I went to meet an artist last week: Janine Mapurunga. Photography is her medium at the most basic level, but she is a crafter of worlds in a larger sense. That is to say, her real medium is joy.
I'm working on a project with the urban and environmental planning company where I am employed that, on its most important level, is about valuing art and artists as active participants in creating meaningful, vital communities -- a different description than has been given us in recent decades. I decided to curate an art exhibit in our office in Sacramento to promote the service line and to connect with the community. I issued a call for artworks, asking for pieces where artists presented their perspective on the "built environment," meaning I wanted to see what artists were thinking about and feeling with regard to redevelopment, urban landscapes, and vital community. We're planning an open house 20 July 2018 (stay tuned for event announcements) and Janine was one of the first to respond. She sent a series of beautiful images, some of which will be part of the show, that document the initial stages of development of a complex of artists lofts in downtown Sacramento. The images are exquisite but even beyond that, the artist has me excited about contemporary creative practice in a way I haven't been for some time. Part of this excitement involves her approach to community and her thoughts about artists' contribution to the vitality of the city.
Downtown Sacramento, like many downtown areas, is the subject of restoration efforts that include affordable housing for artists. The WAL (or Warehouse Artist Lofts) on R Street is an exemplary form of mixed-use, mixed-income, transit-oriented development that combines beautiful architectural design, a nod to the historic use in the neighborhood, and thoughtful ideas about community-building among artists, creative entrepreneurs, and people interested in art. Developed by Ali Youssefi of CFY Development, WAL and its designer are considered radical in a redevelopment climate that put primary emphasis on the most return for investment in terms of dollars. Youssefi envisioned a hub for creative practitioners, who are often instrumental in making a benighted neighborhood into an exciting place to live and work, where those creative partners would never be priced out of the region and where their value would be understood.
Any of us who have settled the frontiers of downtown or eastside LA or Richmond and Oakland in the Bay Area know that as soon as the region becomes cool and vital, it becomes impossible for artists to afford to stay. We have to move to some other hinterland and start again. Because cities and redevelopment firms are beginning to realize the important contribution artists make to the community on levels as diverse as sustainability, community design, and creative economies, they have directed their efforts on finding ways to make it viable for artists to continue living in their neighborhoods, carry on with the business of being creative, and become involved in the more formalized structures that enable their kind of live-work-present lifestyle, even after the redevelopment begins.
For Mapurunga, relating is life and this means fostering community and collaborating with the other residents at WAL on large and small issues: (recent example) how to do we move some potted citrus trees from the patio of WAL's Public Market, an artisan coffee and sandwich shop that also sells vintage vinyl records and Moroccan rugs, to the common space on the roof? This involved asking the new market owners if the residents could have the trees (put in place by the previous owners), coordinating with the neighbors and some winemakers she knows, to obtain and collect the cost of several wine barrels they can use for planters, not an easy task when $50 can mean groceries and gas for the week or even two for many artists. Still, as I stood petting her dog Xica, Janine explained the situation to two other residents, orchestrating the project as seriously as any community organizer working on an election campaign. Her calm but serious demeanor struck me as having a tremendous amount of authority that came from her investment in sustaining the vision for community that Youssefi instigated, while at the same time conveying the ultimate tender respect for her neighbors that informs all of her work. Sentimental as it might sound, watching the exchange touched my heart because I have long sought collaborators like this who take the project of creative living as seriously as they do obtaining fame or earning money or making love.
In her loft, Mapurunga and I discussed her approach to everything she photographs, from farmers to custom-made shoes, where she attends to each with the same apparent love that frames the images of her grandmother who still lives in Brazil, where Janine grew up. Her focus on the details and her subtle correspondence between the human body and the other forms of embodiment in the world (like a strong woman walking in an orange grove paired with the sensual oranges-like-breasts in the foreground) means that even the most familiar subject matter is transformed into something miraculous. Her attention to the tiniest details, hands breaking eggs, lips clutching a nail, offers up a vision of that which makes us most human but with a sense that these banal or even rough details are also what make us most lovable. Her delicate approach to the everyday is not new to art or image-making, but the intensity and seriousness with which she treats her subject matter attests to the way in which she approaches the community in which she participates and to which she brings this joy-as-agency on a daily basis.
Her love of all that is human extends to our animal companions as recent commissions from the City of Sacramento for art in public places attests. An image of Xica gazing skyward with the sun shining on her strawberry blond head, like the light of divine revelation, and her ears lifted to better hear the music of the spheres, wraps one of five utility boxes in the public right-of-way that Janine worked on as part of a much larger effort, the Capital Box Art Project and similar ventures. At one site, eggs in a dish offer latent life as encouragement to connect, while the farmers and chefs responsible for nourishing our bodies form the creative network of daily sustenance. The enlightened pup who shares Mapurunga's life is no mere avatar: she participates in the relational narrative the images and gestures of the artwork instigate. The artist here does not act in the distant capacity of ethnographer, feeding back to us our failures and imperfections; instead she uses her lens to hone in on the delicate points of difference that form the beauty of each and reflect the wonder of an individual's ability to act in the creation of a story of general life. Through the loving (not nostalgic or idealized) gesture of framing, focusing, cropping, printing, and distributing, Mapurunga renders the subject of the image (person, animal, and plant alike) with a kind of reverence that produces a heart flip of joy in the viewer and makes it possible for her to stand up and do what she needs to that very day -- the agency that comes from the experience of joy.
Mapurunga seeks ways to advance the cause for including artists in any revitalization efforts that cities undertake, to retain housing and work spaces that allow artists to carry on with the business of making art, and to keep it possible for us all to stay in these neighborhoods in which we are instrumental players before any institutions or jurisdictions get involved. Sadly, Youssefi passed at 35 after a battle with cancer, but his vision lives on with Mapurunga, his development company, and others within the community at WAL.