffman on this epiphany, I have to take issue with something that I noticed about the movie and the characteristics and what it was saying to me and to others long before I saw the Hoffman interview clip. I loved the character of Dorothy Michaels. She was a firecracker who spoke her mind and yet was sensitive and wise. However, the two main female characters – Julie Nichols, played by Jessica Lange, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role, and Sandy Lester, played by a pitch-perfect Teri Garr – were not strong women. Julie drank too much and knowingly dated a womanizer who treated her shabbily. Sandy was lovable but had low self-esteem. (Although she finally stuck up for herself in her finest moment in the movie after Michael told her that he never said he loved her: She fought back, proclaiming, “I never said I love you, I don’t care about I love you! I read The Second Sex, I read The Cinderella Complex, I’m responsible for my own orgasm. I don’t care! I just don’t like to be lied to!” She triumphantly turned her back on him and stomped out, with the prized box of chocolates given to Michael by Julie’s father tucked under her arm.

But who was the strong woman? Dorothy Michaels! Who taught Julie to take control and not be a doormat to her director lover Ron Carlisle, played by Dabney Coleman? Dorothy Michaels. When I realized that, I thought to myself that the inadvertent message is that women can’t be strong, or that they need the help of a man to be strong, something that I’m sure was unintended. Maybe others can weigh in on this seeming incongruous message because to be sure there are challenges in the movies to gender stereotypes. For instance, Dorothy lets it loose on Carlisle during her audition for the role of Emily Kimberly, hospital administrator for a popular soap opera, when Carlisle tells “her” she’s not right for the part because he’s “trying to make a certain statement” and “looking for a specific physical type”: “Oh I know what y’all really want is some gross, caricature of a woman to prove some idiotic point that power makes a woman masculine, or masculine women are ugly. Well shame on you for letting a man do that, or any man that does that. That means you, dear. Miss Marshall.” Of course, Miss Marshall, the producer, sports power pantsuits, wears her hair in an androgynous bob, and has a tough swagger, but you expect this cliché in a movie about the sexes.

A close-up of accessories for a mixed-fabric summer dress.

A close-up of accessories for a mixed-fabric summer dress.

At the end of Tootsie, when Michael Dorsey rips off his Dorothy Michaels wig to reveal who he is after a long, rambling monologue, he faces Julie and says: “I am Edward Kimberly. Edward Kimberly. And I’m not mentally ill, but proud, and lucky, and strong enough to be the woman that was the best part of my manhood. The best part of myself.” This is the moment in the movie that references Hoffman’s discussion in the interview clip about how a man would be different if he were born a woman. It seems to me that in imagining what it would be like and putting ourselves in that situation we actually strive to be the best that we can be. We imagine ourselves as the opposite sex to be interesting, strong, and beautiful inside, which ultimately makes us beautiful on the outside no matter who says what.

Tootsie, which was deemed by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1998 to be a “culturally significant” film and preserved in the National Film Registry, still has a lot to say about men and women – our roles and our perceptions. Whereas the American Film Institute ranked Tootsie the “second funniest film of all time” in 2000, Hoffman was adamant in saying that it was not a comedy for him, and in a nod to its cultural significance, his performance is above and beyond the male-actor-playing-a-woman role such as Robin Williams’ Mrs. Doubtfire. I love so many lines from Tootsie and the sentimental-but-wistful theme song “It Might Be You” sung by Stephen Bishop. Now I have another reason to love the movie, thanks to Hoffman’s honesty and his generosity in sharing his epiphany about women with all of us.

Lauren Ari: Art as affirmation of the artist’s existence, Part II

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Everything you can imagine is real.
– Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Dictionary Project: "Tickle."

Dictionary Project: “Tickle.”

The Power of mixed media
Lauren Ari’s use of mixed media, as opposed to any one medium, allows her to express what she is trying to say. While the Richmond-based artist likes working with different materials, her foundation is drawing. Working in mixed media, therefore, enables her drawings to be three-dimensional. Throughout her prolific career, Lauren, 46, has produced some amazing projects, as well as collaborative and interactive pieces of art.

Two years ago, she collaborated with an artist to build an eight-foot-tall structure made of clay that resembled an old-fashioned opera shell, which housed a singer and a butoh dancer –performing a postwar Japanese dance that rejected Eastern and Western dance in order to search for a new identity that would establish meaning for a defeated society. Lauren and her co-collaborator invited the community to make parts that would be attached to the structure. “I’m really interested in the interaction,” she said. She likes people to interpret her work by themselves and to bring their past to the experience, rather than being told what the piece means. This is exactly how she wants people to view her Dictionary Project and Bedscapes.

