Our Collaborative Gallery Show premiere on November 30th at SUNYIT was a huge success! We had a great turnout, including friends, community members and many from the refugee community!
Gallery Visitors
Starting at 4:30pm, “Starting Over: Portraits of Refugee Life in Utica, NY” at the Gannet Gallery was finally open for viewing. We worked on this project for over eight months and it was such a relief to be able to share our work!
Around 6pm, we moved down the hall to Gannet Gallery for the World Music Event.
Some of the crowd for the World Music Event
We haso many people come to check out this event, the Kunsela Auditorium was practically filled. During World Music Event we featured SUNYIT student Erica on piano, then Karen-Burmese refugee and Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees employee Daniel Cribb performing Songs of Love and Peace, and finally a group of Bhutanese-Nepali performers singing and dancing to various folk and traditional songs. Check out this playlist on YouTube of the performances:
Around 7pm we introduced Utica Firefly documentary appropriately called ‘Starting Over,” produced by Geoff Storm and Ryan Miller. We are so happy and proud of how this turned out and thankful to the film’s participants.
Starting Over from Utica Firefly on Vimeo.
Check out bonus footage from the documentary on our website!
We ended the night with live stories from the audience. We had many community and refugee members participate and it was a moving and enlightening experience for many.
Pawser Soe, telling her story during Utica Firefly Storytelling Hour
Thank you so much to the local media who came out to support the show!
Check out the story from the Utica OD and WKTV!
For more information on this project, please keep an eye on our Facebook page!
THANK YOU!
