Anais Flower Cutting #1

“We are constantly shifting and changing and learning. And that’s really important. People tend to sometimes stay stagnant in one type of thinking or one type of way. It’s good that we tend to continue. To listen, to mold, to shape.” -Anaïs Isiria Gurrola, Dramaturg and Artist

[Description. Text over images. Quotes from Anaïs Isiria Gurrola Dramaturg and Artist. Image 1. “We are constantly shifting and changing and learning. And that’s really important.” A cornflower with a pink zooming starry background. Image 2. “People tend to sometimes stay stagnant in one type of thinking or one type of way.” The outline of a cornflower has been cut out of a stark background with the pink stars faded away. Image 3. “It’s good that we tend to continue. To listen, to mold, to shape.” Several cornflowers in a pink starry background.]

Anaïs Flower Cutting #2

[Description] Text over images. Quotes from Anaïs Isiria Gurrola Dramaturg and Artist. Image 1. “There’s so much beauty in saying no.” A cornflower in front of a pink carpet full of ‘no’ sculptures. Image 2. “Alternatively, there’s a lot of beauty in walking out.” A cornflower in front of a zooming pink rug. Image 3. “Like, for example, my coworkers and I were having this conversation and it was getting really mean and not productive. and people’s feeling’s were getting hurt. And I just disappear. And like the act of me just peacing out in that moment spoke more than me continuing to argue with that person.” A cornflower over a pink carpet.]

Anaïs Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Anaïs Isiria Gurrola Dramaturg and Artist. Image 1 “In connecting with so many Latinos in Portland, I just realized we’re everywhere. We’re really everywhere.” Image 2. “No, Portland is not white. You’re looking in the wrong places. We are here. People of Color are alive and well in Portland. Anaïs Isiria Gurrola Dramaturg and Artist.” Image 3. “We have communities, and we need to make them feel like theater is also open to them as well.” All images have a background of kaleidoscopic cornflowers over streaming pink stars.]

Babatunde Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Babatunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary Collective. “Pleasure is so important, especially for marginalized folks. I feel like we spend so much of our lives denying ourselves that for numerous reasons. But ultimately, I think for me, liberation feels like pleasure. Uninhibited pleasure and joy. Babatunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary” Image of a hazelnut blossom surrounded by bright red and green succulents.]

Babatunde Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Babatunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary Collective. Image 1. “Where’s the love? Where’s the connection? What do you imagine liberation might feel like? What might it taste like? What type of music is there, you know?” Image 2. “I need people to be ready for their own pleasure. And also to be able to name what that need is and spend some time exploring decolonizing their values around that.” Image 3. “The expectation should be that the folks you’re fighting with and in community with are going to fight for you to have what you need. At least that’s what I’m here for. The revolution will come. Let’s make it pleasurable.” All images include a hazelnut blossom in front of a burled piece of wood.]

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum. “I really see myself as a bridge or a network of bringing people together and using the connection to the museum to try to provide a platform and resources and possibilities and opportunities to Disabled artists.” Lichen on twig immersed in a network of purple and green.]

Becky Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum. “Surviving as a Disabled person in this culture is a form of art making.” Lichen on twig over technicolor underbrush.]

Becky Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum. “I so appreciate ADA and what it is, and it was needed. But we’re so far beyond that. It was written before the Internet existed.” Lichen on a twig over larger blades of grass.]

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Cheryl Green, Access Artist, Independent Audio Describer, Captioner, and Multimedia Digital Artist. Image 1. ‘When someone in a meeting says, “Well, how are we going to communicate with people who have access issues?” And I raise my hand and say, “I don’t think we should ever call it access issues. Image 2. “People don’t have access issues if they are struggling to access our content. We are the ones with the issues in how we delivered it. So can we please not refer to caption users as people with access issues?” All images include a curly fern leaf surrounded by bundles are rosemary.]

Cheryl Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Cheryl Green, Access Artist, Independent Audio Describer, Captioner, and Multimedia Digital Artist. Image 1. “I try to put my emphasis not on being compliant, but on being interesting and creative and artistic in my accessibility work.” Image 2. “It’s not good enough to always just say music gets faster. Music gets louder. I ask my body. Like, what is it doing? My heart’s racing. Oh, the music is racing.” Image 3. “I try to always remember what I have learned from Audio Description users and caption users about what they want. Want. And need. Users want an interesting and informative and immersive experience in a film. So why not give it?” All images include a curly fern leaf surrounded by pink and blue gradient.]

