About Caitlin Peck

Peck with her YAP artists

Caitlin Peck received her BFA in Drawing & Painting from Pennsylvania State University in 2010, also earning the Gerald Davis Award for her work as an undergraduate. She has participated in juried and group shows in the United States and internationally at the Burren College of Art, Ireland. Currently, she is obtaining her MFA in Studio Arts at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia.

YAP students at work on their projects

Peck has been working at Taller Puertorriqueño in the Youth Artists Program (YAP) since January of 2012. Her experience with the students is to encourage them to think critically and creatively about the challenges they  face when making art. In the works of Claiming Places, she asks the students to go beyond the surface of what 'home' means and what makes them who they are. This is a similar path of Peck’s work. Understanding the slippage and fallibility of memory, Peck works in acts of memorializing, memory exercise, and memorization. She works in a variety of mediums including drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance.  

More information on Peck on her website  here: http://www.caitlinpeck.com

The Poster for the Children Show

A Video Snapshot of the Triangulations Exhibition

Video Snapshot of Triangulations from Taller Puertorriqueño on Vimeo.

A video sample of Merián Soto's exhibition, TRIANGULATIONS: Revisiting OYWPP at Taller Puertorriqueño's Lorenzo Homar Gallery. On view from December 7th 2012 to January 19th, 2013. More information on the show is here.

Personalizing Place in the Latino Community

North 5th & Lehigh,  El Centro de Oro

 Latino communities transform public places in their communities into personal ones. These transformations fit with the idea of making a home, for a specific place is more than a house or address; it is the space plus the emotional and intellectual connections that were built into it over time. In the book Diálogos, Placemaking in Latino Communities, the writers discuss one definition of place as referring to “territorialized local communities, collective memories associated with territory, claims of authenticity by local actors, phenomenological associations with locales, and social relationships among people in territorial communities.”[1] In other words, place connotes a community’s shared history and experience. The Latino communities of Philadelphia demonstrate this with the music blaring from windows, the murals they choose to put on the sides of their buildings, and the colors with which they embellish their shops. It is, too, in the names they use to identify their areas (el Barrio, el Centro de Oro) and in the names of institutions and businesses that string neighborhoods together (HACE, Centro Musical, Roberto Clemente High School, Congreso de Latinos Unidos, Taller Puertorriqueño). It is also marked in the colors and patterns of their national symbols that adorn their busineses, like the white cross with the alternating red & blue of the Dominican Republic’s flag, in the bands of green, white and red of the Mexican flag or in the sky blue, white and red stripes of the Puerto Rican flag. Each can be read as a multifaceted proclamation of identity, of coming from one region, of having staked a claim in this area, in this space and for this moment in time.

Betsy Casañas mural, "Cruzando el Charco," N. 5th  and Dauphin

Taller Puertorriqueño (Taller) recognizes its connection to the community. It knows that through its work it has been questioning the misnomer of "Badlands" to the area it is in, and reclaiming the pride of culture and contributions of Latinos in this community. With its Meet the Author Series[2], its Annual Arturo Schomburg Symposium[3] and collaborations with universities and colleges, Taller crosses boundaries, challenges stereotypes and inspires civic engagement. In its youth education programs it fosters knowledge of arts, cultural history and critical thinking; its 20 years of association with the Philadelphia Art Museum is a great indicator of being a leader in using art as a bridge to cultural and community understanding. It knows it has been playing a role as an anchor of the neighborhood’s identity, and as a resource and gateway to and for the Latino community. Students and patrons, both from around the city and within the neighborhood, come to Taller to learn about the city’s Puerto Rican roots and its ever-increasing Latino diversity. More importantly within its programs, it offers context and a safe place to discuss and confront very delicate and volatile issues such as gentrification and the long history of prejudice and classism towards Latino's in this country. To better understand Taller’s place and its place-making role in the Latino community of Philadelphia, we must look to its
origin.

Raising the Puerto Rican flag in Taller  Puertorriqueño

Photos of El Sol Sale Para Todos Screening

Photos the discussion after the screening of el Sol Sale Para Todos on Saturday.   The discussion topics ranged from the problems of Mexican faces with immigrating to the US, to the Mexican organizations started to address these trouble and integration with the Latino community of North Philadelphia.  There were even discussions about how the younger generations in the US loosing is their ability to communicate comfortably in Spanish.

In attendance was Dalia O'Gorman, from Casa Monarca, as well people from the Norris Square Neighborhood Project.  The Executive Director of Taller Puertorriqueño, Carmen Febo San Miguel introduced documentarian's Laura Deutch, Carlos Pascual Sanchez, and Leticia Roa Nixon.

Saturday, Special screening and talk: El Sol Sale Para Todos

Special screening & talk of the documentary El Sol Sale Para Todos. 

Admission is Free.  3PM, Saturday, December 1, 2012.  

The event take place at Juia de Burgos Bookstore at 2721 N. 5th Street.  

  
Laura Deutch, Carlos Pascual Sánchez and Leticia Roa Nixon will discuss the making of the film after the screening.

El Sol Sale Para Todos chronicles the rapid growth of the Mexican community in the historically immigrant neighborhood of South Philadelphia. Told through the first hand experiences of the main subjects who have been a formative part of this development over the last 20 years, a collective story of the community unfolds. However with growth and assimilation, come problems, resistance and efforts to organize. El Sole Sale Para Todos presents stories and fragments from the subjects’ memories, reflections and perspectives about the complexity of searching for a better life in a country that is not one’s own.

