It is a lesson women in the arts share again and again, success does not happen overnight. Filmmaker, actor, producer, and writer Jenni Tooley stresses this reality for anyone pursuing a creative career. Last year the Texas native saw her feature film, STUCK, premiere at Women Texas Film Festival 2019. It took 20 years to make. An Actor is Born Tooley first began acting in junior high. During her last year of high school she got the lead role in a UIL play. Although she enjoyed acting, Tooley’s childhood dream was to become an environmental science teacher. However, financial restraints caused her to remain in Dallas and choose to be part of the University of Texas at Dallas inaugural freshman class. Tooley planned to stay at UTD for only two years and then transfer, but she came across the opportunity to major in art and performance and literary studies. “After enrolling I somehow talked my way into auditioning for a play open to upper level students,” Tooley recalls. “I met Gretchen Dyer, the filmmaker, and she, plus her sister Julia, invited me to participate in a live reading of their film The Playroom. That led to me becoming an ensemble member of Dallas’ Undermain Theatre. I also played the lead in a treatment of The Playroom and used the footage for my first demo reel.” Tooley took the reel to an agent, who advised the young actor that she might be “too artsy” for traditional show business. Looking back Tooley agrees; she found trying out for …

When abstract artist and teacher Dr. Valerie Gillespie enters her classroom at Greenhill School in Addison, Texas, she is returning to the space that transformed her life. Years earlier Dr. Gillespie herself had been a student at Greenhill and spent time under the guidance of teacher Marilu Flores Gruben. In high school she had the opportunity to tour Ms. Gruben’s personal studio, an experience she vividly remembers to this day. “Going to her studio, seeing her personal work, it made me for the first time think of art as a possible career,” said Dr. Gillespie. “Here was this passionate, Latina woman doing all these amazing things in addition to teaching. She taught me for at least eight years and then became a life-changing mentor.” The Teaching Path Following high school, Dr. Gillespie attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she majored in studio art with a concentration in Spanish. During this time, she took a job at the child center on campus. After her first year of working with children, Dr. Gillespie realized education was the profession that strongly called to her. “That rapport you can have with this younger human who is so eager and hungry to learn everything you know…it was an energy I hadn’t experienced before, but really connected with,” she recalls. “Also, the relationship I had with Ms. Gruben definitely steered me towards teaching. In fact, I’d planned to become a lawyer and even studied to do so, but that just wasn’t my path. It was extremely hard telling my …

Clothing creator Aluma’s small studio is light-years away from the hustle and bustle of London Fashion Week. The independent businesswoman likes it that way and prefers the slower-paced approach she now gives to her designs. Living in Tel Aviv, Aluma credits her mother with bringing sewing into her life. At 14 she proclaimed there was absolutely nothing to wear in her closet. Her Mum respectfully disagreed, but said they could go to the fabric shop and that she would teach her daughter to make clothing from scratch. It took only a handful of sewing lessons for Aluma to realize she was hooked. Teenage Years After making pieces for herself, Aluma began designing clothing for friends. One of them, an aspiring photographer, recruited her younger sister and classmates to model for a makeshift photo shoot featuring Aluma’s clothes. The younger girls went gaga over the pieces and asked to purchase them. Even the attendant at the shop where the pictures were developed wanted to know where the clothing could be bought. “Much like today, my clothing sold by word of mouth,” Aluma remembers. “Even though I was selling items, going into fashion full-time didn’t seem possible. I simply thought it wasn’t a “proper” profession. While fulfilling my commitment to the Israeli army, I managed to get a job as a graphic designer. Working on the army’s magazine in that role made me think graphic design was what I should pursue in school, which is what I later did. But my heart was always with clothing design. …

Creativity is bountiful on both sides of filmmaker Emily Cohn’s family. Her maternal great-grandfather was a cartoonist, while her mother is a clothing designer who currently creates one-of-a-kind necklaces and bracelets. Cohn’s father is a musician and songwriter. From both parents she saw how much hard work goes into artistic endeavors, especially as monetary demands stack up. “Growing up in New York City, I watched my mother figure out how to have different streams of income to make ends meet,” she recalled. “She’s done everything from selling fancy umbrellas from our apartment to customizing wheelchairs. I definitely learned, by osmosis, how to budget money over the course of my childhood.” Young Filmmaker In elementary school Cohn made her first film, The Amulet of Fire. Starring her fifth grade teacher and three close friends (with the key prop, the amulet, made by her mother), Cohn jokes it was her first lesson in low-budget filmmaking. Several years later her family got a Mac desktop computer that had a camera in it. Cohn began filming herself and friends, then editing the footage for fun in iMovie. Eventually she and her best friend Emma Orlow created The Do Not Enter Diaries, a web series about teenagers seen through the stories of their bedrooms, from New York to Mumbai. While making that series Cohn was accepted as a Film Fellow at the Tribeca Film Institute. Her first short, Pierced, received funding from Tribeca and in 2012 won Best Drama at the All American High School Film Festival. Not only did …

