Lovella Calica

Lovella will create a series of safe and welcoming writing workshops that will build a supportive community for women and trans artists to share and write about traumatic experiences and stories of resiliency and healing.  Lovella and participants will polish this creative writing and publish them in books that will be shared with community members.  A final public performance will feature the writing and launch distribution of the books thus raising awareness about violence against women and trans people.

Lovella Calica uses art making, especially writing, as a way to heal and survive life experiences. She writes and shares to offer awareness, analysis, resistance, and hope. As a tool to emotionally connect, her artistic practice contemplates issues of sexual abuse, the history and violence around colonization and capitalism, war, loss of loved ones, confusion and frustration with gender, racism, and sexism. Lovella published her first book of poetry called Makibaka: Beautifully Brave in 2006 and printed a few hundred copies to give away free to veterans, friends, and family members. A significant portion of Lovella’s work is with veterans. In 2006, she founded the Warrior Writers Project, which provides opportunities for creative community and artistic expression among recent veterans and current service members, many of whom have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. She also documents them through film, photography, and audio, along their journeys after/outside the military; facilitates writing and art workshops; edits books of their writing (with two published thus far); organizes exhibits of their artwork; and coordinates performances. Lovella is a facilitator/participator in the Writing Circle and co-founder of Tatlo Mestiz@s, a collective of Pilipin@ American artist/activists, which creates multi-media performances addressing issues of gender, grief, assimilation, displacement, and colonization among others. Her photographs have been exhibited locally and nationally. She has also been co-coordinator and performer for Mantra and Poems not Prisons, which were open-mic series’ in Philadelphia.

Lovella will work with members of the Philadelphia chapter of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence to create a series of art-making workshops based on interviews with community elders about historical patterns of violence in communities of color and the connection between domestic and sexual violence and cultural traditions.

Lovella will interview members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) about why they oppose the war and their experiences in the military. Their interviews will be displayed alongside portraits of the members that Lovella will create. In addition, she will facilitate workshops in New York and New Orleans at IVAW convenings for members to create and share artistic work about their experiences as veterans. The final book will help break down societal stereotypes of who veterans are, providing a lens into the hearts of people who have a deep and intimate relationship with the Iraq war. The art workshops provide veterans with the opportunity for healing and creating a stronger sense of community as they connect on a personal and artistic level. Excerpts from the book will be presented in an exhibit in Philadelphia and Vermont.