in production
Production Stills
the glass fashion show
Glass is a magical material. It is strong enough to protect us but it can shatter in an instant. It is born of opaque sand, yet manifests transparency like nothing else on the planet. Glass behaves like a solid, looks like a liquid, but is in fact something between the two.
Laura Donefer is an award-winning artist who has been communicating through glass both the beauty and darkness of life, pushing the boundaries of glass as an art material for over 37 years. She has been honored with many awards, acknowledging both her art and her extraordinary contributions to the glass art world. However, her deepest impact may be the inclusive space she has created for other glass artist of all backgrounds, sexual identities, belief systems, ages, and body shapes who have found a home in the amazing happening that is the Glass Fashion Show.
Since creating the first Glass Fashion Show in Toronto in 1989, Donefer has been luring, cajoling, and in the early years begging glass artists to create masterful wearable designs from this very non-traditional fashion material. Over the years the numbers of participating artists, all volunteers, has grown dramatically, along with the size of the audiences and the impact of the shows. To date 14 of Donefer’s Glass Fashion Shows have taken place in North America, and in Italy, and is understood to be an important phenomenon of the studio glass movement of the late twentieth century. In 2021 the next Glass Fashion Show will be in Seattle, Washington to celebrate the 50thanniversary of the Glass Art Society, the 50thanniversary of the Pilchuck Glass School, as well as the 80th birthday of the most famous living glass artist today, Dale Chihuly. Donefer has assured everyone that this Glass Fashion Show will be an over the top blow out, so to speak, and we will be there to capture it.
Our film will document Donefer as she brings this epic Glass Fashion Show to fruition. We will be there as she works collaboratively with the many artists, some in person and others digitally, from the four corners of the world. Included among the participants is David Licata of New York City, who’s work questions protection and beauty by creating pieces that are flameworked borosilicate glass using various chain maille techniques. Eunsuh Choi, from South Korea and residing in Rochester, NY, has created glass art is that is meditative in tone, her flameworked art leaning towards the spiritual. Charlynne Lafontaine of Ottawa, Canada, makes work with an anthropological focus, each artwork embracing its own connection to biological forms, whether to the human realm or to the plant or fungi variety. Jen Brown Detlefsen of Norfolk VA, who is a staunch feminist and survivor of violence, uses her glass art as a forum for female strength and joy. These amazing people are only a few of the over 80 artists that we will be filming during the next Glass Fashion Show.
Besides being magical, glass can save lives. Another team participating in the 2021 Glass Fashion Show will consist of youth from Chicago that have been injured or affected by gun violence. These Glass Fashion Show participants are now enrolled in an amazing artist development employment program under the watchful eye of Pearl Dick called Project Fire. Working with glass is dangerous and forces these young people to put everything aside and concentrate on the moment. Over the next two years part of that concentration will be in the design, fabrication and finally their participation on the catwalk as they show off their glass fashions.
All of these stories will intertwine just like one of Donefer’s exquisite and intense glass amulet baskets. The culmination of the film will be the fantastical spectacle of the 2021 Glass Fashion Show itself, in all of it’s wild, imaginative, and broad spirit.
the healer’s journey
Students of Medicine take an arduous journey that reflects the path of their fellow humans for whom they vow to provide care. A voyage of transformation on every level, the changes they undergo reflect a deep engagement with the science, art and responsibilities of being present to and caring for aging, illness, and death, while also caring for themselves.
The Healer’s Journey is a film that will follow the path of the medical student, the physician in training and the practicing physician through critical experiences of training and medical practice over the course of four years. The arc of this journey begins with idealism and great expectations, in large part motivated by the potential good envisioned in their future life’s work, by the meaning that it may bring to them, and by the challenges of a career of serving the uncertainties experienced by placing their work at the center of the processes of aging, illness, and death.
Preparation before medical school begins with a descent into the salt mines of the basic sciences- the foundation of medicine- while many simultaneously engage with humanity through community activities, volunteer work, and other undertakings. These demonstrate not only their drive and commitment, but also expose them to a wide range of human experiences, building character and helping them to recognize the complexities of the world and carry that recognition with them as they begin to learn to work at the crossroads of human frailty, illness, and suffering. Paradoxically, although armed with idealism, intellectual acuity, and determination, this pre-professional training has unexpected effects on them.
Nevertheless, as they begin their formal medical education, they hope that the nascent seeds of healthy professionalism will grow. Through the formal curriculum-the educational mission and vision designed and transmitted in the classroom and clinical settings, they look forward to being able to join their predecessors in taking one of the oldest formal professional commitments, the Hippocratic Oath. A testament to their fitness for the rigors of medicine, medical students at the onset of their education are in better health and more resilient than their contemporaries who are not in medicine.
In the ensuing four years, their training continues through encounters with the intersection of the complex worlds of science, human behavior, social, political and economic systems. They experience the formal curriculum of the basic sciences, anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology and therapeutics. Human behavior, psychology, sociology and epidemiology are integrated within this curriculum, while they simultaneously experience their first encounters with real patients suffering from real illness.
Encountered within the formal curriculum, as they immerse themselves into the world of medicine, are powerful informal and hidden forces that are present from the moment they step into the classroom and will continue throughout their careers. These forces, referred to as the hidden curriculum, exert their influence through the tacit structures within medical education and health care institutions. They include the influence of their mentors and peers, from whom they learn interpersonal skills in the medical environment, witnessing experiences of great courage and sacrifice as well as the effects of distancing and adaptive and maladaptive responses to being in the midst of pain, uncertainty, unexpected and sometimes unacceptable outcomes. They experience vicarious trauma as real human suffering is met in all its gritty relief. At the same time personal economic imperatives created by mounting educational debt, aging, and their desire for their lives to broaden beyond their careers add to the complex learning and working environments. Their preparation has been invaluable, yet their overall health and well-being can suffer, many of them arriving at the end of these four years worse off than their contemporaries.
The changes occurring over these four short years accelerate during their residency education, as they take on greater degrees of responsibility for direct patient care, making challenging decisions on a daily basis, and working with the consequences of those decisions. Referred to as the “practice of medicine,” this growth and learning never truly ends, continuing into their post-residency careers. Finally, these individuals- the medical student, resident, and practicing physician, at some point or another, receive care from their colleagues, who are the products of the same professional formation that they experienced. The outcome as a health professional depends on the primary forces of the formal curriculum and the hidden curriculum, and how they interact with the individuals at each and every level of their career.
Underneath what most would characterize as a radical transformation that occurs in this medical education process, there remains those parts of the individual that are carried from early on into the noble profession. For some, bolstered by their education and training, these parts remain strong and evident in their lives- at work and at home. For others, some parts may seem distant, but remain accessible, and endure, ready to burst forth, if given the right conditions.
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