Lauren's Dictionary painting called Mother.

Dictionary Project: “Mother.”

Dictionary Project
Begun in 1999, Lauren’s Dictionary Project was informed by the fact that she wasn’t stimulated in school. Looking back on her education, she jokingly wondered if she could have learned everything from an encyclopedia. Playing with that idea she envisioned getting a dictionary and painting and learning from it. “It just went into motion and moved forward,” she recalled. When she went to the El Cerrito Recycling Center’s free book exchange shelf, she found a “big, beautiful, old dictionary” on the ground. “I’m a really good ‘manifester’ of stuff,” she said, of her serendipitous experience at the recycling center.

Dictionary Project: "Dreaming" - Annie from Annie's Annuals and her seedlings and flowers.

Dictionary Project: “Dreaming” – inspired by Annie from Annie’s Annuals and her seedlings and flowers. Lauren’s murals grace the walls of the well-known nursery in Richmond, CA.

Since the beginning of the project, she has “fallen in love” with the dictionary – its words, the images on the pages, the edges of the fine paper. “I like the contrast between the delicate, old papers and printing, and my intuitive, quick, impulsive, first thought, best thought, down on the paper, don’t edit – boom,” she explained, punctuating each word. “The complement works really well.” The Dictionary Project – numbering some 200 paintings, which are in her own gallery, galleries in San Francisco, and in private collections – is an ongoing project for Lauren, who said, “I can’t get away from it. I just love it.” This project speaks to how prolific she is.

Bedscape: Sleeping with Death.

Bedscape: “Sleeping with Death.”

Bedscapes
In 1997, Lauren was moved by a “brilliant” art show in London that dealt with the topic of sleeping. A quote from Cervantes’ Don Quijote de La Mancha, which was printed in the pamphlet, inspired her, as did the notion of sleep as death: “All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories – and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There’s only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I’ve ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there’s very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse.”

Lauren's Bedscape "quilt."

Lauren’s Bedscape “quilt.”

Lauren was flooded with a lot of images, but she didn’t translate them, along with the quote, until circa 2004 when she began her Bedscapes Project. She embraced the concept of everything being at the same level when one is asleep as well as the ambiguity between sleep and death. The bedscapes run the gamut of emotions – some are tongue-in-cheek, of which bright colors are used to depict humor. But as viewers look more closely, they see that the message is not “funny.” “I think of them as Venus flytraps,” Lauren said. Some are humorous, some dark – with Lauren’s penchant to mix them up. She views them together on the wall as a quilt, involving sewing, quilting, and piecing together. While mostly made out of clay, the bedscapes may move to a different media, according to Lauren. She is still working on them – so far, she has created approximately 30 – for a show planned in May 2014 at the FM Gallery (483 25th Street, Oakland, CA 94612, 510.601.5053).

Bedscape: "War Babies."

Bedscape: “War Babies.”

The subjects or the different “stories” for the Bedscapes Project find her – including her experiences and things that concern her. “War Babies” was made at the start of the Iraqi War. Early on, she would conceive an idea and create a bedscape. Nowadays, with less time and energy, she will ruminate on ideas, although the bedscapes are still intuitive and spontaneous. “I like for them not to feel labored and to just come together,” she explained. “I like it to be somewhat rough or imperfect – with a feeling of freshness.”

Although her art is not labored, it has a certain freedom that’s difficult to get to. She created two bedscapes that deal with the Chevron refinery in Richmond, called “Rooster’s Wake-up Call”: A giant bird is looming over a man in one bed, while two people covered in a black oil slick lie in another bed. A pile of people on a bed is a visual representation of the history one brings when sleeping with another person. For a bedscape addressing global warming, her tongue-in-cheek “solution” was to give trays of ice to a polar bear in a bed. Another bedscape entitled “Sleeping with Death” depicts a woman sleeping with a skeleton. “These are visual poems for me,” she said. “These are things I feel that I can’t figure out, that I feel are too big a subject matter for me to take on.”

Bedscape: "Rooster's wake-up call."

Bedscape: “Rooster’s Wake-up Call.”

Bedscape: "Who are you sleeping with?"

Bedscape: “Who Are You Sleeping With?”

