ART EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS SWEATFREE CAMPAIGN

ASHLAND, OREGON SAYS: "NO TAX $$$ FOR SWEATSHOPS", 31.10.2009 20:50

SWEATSHOP PAINTINGS ON DISPLAY IN ASHLAND CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS at 1175 E. Main St. -- November 3rd through 6th. Anyone attending the November 3rd 7pm City Council meeting will be able to view the paintings. The Council Chambers will be open to the general public for viewing November 5th and 6th from 11am to 2pm and for First Friday, November 6th from 5-7pm. November 6th is Ashland's monthly "First Friday Art Walk."

*Janet Essley Paintings*

Presente: “She is here with us.”
Honoring the Women Around the World Who Make Our Clothing is a series of paintings depicting women who sew the garments we wear every day.

Essley's paintings are an educational tool displayed to spotlight work Ashland is doing to ensure uniforms for police, firefighters and other public employees are free from sweatshop labor. The city first passed a sweatshop free resolution in December, 2008 followed by a procurement policy in June, 2009.

Arrangements for this exhibition have been made by the Ashland Sweatfree Campaign, a project of Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice. A special thanks for endorsement of this exhibit goes to Ashland's Public Arts Commission. An additional thank you goes to artist Janet Essley who has donated her wonderful paintings in order to raise awareness of this growing campaign.

The following Janet Essley paintings were photographed by Paul Woolery.

* * * H a i t i * * *

* * * C h i n a * * *

* * C o l o m b i a * *

* G u a t e m a l a *

* * P a k i s t a n * *

City Council Votes for a Sweatfree Ashland -- resolution passes Dec. 16, 2008
 http://www.rogueimc.org/en/2008/12/14309.shtml

Janet Essley's website
 http://w3.gorge.net/essmoy

Additional photos of Essley's paintings
 http://www.sweatfree.org/PresentePakistan

SweatFree Communities
 http://www.sweatfree.org

Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice
 http://www.sojwj.org

*Janet Essley Paintings*

Presente: “She is here with us.”
Honoring the Women Around the World Who Make Our Clothing is a series of paintings depicting women around the world who sew the garments we wear every day. Some are painted on the cloth of a shirt or dress. When possible artist Janet Essley has used a garment made in the same country as the woman depicted. For example, the woman from Indonesia was painted on a dress sewn in Indonesia. Some paintings have labels glued to them as part of the image.

About the artist:
Janet Essley began formal studies in art at age 35, motivated by a desire to use art as a means of contributing to community. To accomplish this, she has frequently worked in collaboration with youth groups, sponsors, site owners and observers in the execution of community based murals on the west coast. In addition to exhibiting at traditional galleries, she has frequently shown her smaller scale work in unconventional places such as libraries, schools, churches and city halls. Her painting often involves political commentary. The materials she chooses are part of the message she conveys to the viewer. She has painted with used motor oil on paper. She has used carpet felt (a petroleum based product) as a background for portraits painted of people displaced by oil extraction around the world.

In Her Own Words, a statement from Janet Essley:
These women are valued because they adapt easily to industrial discipline, are quiet, patient and dexterous. Each is willing to work 40, 60, 80 hours a week, often as the sole support of her family, at subsistence wages in even the poorest of countries. She works in sweatshops, exhausted and often hungry. She is locked in buildings that collapse or burn down. She is threatened by factory managers if she complains and beaten by police if she protests. She works hard, and fast, in fear of the injury causing machines. She sews the same collar, cuff, or ribbon over and over, denied the satisfaction of knowing how to make a whole article of clothing . Sometimes her only other option for employment is prostitution. She has no choice but to sell her hands or body to feed herself and her family. She does this because corporate globalization has crushed the traditional world into which she was born.

As we remember her hands on each piece of clothing that we wear, may we envision a new world that globalizes compassion. May we insist upon living condition for others that we enjoy for ourselves.

A Note on Process
These portraits were painted from photographs of women at work in sweatshop industries gathered from many sources including National Geographic. .Many of the portraits of women in this exhibit were painted on the fabric of dresses and shirts purchased at second hand stores. When possible I used the dress made in a country for the background of the woman’s portrait. The woman from Indonesia, for example, was painted on a dress sewn in Indonesia. In other cases, such as China and Colombia, the design on the cloth suggested to me the nationality of the woman. Bandanas are the background of two of the paintings. The Mickey Mouse hovering above the woman from Honduras is in the bandana design.The flag pattern in the USA portrait was on the bandana (made in China.) Some paintings have labels glued to them as part of the image.The faces are embedded in the cloth pattern as the women are imprisoned by the economic conditions of corporate and industrial globalization. But each portrait is of an individual person whose hopes and dreams are as worthy as our own.

The paintings ask the viewer to acknowledge the intimate connection we have to women in other parts of the world and to explore through this the impacts of corporate globalization on all our lives. The current realignment of the garment industry due to the end of previous trade agreements threatens the employment of tens of thousands of women workers who are the sole support of their families in countries around the world, including the U.S. The paintings encourage a globalization of empathy and the human right for work with dignity.

