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"Milwaukee, WI – With 30 years of award-winning creative youth programs under its belt, Art Start is pleased to present the 8th iteration of its annual SEE ME BECAUSE multimedia exhibition at the Harbor View Plaza, the first waterfront public park in Milwaukee’s South Side district" - Milwaukee Community Journal
Milwaukee, WI – With 30 years of award-winning creative youth programs under its belt, Art Start is pleased to present the 8th iteration of its annual SEE ME BECAUSE multimedia exhibition at the Harbor View Plaza, the first waterfront public park in Milwaukee’s South Side district. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, May 26th and runs through Saturday, July 31st, 2021. The SEE ME BECAUSE exhibition is the culmination of the Art Start Portrait Project, a year-long project and platform for youth of color to establish their own narratives, explore the complexity of their identities, envision their futures, and express how they want to be seen by the world. The project is supported by world-class artists who collaborate with youth to bring their voices and visions to the public.“
The Art Start Portrait Project challenges the pattern that stereotypes, statistics, and circumstance should determine our youths’ existence, or that the identity that society has assigned them will be their one-dimensional reality,” explains Johanna de los Santos, Art Start’s Executive Director. “We believe that each individual has an autonomous and creative spirit which is inherently healing and liberating. With the freedom to explore, design and imagine oneself, the courage to believe, and access to the resources to create, we can profoundly transform how we identify and how we interact with our lives, futures, and each other.”This is the eighth volume of the Art Start Portrait Project, founded in 2013 by Art Start. It also serves as the organization’s first fully bilingual exhibition, presented in both English and Spanish. The Volume Eight participants were selected through a community partnership with Casa Romero Urban Renewal Center, and will join a living archive of hundreds of youth and families over many years who, as complex, self-determined people in pursuit of self-discovery, have asked the world to see them as they choose to be seen. The archive of previous Volumes portraits can be viewed at www.seemebecause.org
Collaborating artists for the SEE ME BECAUSE exhibition include Nick Collura, Mell Russell, Kat Schleicher, Sara Stathas, Maegan Rebecca, Eric Kleppe-Montenegro, Anthony Giacomino, Jim McDonald. Location Support was provided by RDI Stages.SEE ME BECAUSE: The Art Start Portrait Project V.8 is presented and supported by numerous visionary partners: National Endowment for the Arts, Wisconsin Humanities Council, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, MPS Partnership for the Arts and Humanities, the Harbor District, Allied Digital Photo, Collura Creative, and RDI Stages.Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Art Start is a nationally-recognized organization that uses the creative process and collaborations with the creative arts and media industries to nurture the voices of historically marginalized youth, offering them a space to imagine, believe, and represent their creative vision for their lives and communities. For more information on Art Start, how to get involved or make a donation, please visit the website: www.artstart.org.To scheduling a viewing appointment in advance, please visit:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/154594252571ABOUT ARTSTARTSince 1991, Art Start has used the creative process to nurture the voices, hearts and minds of historically marginalized youth, offering a space for them to imagine, believe, and represent their creative vision for their lives and communities.
Through consistent workshops with long-term partners, including youth organizations, schools, alternative sentencing programs, and residences for youth and families experiencing homelessness, art becomes the starting point of a larger life process, and the start of larger public exchanges about the future of our communities.Art Start’s success has received national media attention, including on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bravo’s “Stories of Arts for Change”, Fox 5ʹs Good Day Street Talk, MSNBC’s The Griot, 107.3 Lite FM, National Public Radio, a mini-documentary by two-time Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple and the 2003 CBS special, “Fulfilling the Dream.” In 2009, The Sundance Channel debuted “The Hip Hop Project”, a feature-length documentary about Art Start’s award-winning music program. Additional features about Art Start have been published in The New York Times, New York Daily News, and most recently in Huffington Post.ABOUT CASA ROMERO RENEWAL CENTER
Casa Romero has served the Milwaukee community as an urban, multicultural, and bilingual retreat Center for 20 years, serving over 16,800 urban youth during its tenure. The vision of Casa Romero is one of justice, peace and community service. Their mission inspires learning, mentoring, and leadership through creative programming that empowers youth participants to recognize the purpose each of us are uniquely equipped to contribute to the human family. Rooted in over 13 years of youth leadership development work, CR’s programming uses a strengths-based approach to generate a culture of respect for self-expression and an atmosphere of affirmation, creating a safe space for youth to explore their cultural identity.ABOUT THE HARBOR DISTRICTThe mission of Harbor District, Inc. is to lead the revitalization of Milwaukee’s Harbor District by connecting people to place, supporting a healthy business community, and improving the quality of our natural environment.