Finding your own way through art
Lauren has spent most of her life volunteering and teaching. Her high school encouraged students to volunteer. “It always sat well with me that you give back,” she said. Lauren is a painting instructor at NIAD (National Institute of Art & Disabilities) Art Center (531-551 23rd Street, Richmond, CA 94804, 510.620.0290), a contemporary studio art program and gallery serving adults with developmental and other physical disabilities. She also teaches at the Richmond Art Center (2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804, 510.620.6772), a nonprofit arts education and cultural institution, and Great Clay Adventure, which brings clay instruction to schools.

Bedscapes: "The Kiss."

Bedscape: “The Kiss.”

As was the case with the girl at Children’s Hospital (see Part I), she has experienced illuminating moments as an instructor. Lauren was teaching art to a kindergarten class when the teacher approached one girl, who had smashed her clay, and asked her where her penguin was. Lauren intervened and helped  the girl verbalize her thought process. When the girl responded that the penguin was under a rock, Lauren celebrated her out-of-the-box thinking. “That is just as valid; I don’t have to see a million penguins for you to be right,” she said of her initial reaction. “That’s how I’ve modeled my life.”

Indeed, Lauren entreats all artists to not listen to anybody but themselves. “Be okay with making lots of what I call ‘ugly’ art. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you just have to be in there doing it,” she said. She tells students in her children’s classes that being an artist is akin to being an investigator, with artists using their eyes. “There’s no wrong way,” she insists of the creative process. “You just need to find your own way. As long as you’re not hurting anybody and you’re finding joy, just go for it – this is your one life. Enjoy it and see what’s out there.”

Lauren with Bella, the family dog.

Lauren with Bella, the family dog.

Editor’s note: Lauren teaches art classes at her home studio on Thursdays, 7pm to 9pm, called Art Camp for Adults. Each session comprises four classes. Lauren suggests ideas and the group decides on the direction. The next session begins in September 2013. Lauren is also open to teaching art classes one on one with artists who are experiencing creative blocks or those who want some coaching and need assistance in putting their portfolio together in order to apply to art high school or college. She also hosts art events out of her home twice a year. To see more of Lauren’s work and to contact her, go to her website www.laurenari.com.

Lauren Ari: Art as affirmation of the artist’s existence, Part I

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The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.
– Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Lauren at the entrance of her backyard garden.

Lauren at the entrance of her backyard garden.

I met mixed-media artist Lauren Ari, 46, at the Stockton Avenue Art Stroll in El Cerrito this past May. She was selling her framed paintings at the invitation of Jen Komaromi of Jenny K, who is a friend of hers and a fellow former preschool parent. Lauren and I hit it off, and although we had just met, a passerby in the store thought we had known each other for years. The relaxed conversation and easy laughter was largely attributable to Lauren’s honesty and energy. “I’m really honest – perhaps too honest – because my work is that way,” she told me in June, when I visited her at her home in Richmond, a welcoming place that is both an informal museum and sunny garden celebrating her colorful work.

When you look closely at Lauren’s paintings and sculptures, you feel as if you’ve gone – with her permission – into the recesses of her imaginative mind, where both light and dark co-exist. You also feel the frenetic energy that created it and the energy emanating, pulsing from her, which is infectious. “There’s something that’s faster than me, personally; I think I’m behind this energy that is moving me,” she said. “I trust something bigger than myself.” Indeed, Lauren added, “A lot of what I do is very intuitive; I don’t set out necessarily to do X, Y, and Z. Circumstances happen and I follow them.”

The sculpture All Is Love in her studio.

The sculpture “All Is Love” in her studio.

Following the winding path
Creativity was encouraged and ran in the family – her aunt was in ceramics and her uncle is a basket weaver. Her mother was also a creative type and reserved an area of Lauren’s bedroom for making art. She fondly remembers her grandmother’s coffee table books and paintings on the walls of her home, and as a child, Lauren pored over her grandmother’s books on Picasso, who inspired her. “”He spoke to me,” she recalled. By age 15, she was doing performance art with Racheal Rosenthal, called “Doing by Doing,” at the Women’s Building in downtown Los Angeles, where she grew up. She transferred out of public high school to attend a local art school. Although she labeled herself a “square peg,” in this creative environment in which all her teachers were artists she began to identify herself as an artist. “They exposed you to so much,” she said. “I really felt like I was learning for the first time.”

Lauren's flower pots in her garden.

Lauren’s flower pots in her garden.

At the age of 17, Lauren attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The first year at RISD provides the foundation for all students, and although at the time she admitted that she was not ready to listen and just wanted to be left alone to create her art, Lauren said that she learned “most everything.” While she was at RISD, her parents divorced, which led her deeper into her art. “I was in my own space; art was healing for me,” she recalled. Adding to her burden was the familial pressure of how she would be able to make a living from her art, despite her family’s encouragement to pursue her passion. “I didn’t have enough strength in myself to have faith in what I was doing,” she said.

