Closing Panel Discussion: The Power of Creativity
Sometimes we need more than words to talk about death and dying. With this session, the Reimagine End of Life festival wraps up after 10 days and hundreds of events across the Bay Area. Experience the power of creativity with select Reimagine performers and creatives who open up conversations about the end of life in unexpected and inspiring ways.
Angelica Ekeke is a Bay area-based immersive visual journalist that has produced work for the Museum of the African Diaspora, Berkeley Law, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Her work is rooted in social justice and is focused on reframing narratives that are often overlooked. Both her local and international work is aligned with highlighting and reporting on diasporic trauma in order to promote transatlantic conversations. In an effort to bridge art, journalism, and innovation, she introduced a new medium to the journalism, documentary, and music world—she calls 'Visual Symphonies". She holds a BA from the San Francisco State University and is a graduate candidate at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
Veronica De Jesus is a Los Angeles-based artist who from 2004 until 2016 made portraits of artists, writers, and diverse cultural figures to mark their passing. The first subjects of her Memorial Drawings were the famous chef Julia Child and the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, whose deaths moved De Jesus greatly. Eventually she expanded the project to include a wide range of people, such as Irene Pijoan, an influential artist friend of hers when she studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from UC Berkeley.
Mara Holt Skov is an art and design historian, curator, author and Associate Professor at California College of the Arts. She identifies rising macrotrends and tracks the convergence of the fine arts, design, craft, and popular culture. She champions design for overlooked human needs in the healthcare realm, focusing on work that addresses individual and collective needs at the end of life. Her creative practice merges research, writing and storytelling in designed books, artifacts and installations created in collaboration with others.
Moderator Jeannie Blaustein, Ph.D. is the founding board chair of Reimagine End of Life, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. Jeannie graduated from Brown University (A.B.), and holds an M.A. from NYU. Jeannie has served as a hospice volunteer, trained to become a doula to accompany the dying, and is on the Steering Committee of “What Matters: Caring Conversations About End of Life”, adapted from the nationally recognized 'Respecting Choices'. She is a certified What Matters Facilitator, Instructor, and has worked as a chaplaincy intern on the Geriatric and Palliative Care service at Mt. Sinai hospital in NYC.
