“LEAP OFF THE PAGE! Be the Hero in Your Own Story,” held at Eagle Rock City Hall, is a free-admission visual arts class focused on photography, photo editing and creative writing. According to her Instagram, the class’ teacher Mary Cheung is an artist, creator, costume designer, inventor and design consultant. Cheung said that the goal of the class is for students to create one final mixed-media project by the end of the two-month long class, which began in September.
Cheung said she devised the class with the goal of bringing together fellow community members to reimagine classic stories and feel empowered by art.
“I thought it would be fun to have people create a character, have their own voice […] take a classic story and show how they see it,” Cheung said. “Not everyone is a Disney princess, white and blonde, so maybe they can reimagine it, or they will see themselves as Cinderella.”
According to Cheung, she sent flyers out to people she knew and posted others around the Eagle Rock community. Cheung said she was hoping to keep the class small and selected the first 12 students who registered and despite a growing waitlist. According to its Eventbrite page, the class is free and for anyone 18 to 75 years old.
Cheung said she sought funding from the LA Public Library initially and then found it with Eastside Arts Initiative Council (EAI). She said the EAI funds allowed her to obtain premium access to the photo editing software Picsart for each student.
Wendee Lee, a student in the class, said she is a voiceover professional, choreographer and singer who thought the class would be a good way to learn to use editing softwares that she could then apply to her professional work.
“I was really hoping to learn this software enough so that I could incorporate it into my own socials and personal artistic promotion,” Lee said.
Lee said she worked using the Picsart software every day in class for her project where she is interpreting the story of The Wizard of Oz with a feminist lens.
“I am exploring a modern take on the days following Dorothy’s first experience in Oz,” Lee said. “The women are representing the phases of womanhood — Dorothy represents maidenhood, Glenda represents motherhood and the witch represents crone, or elderhood.”
Another student, Loriann Beck-Gilmore, said she is doing a portrait of a detective for her project. When not in Cheung’s class, she works as a program coordinator for the Robert L. Douglass Speech and Language Clinic at Cal State LA.
In Beck-Gilmore’s artwork, a female detective walks through a cloud of smoke that fills the frame. Beck-Gilmore said this smoke that veils and hides the detective is her second subject. According to Beck-Gilmore, students are working together to help each other learn how to use this editing software, with many of them teaching each other how to use their iPhone cameras.
Aydee Valle-Amescua, a recently retired Student Support Service Person for the LA Unified School District, said she is an amateur photographer. She said she learned about the class after meeting Cheung in her Sunday tai chi class and that she signed up for the sense of community, as well as to try a new creative outlet beyond her watercolor painting.
Cheung said she recognizes how much work has been to put into the class and that she feels gratified by it because of the community the class has created.
“There’s this camaraderie,” she said. “If I’m busy with something, someone will jump in and help someone else. These are all the things I wanted: for people to connect, learn something, have a good time and discover a side of them, a creative side.”
The exhibit showcasing the 12 finished pieces will be open at Eagle Rock City Hall from Nov. 9 to Nov. 30.
Contact Grace Gonsalves at gonsalves@oxy.edu
