HTBAF: Transformers
How To Build A Fire: Transformers
When: June 21, 2024
Where: Open Source Gallery
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For June, we’ll be in the gallery with Zé Kielwagen’s BAFO! Beauty Temple, an exploration, a celebration, an installation, a veneration. Our theme is Transformers, and we’ll be surrounded by Kielwagen’s transformation of Open Source, the gallery reimagined as a salon, as a shrine … a space where we can practice and perform the art of beauty. Come gaze through the looking glass with us, deep into the ways we challenge norms, disrupt the status quo, and embrace our true selves. Oh, sweetings! The stories we will tell!
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Storytellers:
Bruce Zeines is an artist who has through certain periods of his life been downright obsessive about drawing. He is also a musician who began to teach himself to play guitar on a broken instrument from the age of 12. Fingerstyle guitar is where he is most happy. He has 40 years in advertising and design, having worn the hats of an art director, graphic designer, illustrator, letterer, and photo retoucher depending on what was needed at the moment. He is happy not to be any of those things anymore. He is currently a manager at Kelly Street Garden. Something he often blames on his wife, but he has learned to embrace his position as General Manager of a community garden. All life is art. He now writes grants, manages budgets, promotes, creates programming and walks around the garden basically seeking empathy among the herb beds. He is a father of 3 and grandfather of 2 and life has been a whole bunch of zig zags for which he is most grateful. He currently resides in the garden with his wife Sheryll and can often be found hiding behind the celery at the rear of the garden. A life long storyteller, he hopes not to bore you too much with his rants and ravings.
Rose DeStefano has over 20 years of experience in community organizing, policy-making, and social entrepreneurship. A social worker first, she also holds a GreenMBA from Dominican University of California. She is passionate about transforming long-standing structural and racial inequities while building sustainable futures for all Bronxites. Raised in California, she moved to NYC in 2015 without a plan to stay and realized soon after that this city was her home for life. Because the East Coast is the best coast. In her free time, Rose loves to spend her time in nature hiking, swimming, and exploring but spends most of her time pouring into her backyard.
Rebecca J. Garcia is a Dominican American writer, librarian, and DIY queen extraordinaire from New York City. In her writing, Rebecca explores the idea of home, displacement, and belonging, often through a speculative lens. The experiences of fat, Afro-Latinx people are centered in Rebecca’s writing. When not writing, Rebecca enjoys crafting and sewing, reading YA books and Romance novels, and watching anime.
Peggy Pettitt (born February 8, 1950) is an American actress, dancer, teacher, playwright, and storyteller from St. Louis, Missouri. She has developed a unique solo performance style rooted in African-American storytelling, creating over ten original full-length plays addressing significant societal issues. Pettitt has taught extensively, working with diverse groups in settings from public schools to prisons, and is the founding artistic director of the Pearls of Wisdom, a storytelling ensemble inducted into City Lore’s People’s Hall of Fame. She has also collaborated with the AJODA African Elders Association, preparing productions with Nigerian elders. Pettitt has received numerous grants and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Senegal. Most recently, she has worked with Touchstone Theater, Big Dance Theater, and is creating a performance work with Louise Smith and Lizzie Olesker that will debut in the fall.
Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. She is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. She is co-host of the critically-acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot, and her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, is forthcoming from Random House.