TRIANGULATIONS: Revisiting OYWPP, Merián Soto

Poster for the show.

Jumatatu Poe self documents. Photo: Pepón Osorio (2007)

Merián Soto

December 7th to January 19th, 2013
at the Lorenzo Homar Gallery

Reception:
December 7th, 5:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Triangulations, Soto’s first one-person exhibition features two, three-channel video works created from a number of performance-documents from the award–winning One Year Wissahickon Park Project   (OYWPP). The videos were generated through a process wherein the performer documents her/his own performance. Triangulations recaptures the intersection of movement, sound, place and time in OYWPP.

OYWPP was a series of branch dance performances in Wissahickon Park throughout 07-08, featuring dancers Shavon Norris, Olive Prince, Jumatatu Poe, Noemí Segarra, Merián Soto, and percussionist and composer Toshi Makihara. It was designed around the concept of working with the four seasons, in four sites, for four performances in each site for a total of 16 performances. Performances lasted 45 minutes and were held Sunday mornings at 10:30 AM, to take advantage of the crisp morning air and angled sunlight. The 16 performances were completed in all sorts of conditions including temperatures ranging from 20 to 98 degrees, rain, snow, sleet, and high winds. OYWPP was awarded a ROCKY (Greater Philadelphia Dance & Physical Theater Award) in 2008.

Installation view.  Front Gallery

A brief video of the exhibition is presented here.

Triangulations: Revisiting OYWPP continues Soto’s Branch Dance Series that began in 2005. The series has included dozens of solo “guerilla” performances in Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Park (2005–06), the award-winning year-long seasonal project One Year Wissahickon Park Project or OYWPP (2007–08), critically acclaimed staged works, the performance/installation Postcards From the Woods (2009 Live Arts Festival), two year-long “sister” projects of four seasonal performances: Wissahickon Reunion in Philadelphia, and Branch Dances at Wave Hill in New York City, and most recently the monumental and critically acclaimed SoMoS that concluded Taller Puertorriqueño’s Café Under the Stars Performance Series. 

The branch dances are simple, yet powerfully communicative, works centered on consciousness in performance and in practice. They are grounded in a meditative dance practice involving the detailed sequencing of movements through the investigation of gravity through a dynamic shifting of balance and alignment. The placement of the body in nature, either real or simulated, triggers recognition of ourselves as nature. 

More information on her Branch Dances can be found at: http://branchdances.blogspot.com

Merián Soto began working with video in the mid-1970’s, collaborating with video artist Edín Vélez on early experiments with interactive video. In the early 1980’s, Soto studied and performed with Elaine Summers, an original Judson Dance Theater artist, co-founder of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and pioneer of dances in projected environments. Soto has collaborated extensively with award-winning visual artist Pepón Osorio on large-scale performance works incorporating videos such as No Regrets (1987), Historias (1992) and Familias (1995), as well as with filmmaker Irene Sosa— Así se Baila un Son (1999), Prequel(a): Deconstruction of a Passion for Salsa (2002), and La Máquina del Tiempo (2004). In her recent Branch Dance Series, she has expanded her work with video using nature footage to create immersive performance environments in critically acclaimed works such as States of Gravity & Light (2007), Postcards From the Woods (2009) and SoMoS (2012). Soto is a PennPAT roster artist and an Associate Professor of Dance at the Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance at Temple University.

Reception for Triangulations

Videos in the exhibition: 

Triangulations: Revisiting OYWPP

Concept- Direction- Editing: Merián Soto

Music: Toshi Makihara

Projection Consultant: Lauren Mandilian

Sound editing: Cicada Brokaw Dennis

Assistant to Merián Soto: Melisa Putz

Photos: Pepón Osorio

VIDEOS: 

10/7/07, Livezy Dam,   8:42 min.

Dancers:  Noemí Segarra, Olive Prince, Danielle Kinne, Shavon Norris, Merián Soto

Camera: Noemí Segarra, Shavon Norris, Merián Soto

2/24/08,  Bluebell Meadow  4:57 min.

Dancer & Camera: Jumatatu Poe

3/09/08,  Mt Airy Avenue 7:16 min.

Dancers: Merián Soto & Jumatatu Poe

Musician: Toshi Makihara

Camera: Merián Soto & Jumatatu Poe

6/8/08,  Livezy Dam 8:42 min.

Dancer & Camera: Jumatatu Poe

3/9/08,   Cathedral 6:40 min.

Dancer and Camera: Shavon Norris

2/20/10, Lake Erie 6:52 min.

Dancers: Beau Hancock, Caitlin Quinn, Merián Soto

Camera:  Merián Soto

One Year Wissahickon Park Project: Summer, 2008 22:00 min.

Directed by Merián Soto

Camera and Editing:  Laura Zimmerman

Dancers: Olive Prince, Noemí Segarra, Shavon Norris, Jumatatu Poe, Merián Soto

Musician: Toshi Makihar

Video Interview with Cesar Viveros on his show

César Viveros Herrera from Taller Puertorriqueño on Vimeo.

Here is an interview conducted with Viveros before the opening of his show, No Me Conformo, at Taller Puertorriqueño.  He discusses the reasoning behind the name of his show and what it takes for him, as an immigrant, to be fully integrated into America society.