Cheri Gaulke

photo: Cheri Gaulke

As an educator, Cheri Gaulke has mentored youth throughout Southern California, and as Artistic Director of The Righteous Conversations Project she has empowered teens to use media to speak out about injustices across the globe. In this inter-generational workshop hosted at Harvard -Westlake each summer, students and Holocaust survivors engage in dialogue of remembrance, social conscience and commentary before creating Public Service Announcements and short films about the under-represented in the world today.

Using the survivors' narratives as a source of inspiration, students are then better equipped to create new media message about issues that resonate today. Within the testimony by those who have survived genocide, the students grapple with understanding that so much of what the survivors have to say is applicable to the current travesties in the world. There is no doubt that The Holocaust has to be among the darkest days in human history.

When the program began, Gaulke sensed resistance on the part of the teens to examine the role that media plays in their lives. Questioning the tools used by advertisers was like attacking a sacred cow, but kids have become more media literate and savvy over the years. Now students realize that the power is in the hands of the people and they are able to construct their own reality through critical thinking, using those tools that were once reserved for selling products and are now being used to sell concepts and ideas.

"Students today have a better understanding of their relationship with the environment and the need to redefine sexual orientation and roles," Gaulke said. "Accepting traditional gender roles holds both boys and girls back. Kids today see that. Developing the curriculum is an ongoing process and The Righteous Conversations Project is always examining new aspects in digital storytelling. "We get a very strong product in a very short time," Gaulke said. "I have high standards, but the process is so rich and layered that the kids just pick up the pieces and do their best work." While creating PSAs can be tricky; using stylized speak and visual metaphors, the students are so engaged and interested that everything falls into place.

Filmmaker Trey Carlisle, Holocaust Survivor Michelle Rodri and Educator Cheri Gaulke at the 2016 MY HERO International Film Festival

In 2013, Gaulke joined forces with Althea Paradis and Emmy Award winning journalist, Jeff MacIntyre, to create Digital Storytelling Adventures. Gaulke has travelled with students to six different countries that are recovering from conflict, to create meaningful and very personal documentaries. The students craft their stories with a very personal angle. For example, Trey Carlisle, a Righteous Conversations participant and winner of the MY HERO International Film, Festival Emerging Artist Award, travelled with Gaulke and her crew to Cambodia where he was able to bring together a meaningful story of the Cambodian genocide, The Holocaust and The Black Lives Matter Movement. The result was Carlisle's film Us and Us .

Samara Hutman, co-founder of Righteous Conversations, said "When Cheri Gaulke and I started The Righteous Conversations Project in 2011, we couldn't have fully imagined the extraordinary impact this work would have in the world. From a small project grown with heart and love in my garage and Cheri's Harvard-Westlake classroom, it has gone on to garner local, national, and international acclaim for the many projects it birthed including RC PSA Workshops, RC Digital Storytelling Workshops, RC Music Composition Workshops, L'Dough V'Dough and Share Our Stories. But even more valuable and meaningful than kudos and awards, it has actually shaped and transformed the work being done in schools, museums and faith based communities in our city, our country and around the world. It is a testament to Cheri's vision, boundless creativity, and relentless dedication to mentorship and advocacy that this work has blossomed and grown in ways that have made an indelible imprint on the history of memory and humanity as it is wrestled with. It has been one of the great joys and privileges of my life to partner with Cheri in this work. That we have had the opportunity to do this with our daughters and a community of artists, Holocaust survivors and young people we admire has been the sweetest of blessings and a window of hope as we look toward the future. In the decade ahead, Cheri and I, and our community of precious elders, young leaders and exquisitely talented artists and filmmakers, re-commit ourselves to Righteous Conversations' founding principles and the work we bring into our fragile and imperfectly beautiful, sometimes cruel but also enduringly big-hearted world."

Cheri Gaulke has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Minneapolis College of Art and Design and a Master of Arts degree (in Feminist Art/Education) from Goddard College. She has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), in a Smithsonian-touring exhibition, and in settings all over the world including buses, churches, and prehistoric temples. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and the Brody Arts Fund. Her work has been written about in numerous books and publications. She was recently inducted into the UCLA Oral History Program and in 2004 received a mid-career COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellowship.

In 1975, she moved to Los Angeles to be involved with the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building. There she embraced the notion that feminist art could raise consciousness, invite dialogue, and transform culture. She worked primarily in performance art from 1974-1992, addressing themes such as religion, sexual identity, and the environment. In addition to her solo work, she cofounded collaborative performance groups Feminist Art Workers (1976-81), which merged feminist art and education techniques into interactive performances; and Sisters Of Survival (1981-85), who wore nun's habits in the spectrum of the rainbow and presented their anti-nuclear performances in Europe and the U.S.

Though Gaulke has moved away from performance, the feminist art strategies that she helped to innovate in the 1970s in southern California continue in her work. Her art continues to be a vehicle for social commentary and as a way to tell the stories of individuals and groups under-represented in society. She works in a variety of media, but mostly video, installation, artist's books, and public art. Such projects have included a video in collaboration with lesbian and gay teens, a photographic wall installation about lesbian and gay families, a video installation with Latino teenagers about the L.A. River, and a video installation about kids' perspectives on a river in North Carolina. Gaulke has completed three public art projects - a Metro-Rail Station in Los Angeles that tells stories about an oft-ignored urban river, an outdoor sculptural piece for a library in Lake View Terrace, and three stainless steel and glass glowing "Pillars of Community" for the City of Lakewood. A black granite memorial honoring the service of Filipino WWII veterans was dedicated on November 11, 2006 in a park in Historic Filipino Town, Los Angeles.