Tile painting in the garden.

Tile painting in the garden.

She dropped out of college after two years and returned home, enrolling in the local community college and then taking on a variety of odd jobs. Feeling the need to finish school, she moved to the Bay Area upon the advice of a good friend and got her BFA with High Distinction from the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) (5212 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94618, 510.594.3600) and later attended the University of California at Davis, where she earned her MFA.

“Art was my voice and a way for me to ground myself into existence,” she said, reflecting on that difficult time in her life. Many years later, when she was teaching art to critically ill children at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital, one of her students, a young girl, did not want to leave her class to undergo a procedure. She kept putting her hand down on the paper, leaving imprints which reminded Lauren of prehistoric cave paintings. “It was like she was saying, ‘I’m here,'” she said. For years, much of Lauren’s work represented proof that she existed. The act of creating was her way of saying to the world: “I’m here.” Art was her vehicle for staying present. “It was a big moment for me to really see myself,” she said.

At home with her daughter Mirabai.

At home with her daughter Mirabai.

The Impact of motherhood on the artist
Lauren experienced another revelation when she gave birth to her daughter, Mirabai, in 2006. Until she became a mother, Lauren didn’t realize how consumed she was with making art. “I didn’t question it [my art] as much. It was who I was, what I did, and I just gave myself over to that,” she said. “It gave me my purpose; it gave me a place to be and to ground.” Whatever energy she had she shifted to raising her daughter. “Having a child later in life was a very humbling experience for me,” she said. During that time, she realized – in a “shockingly painful” way – how imbued she was in her desire to be constantly creating.

“I have a lot more spaciousness now,” she said. Instead of excusing herself to work in her studio, she allows herself the luxury of having long conversations with people. She engages in activities that she has never done before, and she and her poet husband, Daniel Ari, and daughter do a lot of dance and movement together as a family. Lauren has since slowed down with her work. “I’ve just become a lot more relaxed,” she said. Before her daughter’s birth, she had already accomplished many of the things she felt she needed to do as an artist, including having several of her pieces included in the Achenbach Collection of the De Young Museum (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118, 415.750.3600) and a two-person show at the Klaudia Marr Gallery, a well-known gallery in Santa Fe. “I succeeded in the outside world and those were all great things, but now I’m trying to figure out how to get back to my practice,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out what’s next.”

Lauren's sculptures in her studio.

Lauren’s sculptures in her studio.

Editor’s note: Lauren teaches art classes at her home studio on Thursdays, 7pm to 9pm, called Art Camp for Adults. Each session comprises four classes. Lauren suggests ideas and the group decides on the direction. The next session begins in September 2013. Lauren is also open to teach art classes one on one with artists who are experiencing creative blocks or those who want some coaching and need assistance in putting their portfolio together in order to apply to art high school or college. She also hosts art events out of her home twice a year. To see more of Lauren’s work and to contact her, go to her website www.laurenari.com.

One of the many murals in Lauren's backyard. You might recognize her murals at Annie's Annuals in Richmond, CA.

One of the many murals in Lauren’s backyard. Her murals grace the walls of Annie’s Annuals Nursery in Richmond, CA.

Tana Hakanson: The Artist’s journey home (Part I)

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The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.  – Robert Henri, American painter and teacher

Preface
I’ve known Tana Hakanson going on eight years this autumn, when our first-born sons entered kindergarten. Thus began years of volunteering at our children’s elementary school and seemingly endless, idyllic afternoons on the playground, our homes and other friends’ homes, and at various child-centered venues for playdates – while we worked outside of the home full-time. As we got to know one another, we developed a special kinship centered in the arts: Tana is an artist, a painter, and I am a fiction writer. Our bond was deepened by our love of paint and words, respectively, and the shared frustration of not having the time or energy to explore our craft and nourish our souls. Through the years, we commiserated with one another, offered encouraging words, and congratulated the incremental victories of finishing a painting and completing a revision of the novel.

Two-thousand thirteen promises to be an important year for the both of us, as we dive deep and make headway into living our creative lives: My novel, after a 16-year journey, will finally be completed later this year, and Tana, who launched her art studio website earlier this year, is preparing for her second open studio.

Tana Hakanson works on a painting at her home studio in the Richmond Annex.

Tana Hakanson works on a painting at her home studio in the Richmond Annex.

