INNOVATION and CHALLANGE Produces a Unique Outcome

The Fox Storytelling Murals & Film program is the first of its kind to bring together children, community, storytellers and Los Angeles visual artists and filmmakers to create an interactive arts project. Students worked with an artist-in-residence in six Los Angles Elementary schools to produce large scale murals and a b/w film. Artist Gayle Gale, project director, organized a group of LA's well known artists in collaboration with Michelle Isenberg of Isenberg & Associates to meet this challenge. Photo artist Jean Ferro, photographer/artist was chosen to photograph the artists at work during the entire project. This is the broadest arts program undertaken by a major corporation in satisfying the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department one percent for art obligation.

Ferro jumped at the opportunity to test the water of the newly expanded worldwide web to create photo galleries through Konica.com so that students and families could view the images and purchase photographs. The original online exhibit of photographs documented the storytellers, murals and film project. Upon completion, 1997/98 cutting edge Konica online site contained over 250 images and were online through year 2000. Viewers who received a pass code could view the photos in several sizes or CLICK on the photo itself to enlarge, download or e-mail images FREE!. They could also order prints or other fun items with a credit card. Ferro chose Konica at the time (who were one of only a couple of online photo gallery sites) because their well designed graphics and simplistic ordering system seemed ideal for the student market.

"I was looking to do something new and unusual and when I saw the format of the Konica.com online system, it seems like a good way to provide a visual bank of images to all involved in the Fox Storytelling project." said Ferro. For the final project, Ferro made a selection of the 6 week project's 4x6" original images and photographed them onto specifically identified place-cards with the name of the project and artist.

The newly edited and photographed images with identification were processed at Larchmont Photo, a local one hour processing lab with the request to not cut the negatives, keeping the film rolls in tack. Ferro then made special arrangements with Konica in Torrance, California to overnight ship the film and they would upload the entire roll and create separate identities for each school. A total of 7 roles of film with approximately 35 images per roll were uploaded (one roll for each of the six schools and one finale roll from Fox Studio presentation). Once created, Ferro was able to send the links to the schools and artists. Each series contained an artist, filmmaker and storyteller.

"It felt really good to be able to bring something fresh and new to the Fox Storytelling project and serve both the community and artists, using the most cutting edge technology available at the time" said Ferro.

Photos

Lists of Schools

Grape Street Elementary, South Central Los Angeles
artist  Richard Wyatt,
filmmakers  Mark Berndt/Michael Long,
storyteller  Willie Sims

Barton Hill Elementary, San Pedro
artist  Candice Gawne,
filmmakers  Gardner Monks/Chris Levitas,
storyteller   Karen Golden

Commonwealth Elementary, Los Angeles
artist Richard Godfrey,
filmmakers  Mar Elepano/Stacy Armenta,
storyteller   Phyllis Chang

Erwin Elementary, Van Nuys
artist  Angela Briggs,
filmmakers  Daniel Villareal/Samantha White,
storyteller   Ayanna Contreras

Huntington Drive Elementary, East Los Angeles
artist  Alfredo DeBatuc,
filmmakers  Luis Mesa/Aito Steele,
storyteller  Georgiana Sanchez

Melrose Avenue Elementary, Los Angeles
artist  Gayle Gale,
filmmakers  Judy Irola/Gardner Monks,
storyteller  Alidz Agbabian

Storytelling Murals & Film
a Michelle Isenberg, Isenberg & Assoc, Inc. presentation