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery. “We need creativity in order to imagine new worlds and new ways of being. Or even to remember how to reinstitute old ways of being. And so I feel like access art is refinding that divine creative.” Image is of a crimson clover in front of lush green foliage.]

Leila Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery. Image 1. “I feel like people should be scared. If I was an able bodied neurotypical person at this point in time and I found out about ableism and I found out about, like all of these, you know, oppressive structures, I would be very scared.” Image 2. ‘Not just scared but I would be moved to action. I feel like discovering a new type of oppression should wake something up in your brain and be like, “Oh no, this isn’t right, how do I get rid of it?”’ All images include crimson clover in front of a purple and blue gradient.]

Leila Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery. Image 1. “I view my position as like I should be institutionalizing solutions that the community has already come up with, and that should just be the name of the game. And people don’t see government work as that. But that’s what I think it is.” Image 2. “My job is to ungaslight the people and really reveal that, you know we have the answers we have been looking for and we are the ones who will save us.” All images include crimson clover surrounded by flickering lights.]

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant. “Surrounding myself with beauty is a form of access.” Sea holly surrounded by purple soil.]

Rebel Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant. ‘When I’m producing work, I interrupt if there’s an access need. I don’t think, “Oh, it’s so important that the presenter gets to present their whole thing at the expense of people not understanding or people not being able to read the information and just leaving those people behind.” Instead, I say, “Hey, can we take a pause for a minute? We’re having some access issues.”’ Sea holly surrounded by lush foliage.]

Rebel Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant. Image 1. ‘I think like ADA access is a barrier a lot of the time. You know, people are able to check off a list and say, “Hey, we’ve done our due diligence and that’s all we have to do.”’ Image 2. “And the result is that like, in my wheelchair, I go into bathrooms where I can barely fit in the stall and I can’t close the door. But I’m told that that’s an accessible space. And like, how is having my privacy violated an accessible space?” All images include sea holly in front of flames.]

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC. “Don’t assume everybody needs the same thing.” Image includes branched lichen surrounded by beautiful purple soil.]

Saara Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC. Image 1. “I immigrated this country as a refugee, and originally I’m from Somalia. I am legally blind and I do advocacy a lot for Disability refugee community. Because when I came to this country, I struggle for me to navigate the system and the language.” Image 2. ‘A lot of times people who are interpreters really don't know how to interpret when it comes to people with disability. I went to The Commission for the Blind and they hired somebody who was interpreting for me. I remember the case manager, she was telling me like I can go to school, I can do a lot of things. The interpreter was shocked to say, "I'm not sure if you can do this.”’ Image 3 “I had no idea at that time: do I quit or do I try, you know? It was a really bad situation. Then I said, what I have to lose? I'm going to try.  Yeah. I really thank God I just tried. I had no idea what I was doing. I just went there. But I'm happy that I didn't listen to him.” Image 4.  ‘I even went to interpreter training. You know, people who do the training. I said, How can you include the language so people can learn how to talk to people with disabilities? They ask me, can I do volunteer? [laughter] And I said, "No, you're going to pay for the teachers to study from me, not volunteer.”’ All images include a background of branched lichen surrounded by lush greenery.]

Saara Flower Cutting #3

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC. “In my own experience and with people I work with, they really don’t know the right question to ask. First of all, you need to know what exists and then you can ask. So I always have to educate the community what they can ask and how can they use their own creativity so they can do their part to get access they need.” Image includes branched lichen in front of a blue and purple gradient. 

[Description. Text over image. Quotation from Subashini Ganesan, New Expressive Works, Founder and Executive Director. “What I need is time, but not time to do things. Time to not do things. Time to just…[exhales]. So that things can defrag and fall into spaces.” Image is of the leaves of an arnica flower surrounded by bright blue and red tendrils.]

Subashini Flower Cutting #2

[Description. Text over image. Quotes from Subashini Ganesan, New Expressive Works, Founder and Executive Director. Image 1. “I work with colleagues and I help them get more confident about applying for grants, and the biggest barrier becomes the budget.” Image 2. “First of all, we’re so afraid of money and we’re so afraid of the shame that so many of us feel for not knowing how to work with money and then to represent it on paper feels even more awful and stressful.” Image 3. “I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to figure out what financial literacy means for our [arts] community. How do we buy homes? How do we have retirement?” All images include an arnica flower surrounded by blue and purple clouds.]