The Artist emerges
This time, last year Tana Hakanson reluctantly signed up to participate in Pro Arts’ East Bay Open Studio last June, at the urging of her husband Mauricio Monsalve. She had returned to painting a year and a half ago, when Mauricio suggested that she reduce her hours as a systems specialist for an adventure travel company to four days a week. But at the time, she felt she didn’t have enough work to present, even though her free Fridays allowed her the block of time she needed to paint. Mauricio knew she was ready, but just needed a push. By the end of the open studio, she had sold 21 paintings and was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response to her work. As Tana sets up for her second open studio next month, she is better prepared with more work to show and more inspired. More importantly, she has grown so much as an artist.

Tana as a child and budding artist.

Tana as a child and budding artist.

Artistic beginnings, hiatus, and return
As a child, Tana loved to draw. When she went to college, however, she studied music under scholarship. She switched majors and graduated with a degree in English and a minor in music, although she managed to take a lot of drawing and painting classes. When she went on an overseas study program in Indonesia, she fell in love with the local art and was inspired by the colors and how art is part of everyday life in Bali. She studied traditional Balinese art and stayed on after the program ended, painting and selling her work to individual art patrons and in a local art gallery in Bali.

After graduation, Tana tried her hand at commercial art, attempting to combine her love of art with earning a living. She did illustrations of books on dogs and cats. “It was really fun, but I realized it wasn’t exactly what I was trying to get out of art,” she recalled. For Tana, art is “personal and spiritual.” She applied to graduate school, hoping to explore that aspect of art. Most of the programs out there, according to Tana, were more conceptual, socially driven, and intellectual, and not focused on the spiritual or philosophical experience of art. The arts and consciousness program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley stressed the process of art over art itself and the transformative aspects of art making. Many graduates of the program become art therapists; but Hakanson said, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it [the degree], but I knew it was what I wanted to study.”

Getting her masters jump-started her to develop her art further. When she gave birth to her son Marcelo in 2000 and then her son Mateo in 2003, however, Hakanson focused on motherhood, which she describes as a “deep and ongoing experience.” Although she continued sketching – taking her sketchbooks on family road trips – she stopped painting altogether. Working at Wilderness Travel (1102 9th Street, Berkeley, 94710, 800.368.2794) and taking care of her sons after school didn’t leave any time, especially big blocks of time, for painting.

Tana and her family on a recent trip.

Tana and her family on a recent trip.

She carved out a little time to take up dance, specifically flamenco, which was a different medium for releasing her creativity. “I love the body and I love movement,” she said. “Movement is a way to connect to nature and that energy of life, and it’s transformative in the same way art is.” When her Fridays were freed up, she contemplated dropping flamenco to focus completely on painting. But the movement aspect of dance and dance’s ability to fuel her art and give her energy were important enough to keep both going. “For me, a big aspect of my work is movement,” she said.

Tana's sketch of a dancer.

Tana’s sketch of a dancer.

Abstract painting: Freedom to experiment
Tana is devoting the next two years to developing her painting, and then marketing her work. For now, with Fridays as her only day for painting, she has just enough pieces for next month’s open studio. Tana feels that she’s learned so much in the last year in terms of working with the materials. “The more I paint, the more I understand how to use the material for what I want to do,” she said. One of her many goals this year is to work with disparity in the tones to create more contrast, which creates depth. “I tend to avoid contrast, because this kind of boldness doesn’t come naturally to me – in painting or in real life,” she explained. “But just like in any aspect of life, you have to face it and keep trying if you want to grow. I have a vision of where I want my art to be, but it’s not something I can really pinpoint.”

An abstract painting from Tana's series of water paintings.

An abstract painting from Tana’s series of water paintings.

Experimenting with “liquidy” paint gives her the sense of movement that she is seeking, in both the process itself and the work. “As the paint settles, you can see the energy and flow of movement,” she said. “For me, it’s about freedom to try new things, seeing where it takes me, the unexpected, and surprises along the way,” she said. “The process is the thing for me – then something interesting comes out of it that eventually becomes a painting. Sometimes it just happens naturally – like magic. Sometimes it involves some working and struggling along the way. Mostly it’s some of both, and that interplay makes it compelling.”

Tana Hakanson will show her new work at this year’s East Bay Open Studio, sponsored by Pro Arts the first two weekends in June (1-2 and 8-9), from 11am to 6pm, at her home at 1633 Mariposa Street, Richmond, CA 94804. You can also see her work at Tana Hakanson Studio. Support the arts! Let Tana know that you read about her work here.

