United Voices of Pomona For Environmental Justice

Dear friends,

As some of you know, I'm part of a non profit organization called "United Voices of Pomona for Environmental Justice."

This group joined together for one cause which was to stop a regional trash station from being built in our city. We have been fighting this for a very long time and we finally have a site up to help us spread the word about what we have done, what we are doing, and what this fight is all about.

We have evolved from one issue to many issues in Pomona that surround the health of our environment and the living beings in our city and beyond. I beg of you to share our site with your family, friends, and strangers so that our voices become united and we can fight the corruption that surrounds our city.

Please share this site with as many people as you can, we need all the help that we can get to save our city.

http://unitedvoicesofpomona.wordpress.com/

http://www.gofundme.com/savepomona

Thank you!
Love,

Processed. Print. Twelve.

Pentax K1000/ Fujicolor Superia 400

February 1 2013

I met Daisy about two years ago. I was going to a show in Echo Park and when I was waiting in line I saw Andrea, which at that point, I hadn't seen or talked to her since 2006, five years!

I remember the feeling of re-introducing myself to Andrea again and how nice it was to meet a familiar person again but knowing nothing about her. I think we were completely different people in high school, I know I was so I felt this sense of a clean start even though Andrea and I never really talked in high school. Daisy was there with Andrea and I met her for the first time.

This was May 2011 so it was almost going to be a year since graduating from college and moving back to Pomona. At this time I was still struggling with the transition of living a fairly independent life for four years to living at home again. There was a lot of conflict going on with me due to the stress of navigating life after school, trying to find a way to be productive without professors giving you assignments, finding a job that I actually liked and paid well enough to help with my student loans, trying to meet people in the art world to build some sort of community. This on top of many things caused a lot of conflict in me at the time.

Daisy told me she was about to graduate in June and she shared some of her anxieties about life after college but it didn't seem to bother her as much. I think seeing someone that seemed to be fearless really helped me find peace with where I was. Also it just helped to talk to someone that seemed to understand what life after college could be. I've never told her that but as I was looking at this photo that I took of her in February of this year and I remembered the first time we met and I remember that feeling.

Daisy reminds me to work harder at being a present friend because she lives in Los Angeles and even though it isn't that far, it seems more difficult for me to make time to see friends that don't live in the cities right next to mine. A big lesson I've learned and am still learning this year is to make time to enjoy life, enjoy friendships, enjoy meeting people and getting to know them better and sharing.

I like this photo of her because it reminds me that people embody so much, and they offer more than you can imagine, and contain a vast complexity. Yet, at the same time, we are really simple and sometimes all we need are things that are really simple to be happy or to be at peace. In this case I was happy to get a day off to hang out with her, look at art, and just talk about how simple and complex our lives are.

Processed. Print. Eleven.

Echo Park, December 18 2011

Pentax K1000/ Kodak Portra 400

I've always been fascinated with store fronts, but mostly those mom and pop store fronts, those are the ones that get me. I like little markets like this one because they are organized but chaotic at the same time. And the amount of what is in the store is aesthetically enjoyable compared to those big box stores that have an entire thirty foot isle stocked with all kinds of sandwich breads. Whereas these markets have just a few types of bread.

I was riding my bike up Sunset to see Beach fossils on this night and the glow from this store front made me stop. Lately I've been so busy that I haven't really let myself stop, just stop and take it all in. It happens to me a lot, getting stuck in this whirlwind of loud processess. But here I am, stopping for a while, and it's nice. Maybe I can work towards some sort of medium, a medium that lets me continue to utilize what I have to offer as a community member, a person of this planet, but at the same time gives me enough space to breathe, to enjoy the work that is past, present, and ahead.

Maybe stopping or pausing might help me see something that I would normally just past right by.
I like that you can't make out the address number in the photo, it leaves room for something else, something I haven't yet seen. 

Hip Hip...

As of April 2nd 2013-

I officially paid off one entire student loan,
now I just have two more.
I'm thankful for my family,
because without them
I would be homeless and full of student loan debt
and this would not have been possible.

Time to eat a bagel and go to sleep.

(cheering inside myself,
and theres also a huge party/celebration
with carnival rides and foods from all over the world in my imagination)

Hooray!