Zenger Farm's Jill Kuehler: Urban Agriculture and Food Security

Zenger Farm's Jill Kuehler

Inspired by her summers spent in her grandmother’s garden digging for worms, Jill Kuehler still cannot keep the dirt out from under her fingernails. While in the Peace Corps in Guatemala she helped a rural elementary school install a garden that continues to provide food for school lunches. Commitment to connecting children with their food source has been her passion ever since.

Before becoming the Executive Director of FZF, Jill was managing the Lents International Farmers Market, a program of Friends of Zenger Farm, for two seasons. In addition to the LIFM, Jill also directed The Sauvie Island Center, a Portland non-profit organization teaching children about farms, the food they grown and the landscape in which they exist. Jill also spent two years as the Wellness Coordinator at Abernethy Elementary, developing a model wellness program centered on the school’s Scratch Kitchen and Garden of Wonders where students learn to grow, prepare and eat good food.

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Carla Bengtson: Meeting Species

Carla Bengtson: Meeting Species

Carla Bengtson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art as well as an Associate Member of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon. Previously to coming to the UO in 1995, she taught at Yale University, Connecticut College, Wesleyan University, and was Head Curator of the John Slade Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a BFA from Tyler School of Art, and an MFA from Yale School of Art, and was a two-time participant in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. She has received numerous awards and grants, including an NEA Individual Grant for Artists, and is represented in multiple public and private collections.

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CultureWork: October 2009. Vol. 13, No. 4.

Dear CultureWorkers:

In the Fall 2009 edition of CultureWork, we present stories of artists passionate about their ideas on current topics, particularly the personal as political and the political as personal. In each story, artists and curators work with new ways of storytelling culturally sensitive content within their chosen venues.

In The Bailout Biennial by elin o’Hara slavick and María DeGuzmán, we find curators and artists coming together quickly to create a large-scale art exhibit, which addressed the questions surrounding the government sponsored bailouts of large corporations earlier this year.

Likewise, in Creating & Performing Pinang & Ayu: A Love Story–A Lesbian Shadow-Puppet Performance, Summer Melody Pennell explores the dynamics of homosexual relationships in Indonesia, and how the artistic medium of performance can give voice to the normally unheard and oppressed. Pennell also explores the dynamics of what it means to be a spectator from another culture and the ways in which bonds can be formed through creative expression.

We hope these personal stories of experience with alterations of traditional presentation formats will spark your own creative thinking for exhibits and performances within your own community.

To read the latest edition of CultureWork, please visit:
http://culturework.uoregon.edu

Regards,

Julie Voelker-Morris
Robert Voelker-Morris
Editors