Editor’s Note: Part II of Tana Hakanson: The Artist’s Journey Home will be posted on Monday, May 27.

The artist's studio.

A painting dries at the artist’s studio.

Jolie’s ‘medical choice’ takeaway: Be an informed, empowered patient

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Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.
– Angelina Jolie, American actress, film director, and screenwriter

I'm no Angelina Jolie, but I'll pretend I'm on the red carpet.

I’m no Angelina Jolie, but I’ll pretend I’m on the red carpet.

I don’t hero-worship actors or celebrities. I admire people, regardless of who they are and what they do for a living, who work to make the world a better place to live, whether it is through activism for social justice, environmental protection, or other cause. I do admire famous people who use their visibility and money to those ends because oftentimes their celebrity status highlights causes, issues, and injustices that otherwise would go unnoticed. Ever since Angelina Jolie became involved in human rights issues, first as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador in 2001 and later through her establishment of charitable organizations and her screenwriting and directing, I have been an admirer.

She gave me another reason to admire her. I applaud Jolie’s decision to write an op-ed piece in the New York Times about her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. As many have commented already, her decision to discuss it openly and write about it so thoughtfully is notable because she is a glamorous actress in an industry that worships youth and beauty and eschews flaws.

There were detractors, as expected. Yes, she could afford the $3,000 BRCA genetic test and have the best medical care in the world for breast reconstruction, whereas many economically disadvantaged women do not have the means. Some in the medical community worry that her revelation will influence women with a history of breast cancer and create a spike in what is already a trend toward mastectomies that aren’t medically necessary for many early-stage breast cancers.

Rain cloud necklace by M.E. Moore (Gorgeous & Green, Berkeley), cuff by Alkemie of Los Angeles, cicada ring by End of Century in NYC, and earrings from Abacus in Portland, Maine.

Rain cloud necklace by M.E. Moore (Gorgeous & Green, Berkeley), cuff by Alkemie of Los Angeles, cicada ring by End of Century in NYC, and earrings from Abacus in Portland, Maine.

But here’s the thing: Jolie made her decision after exploring her options, talking with medical experts and undergoing genetic counseling. She is the empowered, educated patient whom healthcare reform advocates want in a healthcare system that we are trying to transform. This is a topic that I write about a lot in my work. Educated, empowered patients are an important component of healthcare transformation equation. As we shift, slowly but surely, from a fee-for-volume to a fee-for-value reimbursement model (meaning, hospitals and physicians get reimbursed not for how many patients they see, but how many patients they can keep healthy or get to a healthy status), healthcare providers need patients to take more responsibility for their own healthcare. (For that matter, healthcare insurers want that, too, but we all should take responsibility for our own healthcare.) Patients need to see all their options and understand the benefits and risks of every option. I applaud Jolie for emphasizing her careful deliberation. That’s the objectivity that is required. But there’s no denying the personal aspect of cancer. For Jolie, it’s her mother’s lost battle to breast cancer and wanting to be there for her children.

I am in an age group in which the number of women being diagnosed with breast cancer and other cancers rises. I have good friends who have survived it. I have met acquaintances who have survived it. When I first met David back in 1995, his mother underwent a double mastectomy shortly thereafter when she was diagnosed in her early fifties. Her mother and sister had died of breast cancer years earlier, and her niece died years later. In a commentary about Jolie, the chief of the breast service at Sloan-Kettering was quoted as saying that she has tried unsuccessfully to talk women out of having a mastectomy when it was not necessary. It is difficult to dismiss the personal, even in the face of evidence-based medicine. For example, I still have a yearly mammogram despite the differing screening guidelines and especially the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force mammogram guidelines which recommend women begin screening at age 50 and repeat the test every two years. On one level, women will be guided by their personal situation and history. So long as they are educated, they will make thoughtful choices, with ‘choice’ being the operative word for empowerment.

Whether you worry about what harm may come out of Jolie’s revelation, the overarching good is that we continue to have discussions about breast cancer and act on those discussions – how we can prevent it, raise awareness for it, raise money to defeat it, and especially support our family and friends who have to battle it. For all the grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and daughters out there, we owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to be brave and to be on the side of light and life.

Post script: Read about another amazing woman who survived breast cancer, Peggy Liou, whom I wrote about at the Dress at 50 here.

Vintage purse from the Fairhaven Antique Mall in Fairhaven, Wash., and Sam Edelman patent pumps complete the outfit.

Vintage purse from the Fairhaven Antique Mall in Fairhaven, Wash., and Sam Edelman patent pumps complete the outfit.

