Daily Lobo new mexico
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friday November 14, 2014 | Vo l u m e 1 1 9 | Is s u e 6 3
Charity art raffle to benefit homeless community
Sergio Jiménez / Daily Lobo / @SXfoto
Jodie Herrera works on an oil art piece for her solo art show titled “The Shape I’m In” on Thursday. Herrera combined her show with a raffle of works by local artists to benefit Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless. The show will be held Nov. 22 at Tractor Brewery.
By Matthew Reisen This story is part of a weekly series about homelessness in Albuquerque. A UNM alumna is organizing a charity art raffle to benefit some of Albuquerque’s neediest citizens. Jodie Herrera, a New Mexico native and 2013 UNM graduate, said the event will combine her solo art show along with a raffle of works done by dozens local artists to benefit Albuquerque
Healthcare for the Homeless. The show, titled “The Shape I’m In,” will be held on Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. at Tractor Brewery off of Fourth Street, she said. Herrera said she wanted to address the issue of homelessness in Albuquerque as the winter season approaches. “I felt like I wanted to target something more relevant right now with what’s going on,” she said. “It’s getting really cold and obviously we have a
huge homeless population, and I’m really concerned about that, as well as other people in our community.” Around 26 local and national artists, including Herrera, each donated at least one art piece to the raffle, she said. “It’s really great, because once I put it out there, people became really aware of it. It caught like wildfire and a lot of artists just wanted to donate,” Herrera said. Angie Poynter, a local artist and
contributor, said she is glad to donate a piece of her art and help the homeless community of Albuquerque. “It’s a satisfying feeling when you know your efforts, work and passion of creating art is going towards a cause larger than you. I am more than happy to give,” Poynter said. “Ironically a lot of artists themselves are struggling to make a living, but are still willing to give what they can back to the community.” Herrera and Poynter, along with
Josh Schriber, are part of the Pop-Up Collective, which has put on three shows in the last year, Poynter said. The last show they did was called Cardiac and benefited The Heart Hospital of New Mexico, Herrera said. For her next scheduled show at Tractor, Herrera said she decided she wanted to do a benefit for the homeless and contacted Cynthia Cisneros at AHCH for guidance.
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Homeless page 2
Multiculturalist braves old world Grad student one English professor and author explores post-colonial era By Lena Guidi Jan. 14, 1984, was an important day for Feroza Jussawalla: Her son was born, and it was her birthday. If that wasn’t enough cause to celebrate, her first published book, “Family Quarrels: Towards a Criticism of Indian Writing in English,” arrived in the mail. The book is an analysis of how Indian writers who write in English have been shaped by criticism and Western literary trends. It is one of many works Jussawalla has published over the years in her academic specialty, post-colonial literature. “I focus on literature written by people who grew up in countries that became independent from Britain in the 1940s and ‘50s,” she said. A professor in UNM’s Department of English, Jussawalla said that while she focuses on Indian authors such as acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie, she teaches works from African, Latin American and Caribbean writers as well. Multiculturalism has always
Dr. Feroza Jussawalla
been a part of Jussawalla’s life. She grew up in South India, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Osmania University College for Women in the city of Hyderabad. She said her life would have been very different if not for a family of Mormon missionaries that lived in her hometown. “My mother was trying to arrange a marriage for me, but these missionaries said I was too young and brought me to America so I could continue my
education instead,” Jussawalla said. She attended the University of Utah, where she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in English. Jussawalla went on to work at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she taught composition and magic realism in addition to post-colonial literature. She said her classes were popular at UTEP because it is a minority-majority school with many bilingual students. “Students in El Paso were very interested in my courses and my writing because I brought a different perspective to composition teaching,” she said. “I did not insist on them writing in correct English, but in the idiom they are used to.” She said she has continued to apply her background in post-colonialism to teaching literature and composition since coming to UNM in 2002, when her now ex-husband became dean of the university. Earlier this year the UNM Alumni Association awarded Jussawalla the
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step closer to Mars By Marielle Dent
Zach Gallegos, a graduate Earth and planetary science student, is intent on being a member of the first astronaut team to establish a permanent colony on Mars. This Dutch non-profit agency has set a goal of sending the first four-person crew to Mars in 2024, and then successive crews every two years after, according to the Mars One website. There is, however, no return mission planned. The astronauts would live out the rest of their lives on the Red Planet. The program plans to raise some of its funding through a reality TV program that will follow the astronauts’ selection process through their first few years on Mars. The Daily Lobo spoke to Gallegos about making the cut and his potential journey. How did you hear about Mars
Zach Gallegos
One and did you know immediately that you wanted to participate? “I remember hearing about the Mars One mission when it was still only an idea. Immediately is the correct word — there was virtually no time between my discovery of the mission and my decision to go to Mars. I applied for many reasons: it is an historic event, it is scientifically exciting as a planetary geologist, and
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