Segerstrom Center for the Arts to Celebrate International Women's Month With Free Event

Segerstrom Center for the Arts is celebrating International Women's Month on Saturday, March 21 on the Julianne and George Argyros Plaza with a FREE event where you can meet inspiring female creators and indulge your own DIY spirit at Rock, Paper, Scissors: ¡DAMAS! Live music pulsating from the Argyros Plaza stage will provide an energetic soundtrack to inspire your creativity. The pop-rock sisters of the Sledge Grits Band will kick off the afternoon, followed by Go Betty Go and their punk rock, rough and tumble sound. Between sets, join us for an open forum conversation with several prominent SoCal women artists and innovators about creativity and what drives them. Try your hand at some art of your own with a colorful mixed media collage workshop led by local artist Trinh Mai. And don't forget to stop by the Segerstrom Center booth and create a pin with our special button-making machine! While you take a break from art-making, enjoy drink specials and tasty bites from George's Café.

Performance Schedule:

1:00pm Sledge Grits Band

2:00pm "Women in the Arts" panel discussion with JoVia Armstrong (musician), Peppur Chambers (writer and producer), Trinh Mai (visual artist), and Stacy Russo (writer)

3:00pm Go Betty Go

Activities:

Collage Making with Trinh Mai

Books and Coloring with OC Public Libraries

Paper Bag Books with Newport Mesa Moms

Segerstrom Center for the Arts custom pin making

The Rock, Paper, Scissors series is made possible by Behr Paint.

Women in the Arts Panelists:

About JoVia Armstrong:

Daringly innovative, percussionist and educator JoVia Armstrong is a well-traveled musician and a Sabian endorsee. Detroit bred, she is winner of the 2014 Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year through the Black Women in Jazz Awards. Jovia, who is a PhD student at the University of California Irvine's Integrated Composition Improvisation and Technology program, received the 3Arts Siragusa Foundation Artist Award in 2011 for her work as an educator. She is a member of Chicago soul group JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound as well as a member and writer behind World/Jazz group Musique Noire, who recently won the 2015 Best Black Female Jazz Group through Black Women in Jazz Awards.

Jovia released her debut album, "Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles" in 2009. She produced the latest JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound EP "Red Black and Blue," which was released in April 2018. She has performed with El DeBarge, Rahsaan Patterson, Maysa, Eric Roberson, Frank McComb, Res, Omar, The Impressions, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble, Malian musicians Ballaké Sissoko & Babani Kone, Les Nubians, Joe VasConcellos and Martha Reeves. She has worked as a Mentor and Teaching Artist for various Chicago organizations, including YOUmedia Chicago, Street Level Youth Media and Intonation Music Workshop. She also launched Sounds About Write Music School on the Southside of Chicago that teaches instrumental lessons, theory and music production for aspiring songwriters and beatmakers. https://joviaarmstrong.com/

About Peppur Chambers:

Peppur is an international writer/actor/director who strives to live her voice and inspires others to do the same.

For the past twelve years, she has been developing her women's lifestyle brand, Brown Betties© which includes an award-winning webseries (Brown Betties Guide: How to Look For Love In All The Wrong Places), women's empowerment workshops (Be Your Own Bettie), a dinner-theater show ("Harlem's Night: A Cabaret Story") and her published novella, Harlem's Awakening (Black Hill Press, 2013), of which she's currently writing the second installment.

A graduate of Marquette University's College of Journalism (BA Advertising/Marketing), Peppur taught journalism at Prague College and has contributed to Circle+Bloom, Prague Pulse Magazine, Bridge/Gate Magazines, Boned, Prague Literary Microfestival, Humor Mill Magazine, LA Beat, and The Firm FM radio show where she did a weekly, relationship-advice segment, "Keep It Spicy". She's also a freelance Social Media and Marketing Content creator for small businesses through her company Pen & Peppur, LLC. https://peppurchambers.com/

About Trinh Mai:

Trinh Mai is an interdisciplinary, California-based, second generation Vietnamese American visual artist. Her work examines the refugee and immigrant experience, both past and present. Using vast breath of media, Trinh tells the stories of Us -- the enduring People, the living history, focusing on our witnessing of war, the wounds we've survived, our collective need to heal, and our custodial responsibility. Mai has been engaged by numerous academic and arts institutions, including the University of Washington as a Walker-Ames Guest Scholar, Stanford University and Harvard University to engage the community in creative storytelling and to speak about her art practice, while Her visual art, poetry, and analyses of her work have appeared in publications such as the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement (Purdue University), Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (University of Chicago Press), Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Duke University Press), Ruminate Magazine (Fort Collins, CO), and the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (Yale University). http://trinhmai.com/

About Stacy Russo:

Stacy Russo is a California poet, writer, artist, zinester, and librarian who is committed to creating books and art for a more peaceful world. Stacy's books have been featured on National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting System, Sirius XM Radio, KCET Artbound, LA Weekly, and various other media channels. Her work includes A Better World Starts Here: Activists and Their Work (Sanctuary Publishers), We Were Going to Change the World: Interviews with Women from the 1970s and 1980s Southern California Punk Rock Scene (Santa Monica Press); Love Activism (Litwin Books); The Moon and Other Poems (Dancing Girl Press) and the forthcoming edited collection Feminist Pilgrimage: Journeys of Discovery (Litwin Books). Her art has recently been featured in two Collage Artists of America juried shows and she celebrated her first two solo art exhibitions last year. Stacy lives in Santa Ana with her two beloved senior rescue dogs. https://stacy-russo.com/

About Sherwynn Umali: (moderator)

Sherwynn joined the UCI Student Life & Leadership team as the Associate Dean of Students in July 2013. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing the Office of Campus Organizations and Volunteer Programs, Greek Life, the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, the Womxn's Hub (W-Hub), Student Outreach & Retention Center, FRESH Basic Needs Hub, and Parent Programs. She chairs the All-University Leadership Conference, serves as the program director of the Administrative Internship Program where she teaches MGMT198 and oversees staff development and technology needs for Student Life & Leadership.

Prior to this role, she served as the Director of Campus Organizations, and Assistant Director in the Cross-Cultural Center at UCI.

Sherwynn her B.A. in Psychology & Social Behavior and Studio Art from UCI and an M.A. in Education, Leadership & Policy Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Rock, Paper, Scissors: ¡DAMAS!

Segerstrom Center for the Arts - Julianne and George Argyros Plaza
600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA

Saturday, March 21, 2020

1 - 4:00 p.m.

600 Town Center Drive Costa Mesa, CA 92626 T (714) 556-2121 F (714) 556-8984 SCFTA.org

Admission - FREE

Information - SCFTA.org

Phone - (714) 556-2787

Open 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. daily

Information provided is accurate at the time of printing but is subject to change. Segerstrom Center for the Arts is a public, non-profit organization. "Segerstrom Center for the Arts" is a registered trademark