Maria Diecidue: Empowering communities in India for water sustainability

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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
– Mahatma Gandhi

Preface: I met Maria Diecidue at a healthcare information technology conference meeting about four years ago. Each year, at this same conference, we got to know one another a bit more. When Maria, who lives and works in Chicago, briefly mentioned having gone to India through a corporate service program the last time we saw one another, I wanted to learn more. We didn’t get a chance to catch up, but when I started my blog last December, I knew I wanted her to share her story not just with me but with a wider like-minded audience.

A ‘bleeding heart liberal’ meets a ‘blue washing’
When she was young, Maria Diecidue, who describes herself as a “bleeding heart liberal,” wanted to join the Peace Corps. But as so often happens in life, she went down a different path. Years later, after IBM acquired the healthcare information technology company she was working for, Maria learned about IBM’s culture of giving at an employee orientation or “blue washing.” “It’s nice to hear that a multi-billion dollar corporation can be self-deprecating once in a while,” she said, of the “blue washing” reference. During the orientation, she was especially pleased to hear about IBM’s commitment to corporate citizenship. And, when she heard about the Corporate Service Corps, a four-week program modeled after the Peace Corps, she was ready to “drink the Kool-aid.” In the Corporate Service Corps, volunteers bring their knowledge and skills to an emerging country to address a community problem. Maria’s initial response was: “Where do I sign up? When can I go?”

Maria with her IBM colleagues and NGO India@75 (left to right): Arun Chaube of India@75, Miguel Contreras, interpreter Namita Goel of India@75, Zach Waltz, and Maria. (Photo credit: Mamtha Sharma, IBM)

Maria with her IBM colleagues and NGO India@75 (left to right): Arun Chaube of India@75, Miguel Contreras, interpreter Namita Goel of India@75, Zach Waltz, and Maria. (Photo credit: Mamtha Sharma, IBM)

Once she met the requirements to apply – employed for at least a year, good performance rating, and manager approval – she eagerly submitted her application, which included her preference to go to Asia from among IBM’s four geographical service areas. In her application letter, Maria talked about how population health has always been a challenge and how industrialization has made it worse. She firmly believes and is impassioned by the idea that technology should be used, not only for profit, but to solve global problems. In her essay, Maria also described her passion for environmental issues and the importance of a sustainable environment. As a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Maria was interested in the built environment and its impact on the earth.

Meeting members of the local NGOs. (Photo credit: Arun Chaube, India@75)

Meeting members of the local NGOs. (Photo credit: Arun Chaube, India@75)

Maria, who is an IA Communications manager for IBM Information Management, was accepted into the program in May 2011, but not given her assignment until six months later. It wasn’t until the end of April 2012, however, after receiving about ten hours of instructions and cultural immersion lessons, that she and 12 other IBM employees were deployed to Indore, India, a city of two million people in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. They were divided into four groups, with each group assigned to a local NGO (nongovernmental organization). There are some 18,000 NGOs, which are supported by the business community, working throughout India, according to Maria. She and her two partners, both business consultants, Miguel Contreras from Chile with a background in mining and Zach Waltz, a fellow American with a background in government, were assigned to develop a basic toolkit of do’s and don’ts for water sustainability and management.

The "water goddesses" of Indore. (Photo credit: Miguel Contreras, IBM)

The “water goddess” (in red) of Rahul Ghandi Negar. (Photo credit: Miguel Contreras, IBM)

Tackling India’s water issues
Maria and her colleagues were dispatched to vulnerable communities – or slums, as they are called in the U.S. As many as 600,000 Indore citizens live in vulnerable communities. In most of these communities, water is delivered by big tanker trucks and the women and children who were responsible for collecting and transporting water via buckets and tubs to their communities. In Indian culture, women raise the children, cook, clean, and gather and distribute water. Many kids don’t go to school because they have to wait for the water trucks to show up, which at times is in the middle of the night. Even though the women had interpreters who could translate Hindi to English and vice versa, Maria said, “You could actually understand the women, understand their passion. It transcended language. It was magical.” During her visit to the Rahul Ghandi Negar community, Maria met some amazing women who she refers to as “our water goddesses.” Despite being treated as second-class citizens in their own country – by virtue of their ability to get cooperation and collect money from the community members – they established themselves as community leaders. They convinced the local municipality that they can manage a bore well and got one dug in the Rahul Ghandi Negar. Now, water is available in the community a few hours a day, several days a week. Maria’s hope is that the kids will be able to go to school regularly now that they are closer to the water source.