-Janet Essley

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Reflections from a Nun upon seeing this art.. 02.11.2009 - 21:10 Sr. Genevieve Cassani Reflections Where and from whom my mother learned to sew is still a mystery to me and I never really thought to ask her. My Mom’s mother died when she was only three, so the skill of making clothes was not passed on from mother to daughter. Since elementary school was as far as she traveled in the world of academe, I have to assume she was self-taught. As a child, my clothes were almost all hand-made including jackets, purses and hats. Material was carefully selected and patterns were shared with my aunt who sewed for her daughters. Smocking. Who remembers smocking? I had smocked dresses. She sewed doll clothes, made curtains and drapes, She had special labels made that said, “Hand-made by Rose.” When I learned to sew in high school and was not able to make the pieces fit, her hands could smooth and tuck and press until they did. The skillful work of my Mom’s hands warmed me, made me feel cared for and special. She touched me as I dressed and I didn’t realize how intimately connected that made us at that time. Today, I am connected to and touched by other women who make my clothes. The labels on my back are a sign of women who work 40, 60, or 80 hours a week, often as they only breadwinner in a family and for wages that are paltry and in conditions that are unsafe and unhealthy. The garment industry employs women who warm me now, make me feel cared for and special. They are often locked in buildings that collapse or burn down. They are intimidated by employers, sexually harassed and sometimes physically harmed. The pace with which they work on machines is lightning speed and often dangerous. Living on the edge and impacted by corporate globalization, these women fear the day when new trade agreements threaten to end their employment and plunge their families farther and farther into a deep well of poverty. Desperation can drive them to make choices which degrade their dignity while keeping food on the table for their families and themselves. The work of the hands of women touches me every day when I dress, and it is with them that I am intimately connected. Now I realize that each time I put on a piece of clothing I am one with the thousands of women workers who are trapped, conflicted, whose rights are not respected and whose dignity is denied. One School Sister of Notre Dame, S. Mary Magdalen Wieck, now deceased, was keenly aware of her relationship to the women who sewed the clothes she wore. She never removed those scratchy labels which I often do, and endured the discomfort of a prickly feeling on the back of her neck to remind hers of the hardships in the lives of the women who sewed them. The label became an act of solidarity for her, a transforming experience of love and unity. In my early years as a religious woman, we memorized “dressing prayers,” prayers which we said for every garment we put on our bodies, and we had many garments. It is time for me to resurrect the ritual of dressing prayers with a new prayer, one that will remind me of the women whose labor cries out for justice and the fabric of whose lives are inextricably bound with mine. O Jesus, I unite myself with all the women whose hands made the clothes I wear today. May they be respected, their rights honored, and given the justice and compassion that is their due. Clothe us with the precious garment of your love. May the vision of a new world that globalizes compassion energize me to seek a living condition for them that I enjoy myself. With the threads of our lives are bound together, I offer my prayer with Mary of Nazareth, Theresa and Caroline, companions in hope on the way of discipleship. and in the power of the Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen. Genevieve Cassani, SSND Mission Effectiveness Coordinator School Sisters of Notre Dame, St. Louis Genevieve Cassani, SSND> Homepage:: http:// Comments from a Sociology Professor 02.11.2009 - 21:17 My Mother's Hands, Her Hands, Her-story About two hundred and thirty years ago changes in the way clothes were made contributed to an industrial revolution which altered forever the way of life people had led over the previous hundreds of years. Carding, spinning, weaving and sewing where moved fromhand work at home as a part of farm life to feeding machines in giant factories which belched out smoke and grinding poverty in the new industrial cities. The labor of children and women replaced that of men because families were expelled from the land and men might fight for higher wages. The 19th century poem, "The golf links lay so near the mill That almost every day The working children can look out And see the men at play. points to irony of child labor and the wealth it created for the few owners. Throughout the history of the clothing industry workers struggled for better wages and working conditions, and owners sought cheaper, more malleable workers. As early as 1836 the girls who worked in the mills in Lowell Massachusetts went on strike protesting wage reductions. "Oh! isn‚t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I- Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?" In 1911 a fire in the Triangle Waist Company in New York City killed 148 of the over 500 women who worked there. In the aftermath of the Triangle fire and the New Deal in the 1930s the International Ladies Garment Workers Union won better wages and working conditions. In response owners took work elsewhere. Mills and garment factories in Maine and Massachusetts folded up and were reopened in southern "right to work" anti-union states. Then in search of even cheaper labor manufacturers took their investments to the third world. In countries from China to Vietnam and places like Lesotho, Jordan or Madagascar where agricultural subsistence is failing because of population explosion and the importation of industrialized farm products from the West, manufacturers can make clothing cheaper by paying barely a living wage. This also goes on in the hidden factories of Montreal, L.A, and New York with their vulnerable populations of illegal immigrants. Now immigrants and dispossessed peasants face another challenge. With the implementation of the new World Trade Organization agreements, China (relying on its artificially pegged currency, abundant labor and highly mechanized production) can undersell even the cheapest of hand labor countries that do not have the capital to mechanize. The women in these pictures work use sewing machines doing piece work. They come from societies where their domestic labor used to be both productive and culturally rich. Now as multinational capital bears down on their traditional ways of life, they have no choice but to sew in factories under oppressive conditions. Their labor, crucial to their family's survival, is now threatened by agreements reflecting the interests of international corporations. When we buy clothes, may we be mindful of how the deal we are getting or the fashion we "must have" impacts the lives of women around the world. Their hands touch us as we dress each morning. May we remember them with respect and compassion.--Charlie Fisher Charlie Fisher> Homepage:: http://