Monday, November 22, 2021

Score Unique Gifts at the Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop

Support local artisans by shopping for your holiday gifts from the Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop in Pantego.

Want to get away from mass produced big box store offerings for the recipients of your gift list? Then come out to the Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop in Pantego at Simply Divune Cafe. Support local artisans while whittling down that holiday list of yours. When you shop, you might even find a treasured treat for yourself.

Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop offers a unique shopping experience. Handcrafted, many one-of-a-kind creations, by about a dozen local artisans, will fill the private room of Simply Divune Café. A wide range of fabulous finds, including ceramics, upcycled decor, framed and unframed art, jewelry, Christmas decorations, handmade candles and more will appeal to you and the people on your gift list.

Find all of this in the Village Park Shopping Center at Simply Divune Café, 2230 W Park Row Dr, Pantego, TX 76013.

On Saturday, November 27 from 9am-3pm, get a preview of some of the hand crafted goodies that will fill the Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop this year. Even though Small Business Saturday is a preview day, these unique creations will be for sale too, so pop in and purchase anything that catches your eye since many of our items are one or few-of-a-kind finds.

Happy Holidays Pop-Up Shop will be fully stocked and open beginning at 10am on Tuesday, November 30, 2021 and will be open for your shopping pleasure through Thursday, December 23. Shop hours will be: Monday 10am-2pm, Tuesday - Thursday: 10am - 5 pm, Friday - Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm, Sunday: 1pm-5pm

“Every year I am amazed at the variety of the new wares the participating artisans bring to this holiday pop-up. You never know what remarkable find awaits to be discovered,” states Cathy Stein, one of the artists and coordinator of this event through 817 Arts Alliance.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Pegasus Media Project Provides One-of-a-Kind Career On-Ramp to Dallas’ Aspiring Film Artists

A new apprenticeship program, in partnership with The Alliance of Media Arts + Culture and Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, provides a direct career merge for young adults from underserved communities.

When Joey Lee graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, he felt excited about his future. He had created a portfolio of his strongest work and started to look for work in the advertising industry. Unfortunately, the work never came along with COVID. Ultimately, Lee returned home and to the unfulfilling job he had left prior to attending college.

“I was kind of lost, stuck,” Lee says. “It’s funny. I had just started thinking to myself that maybe the film industry was something I wanted to get into, just because I like writing and telling different stories.” That’s when Lee heard about Pegasus Media Project, and he applied on the spot. The first program of its kind offered in Dallas and, in fact, in the nation, the Pegasus Media Project apprenticeship program is designed to give young adults like Lee a pathway into the film and media arts industry.

While Dallas-Fort Worth boasts the state’s largest creative economy at $34 billion and over 200,000 jobs, pathways to those careers were built on a culture of unpaid internships. “But even with paid apprenticeships available, many people still need an on-ramp to qualify for them,” says Wendy Levy, Executive Director of The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, the national program sponsor for Arts2Work.

In the spring of 2021, Arts2Work, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Pegasus Media Project partnered to provide access to creative careers to people traditionally excluded from those opportunities. Apprentice Caodan Tran is one of those individuals. “Being Vietnamese-American, I wish I had seen more stories like mine growing up,” she said. “This is something I’ve always wanted access to. I just didn’t know how to get there besides going back to school.”

In launching the program, Arts2Work partners MIT Solve, New Profit, the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Adobe provided a $250,000 cash and in-kind investment in the Dallas pilot program, seeding Pegasus Media Project as a certified Arts2Work Training Center. The equipment and infrastructure have been vital to a program serving Dallas’ most underrepresented and underserved communities. Over 15 weeks, film educators, teachers and mentors working in the industry not only trained apprentices in equipment use and technique but quickly set them up to begin telling their own visual stories.

Lee’s mentor, Dallas filmmaker Jake Hochendoner, says he leaped at the opportunity to work with the apprentices. “I had mentors early on who helped me get to where I am today,” said Hochendoner. “Without those mentors, I would have probably struggled to find myself, find my place, find my voice and be validated as an artist.”

As part of their on-the-job training, Pegasus Media Project apprentices also made films for local performing arts groups, working together telling powerful stories to bring Dallas audiences back to theaters again. “We want to provide avenues for becoming an individual entrepreneur but also to have the option to hyper-focus on one skill and move into the workforce,” said Daniel Laabs, an independent Dallas filmmaker and lead mentor. “We want to give them as many options as possible and make them as hire-able as possible.”

Having completed the program, Lee says the experience has been meaningful for him and he hopes it will be a springboard to new opportunities for him.

“This program has blown me away,” said Tran, who said the skills she learned through the program felt like the missing link for her. “I have been so grateful.”

Photo Credit: PegasusMediaProject, Xenia Matthews, apprentice, on location shoot at Sate Fair of Texas, photo by Niloo Jalilvand

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Call for Artists from Create Arlington - Deadline Nov. 28, 2021

With the theme of Gratitude, Create Arlington is asking the artists to tell them what the exhibit will look like. ARtists can submit anything that they feel speaks to the subject of showing appreciation and being thankful. Is it possible to maintain this outlook during difficult times? How does a thankful heart change a person or even transform a community? Is there a specific aspect of gratitude you want to explore, unpack, deconstruct, blow up, or rearrange?

They are accepting art that covers a broad spectrum of media from traditional materials to small installation, to multimedia (such as video), poetry, short stories, music and beyond. Create Arlington is grateful for the many successes within their community this year, and would like to see how it’s expressed in the gallery for the end of the year. For all the submission details, click here.