Maria and her colleagues at a meeting with the BGMS NGO, which is dedicated to women empowerment. (Photo credit: Arun Chaube, India@75)

Maria and her colleagues at a meeting with the BGMS NGO, which is dedicated to women empowerment. (Photo credit: Arun Chaube, India@75)

In addition to observing the vulnerable communities, Maria and her colleagues visited developments for the growing middle class and schools for upper-class students. “Everyone is tapping into the same underground water-aquifer,” she explained, so all communities need to be educated on water sustainability. When the three saw how India’s natural water sources – its lakes and rivers – were polluted, Maria said, “We realized [access to clean water] was a problem not just for vulnerable communities but all communities, and it can’t be solved by one person.” One of the causes of water pollution in India is the lack of infrastructure for waste. All garbage, including plastic, is burned, which releases toxins such as fluorocarbon in the air and further exacerbates the environmental problems plaguing the country, she pointed out.

One of her colleagues was trained in a methodology developed by McKinsey & Company, in which transformation change requires changing the mindset, behavior, and capabilities of people. “A big part of that is recognizing and cultivating leaders and then replicating leadership within the community,” she explained. Maria and her colleagues worked with other NGOs in the area, comprising anywhere between five to 50 people, giving them the basic toolkit and designed to cultivate them into the green leaders of Indore by modeling the characteristics of the women they observed – the “charismatic ‘water goddesses.'” The toolkit itself teaches average citizens sustainable water management – how to  manage water supply by harvesting rain water, recharging wells, and reusing grey water in the house, office, and community. Once the NGOs are trained, they continue the process of identifying and cultivating leaders, which creates a culture of self-sufficiency. “We worked nights and weekends [within the four-week period] to get it done,” she said.

The future green leader of Indore. (Photo credit: Maria Diecidue)

The future green leader of Indore with Miguel Contreras. (Photo credit: Maria Diecidue)

Maria and her colleagues conducted an awareness class in the schools, asking these students how they would manage water if they couldn’t get it from the tap or only had access to it for one hour a day but not every day of the week. Maria and her colleagues asked them if they knew anyone who did not have water running from the tap at home. They did. “We went through exercises with the students to try to enlighten them of these conditions that people in their own town have to deal with because they can’t access water,” she said. When students were challenged to come up with solutions, initially, their response was for everyone to get rid of the swimming pools. By the end of the program, students learned, for example, to take short showers, turn off the tap while brushing teeth, and washing and reuse gray water from dishwashing for watering plants. “They were very receptive, and it worked really well,” she said. “It was very moving.”

Great expectations and life post-India
Going into the program, Maria was hoping to “do some good and make a difference,” although, she admitted, “I had no concept of how I could make a dent in this whole big problem of water management.” She knew, however, that the experience would have a great impact on her – learning about an entirely different culture. The people she met were very warm and generous, sharing what they had, regardless of their socio-economic class. When they visited families in their homes, Maria and her colleagues were greeted with flowers and bindis on their foreheads. “It was like a religious ceremony; there was something spiritual about it,” she said, of the visits.

When Maria returned, she gave a presentation on her team’s efforts on water sustainability to her immediate and higher-level management groups. “In some ways, everything’s changed,” she said, of her experience. Not surprisingly, she is more sensitized to the sustainability of water and the environment. Coincidently Maria’s significant other had previously adopted six children from India, and spending time there gave her an understanding of his children’s birth country and created a deeper bond with him. She also formed a bond with the IBM team members in her group and her circle of friendship has expanded to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Japan, and Mexico.

Maria with some of the children from Indore. (Photo credit: Miguel Contreras, IBM)

Maria with some of the children from Indore. (Photo credit: Miguel Contreras, IBM)

The physical challenges of living for two years in an emerging country at this stage in her life (Maria is 62) will likely preclude her from joining the Peace Corps upon retirement, which was something she thought she considered years ago, she doesn’t shut down the idea completely. “I don’t know, maybe, we’ll see,” she said, gamely. For now, she volunteers with IBM’s mentor program at a Chicago high school, which is collaborating with businesses and being funded by the federal government as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy. She recently presented at the academy, talking about her experiences in India and emphasizing the message of sustainability. She continues to do volunteer work, the most recent one for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. “Volunteer work,” Maria said, with conviction, “will always to be a part of my life.” In the meantime, she is happy to be working with a company that encourages its employees to do volunteer work and in doing so is a model for corporate citizenship. “We need more of this in the world,” she said.