Renowned photographer helping

As earth moves on the west side of Highway 12 in preparation for the construction of the new Valley of the Moon Teen Center, an art project is also underway at the center. The brainchild of Shelly Willis of the Sonoma Community Center and the Teen Center’s executive director, Celeste Winders, this project promises to be a meaningful and important venture into the culture and community that is The Springs.
During a month-long visit, award-winning Minnesota photographer Wing Young Huie will work with a handful of teens from the Valley of the Moon Teen Center to chronicle their view of The Springs through a camera’s lens. The project developed through conversations among Willis, Winders and Kenneth Ramirez of Vineyard Workers Services. The Sonoma Community Center, through their annual fundraiser, Sonoma Valley Muse, is funding the project. Each year, the center partners with a community organization to produce or present art and education programming.
Familiar with Wing Young Huie through her own public art work in Minneapolis, Willis invited the artist to The Springs for a site visit and to continue discussions about the project.
According to his website, www.wingyounghuie.com, “His best-known work is Lake Street USA, which in the summer and fall of 2000 transformed six miles of a well-known Minneapolis thoroughfare into one of the most remarkable public art projects in recent memory. Wing’s most recent project, 9 Months in America: An Ethnocentric Tour, presents a post-9/11 America, a place where Asians, particularly Chinese, happen to be in the majority. This ambitious, cross-country odyssey frames the complexity, nuance, appropriation, humor, contradictions and surprises of American life in our time. Whether in epic public installations or major museum exhibitions, Wing creates up-to-the-minute societal mirrors of who we are, seeking to reveal not only what is hidden, but also what is plainly visible and seldom noticed. The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Wing Artist of the Year in 2000.” Wing has published two books: “Frogtown: Conversations and Photographs in an Urban Neighborhood” (1996) and “9 Months in America: An Ethnocentric Tour” (2006).
Huie will be in The Springs working with the teens from October 8 – November 8. Arrangements are still being made for his stay. It is hoped that he will be able to live in The Springs during his visit, in order to capture the true round-the-clock charm of our neighborhoods. If anyone has appropriate accommodations in the way of a guesthouse or quarters, please contact Shelly at the Sonoma Community Center, 707.938.4626 ext. 4.
As Huie develops his photo list, he will rely on Springs residents, business owners and individuals to advise him and help him arrange photo shoots. He will also venture into the neighborhoods on his own taking photographs less formally. “In addition to the teen photographers, he plans to give cameras to an elder in the community and a vineyard worker,” Willis said. “We hope to produce as many as 100 photographs.” The images will range in size, be installed in storefront windows and likely blown up mural-size for installations at three sites along The Springs Highway 12 corridor. The project will be installed in early fall, 2008.
Considering the beautiful tapestry The Springs has to offer, I can only imagine the finished photographs will be something to behold.
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