WaveMaker Grantee: PageSlayers
Interview with Dana De Greff, PageSlayers Founder and Executive Director
Tell us about your WaveMaker project:
PageSlayers, a 2016 Knight Arts Challenge winner, is dedicated to cultivating the next generation of artists- and writers-of-color in South Florida. We partnered with EXILE Books with Elia Khalaf to produce SIDE X SIDE in 2018, a dynamic, interactive correspondence art project that engaged with young artists and writers in Opa-Locka and Little Haiti. We aimed to bridge our respective Miami-Dade neighborhoods together by means of mail art, highlighting their unique experiences and neighborhoods. Inspired students between the ages of 8 to 10 years old living and attending public school in Little Haiti and Opa-Locka were paired with each other as pen pals, creating correspondence art – stamps, envelopes, and other snail-mail memorabilia – while learning about life in another diverse community through the lens of a new friend. These students expanded their literary horizons beyond community borders and instilled in themselves a civic sense of pride from where they read, write, live and play.
Going back to the 1960s, mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, has been used for exchanging art, collages, drawings, and the written word. We were drawn to this medium because it allows for spontaneity, creativity, and is inclusive in its nature; all you need is access to a mailbox! One of the most appealing aspects of mail art is its egalitarianism – through the postal service, students can connect and circumnavigate issues such as transportation, economic status, and lack of meeting spaces. Both the communities of Opa-Locka and Little Haiti are predominately communities of color and immigrants, and both have strong ties to literature and art, which is why we thought they would be an excellent pairing. These two areas have also been in the process of major cultural, economical, and artistic revivals since the fifties and sixties.
We began our pilot program working with PageSlayers Summer Camp, which was part of the Opa Locka Community Development Corporation overall summer camp programs, with a group of about 15 students, and another group of about 15 students in Little Haiti through Gang Alternative, Inc. Over the course of about 6 weeks, we met with each group multiple times, leading workshops on letter writing, stamp making, and more to create a unique pen pal project. EXILE provided basic templates/graphic design and guidelines that will help to spark dialogue and generate collaborative content between students in Opa-Locka and Little Haiti, which included special envelopes, paper designs, and writing prompts about what makes the students neighborhood’s unique.
What was the easiest aspect of this project? What was the most challenging? Did you learn something new? What do you wish you had done differently? What went perfectly?
The easiest part was meeting with the kids in both Opa-Locka and Little Haiti and watching them create their own art and letters. Most kids have a natural sense of play and wonder that adults lose or tamp down, and it was never difficult to get them to be creative and wild!
The most challenging aspect, however, was time. Because we worked within the confines of summer camps in both neighborhoods, there was always a limited amount of time to work with each group and each session went so fast! We did the best we could, but I always wished we could stay for much longer. In an ideal world, I would love to have summer camps or after school programs that focus exclusively on writing and art, so that we could have weeks to work with each group and time to develop things like personalized stationary, journals, more zines, posters, and more.
Tell us what you're most excited about as a result of this project? Has it inspired a new work, collaborations, direction? Has it brought new opportunities for expanding it through other grants or exhibitions? What, where, and when? Tell us more...
In 2019, I applied for an Ellies Creator Award through Oolite Arts and won! The idea is basically a continuation of our Wavemaker Grant, but on a much larger scale, and this time working with the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has affected our plans, so for now, we will pick up in summer of 2021 with the idea of meeting with groups between Opa-Locka (through the OLCDC) and Little Haiti (through the LHCC), culminating in a zine-making and pizza party at EXILE Books shop, and, hopefully, a display and reading at a zine fair at PAMM! We are excited to directly contribute to Miami’s mail art history, and hope many of our students can make the party and zine fair.
In one sentence - what one thing about doing this project will stay with you?
The realization that kids are resilient and fiercely creative; if we encourage and allow them the freedom to create art, they will impress and save us all.
ABOUT DANA DE GREFF
Born in Miami, Dana De Greff holds a Masters in Fine Arts in fiction from the University of Miami. She is a Visiting Professor of English at St. Thomas University and has taught creative writing classes with Books & Books in Miami, as well as online through the Loft Literary Center.
She is the author of Alterations (winner of the 2018 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series published by Seven Kitchens Press), recipient of the 2018 Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Service Award, and the 2017-2018 Literary Artist-in-Residence at the Deering Estate. She has been accepted or awarded scholarships from Tent: Creative Writing, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, The Key West Literary Seminar, the Lemon Tree House Residency in Tuscany, and Hedgebrook. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Cosmonauts Avenue, The Citron Review, PANK, Origins Journal, Philadelphia Stories, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Gulf Stream Magazine.
She is represented by Writers House.
ABOUT ELIA KHALAF
Elia Khalaf is an Artist and Art Therapist, born and raised in Lebanon and presently a New Yorker. His practice revolves around issues of public amnesia and the construction of identity, expressed in zines and story-telling.
His latest projects are #NotMyNeim, O Miami Poetry Festival winner of 2018, and Made-Up Memories, a community art project and Miami Awesome Foundation grantee.
PayeSlayers received a Cycle 4 WaveMaker Grant in 2018. Since 2015, WaveMaker Grants have awarded $399,000 in grants to 77 Miami’s most visionary artists, collectives, and curators.
WaveMaker Grants at Locust Projects is made possible by support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and is part of the Warhol Foundation's Regional Regranting Program. Part of a national network of Warhol-initiated regranting programs, WaveMaker Grants is the first in the southeast. For more information about the Warhol Foundation's Regional Regranting Program, please click here.