It was not until college that Carol Prusa realized creating art made her feel fully engaged. A native of Chicago, Prusa had originally thought she’d pursue a career in the sciences. However, that first drawing class at the University of Illinois (coupled with the support of its teacher) put her on the path to becoming an artist. Today, Prusa utilizes the silverpoint method for much of her internationally known work, while also teaching painting as a Professor of Art at Florida Atlantic University. Mapping the Stars Prusa’s latest exhibition, Carol Prusa: Dark Light, opened last month at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. It invites viewers to honor the women astronomers who originally helped map the stars. Curated by Kathleen Goncharov, Senior Curator of the museum, the exhibition features never-before-seen works. Prusa finds cosmology fascinating and remembers when she first heard of the Big Bang. “I was in sixth grade when the Big Bang went into my head,” recalls Prusa. “And it hasn’t gone out since. My work refers to this idea of threaded singularity. We’re all tethered to that moment, when the universe began, and the vibrations of that moment continues to touch us to this day.” Artists, scribes and artisans have used the age-old silverpoint method, favored by Prusa, since ancient times. Some of Prusa’s inspiration comes from the sciences of astrophysics, meteorology, and optics. She also incorporates Russian Orthodox and Tibetan Buddhist art-making traditions, which she studied in the 1990s. Just one of her works can take thousands of hours to create depending on its complexity and size. “My practice becomes, for me, like a form of …

Those arguing #MeToo is losing steam are sorely mistaken. That’s the belief of best-selling author Linda Hirshman. Her latest book, Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment, details the 50-year history of legal and cultural moments that precede #MeToo. It also serves as a reminder that the movement did not mysteriously happen overnight and makes sense of how this pivotal moment in American culture came to be. Hirshman spent her childhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Already reading by age four, it was women biographies that drew her to the local library. Favorites were stories on Clara Barton (founder of the American Red Cross), Julia Ward Howe (author of the Civil War anthem “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association), and Lucy Stone (a prominent orator, abolitionist, and suffragist). Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women also made an impact. Years later Hirshman became a lawyer. In addition to a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Juris Doctorate from University of Chicago Law School, she received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. “I wanted to do something where I could earn a substantial, reliable income,” Hirshman said. “Self-reliance has always been central to me.” SCOTUS, Teaching, Writing Hirshman appeared in three Supreme Court cases (one win, one loss and one draw). This includes the landmark case Garcia v. SAMTA, which defined the line between the federal government and the states. Next she went into academia. Hirshman taught at Brandeis University, Chicago Kent …

In 1991, an iconic film changed Jennifer Townsend’s life. Not only did Thelma & Louise inspire her to drop her former husband’s last name, it caused Townsend to launch a research project to see if other viewers also had strong emotional responses to the film. Email was not available so a press release went out to magazines and newspapers across the country. A few printed the short blurb about the project, leading to readers requesting questionnaires. Most mailed their responses to Townsend, while some responded by voicemail on a dedicated phone line. “I had planned to write a lengthy article about the responses and what the film had meant to me, but it just didn’t feel like the right time to put it all together,” Townsend recalls. “Decades later a lightening bolt struck. Those responses should become a film. I liken it to when Thelma & Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri told an audience the story came to her all at once, like getting punched in the heart. It was the same thing for me.” So this retiree in her 70s set out to make her very first film. Two Films/One Powerful Story Townsend’s efforts paid off. Her documentary, Catching Sight of Thelma & Louise, had its world premeiere at the Cinema At The Edge (CATE) film festival in 2017. Clips from Thelma & Louise serve as a catalyst for personal stories by viewers who were impacted by the film, as well as two of the male actors (Christopher McDonald and Marco St. John) and film editor Thom Noble. Those appearing in the …

The arts have always been a part of Sarah Greenman. As a child, this painter, playwright, and activist spent hours with her maternal grandmother, a watercolorist in a small attic studio. Her grandfather built the sacred room, because he knew it was important for his wife to have space of her own. That tradition has continued, with Greenman now having a studio behind her own home in Oregon. Its name is “The Little Shed That Could” and it is a place for Greenman to spread out, get messy and experiment. Growing up in California, Greenman spent a lot of time active with the local community theater. Both of her parents were involved with directing, scriptwriting and performing. Her paternal grandmother even lent her seamstress skills to designing their costumes. Having caught the acting bug, Greenman went on to graduate from the Pacific Conservatory Theater (PCPA). While serving as interim Director of Outreach and Education at PCPA, she fell in love with her partner, Jack, an accomplished actor and voice dialect coach. The couple relocated to Dallas, where Jack worked at a local university. Greenman frequently contributed to the home tour site Houzz.com and also worked on her lifestyle blog, La Maison Boheme, which focuses on modern bohemianism and art. Painter Together she and Jack are raising two sons, Walker and Charlie. Charlie lives with a host of special needs that stem from an pediatric stroke and Craniosynostosis. During his early years, Greenman took up painting, because it was something she could do with Charlie in a …

Growing up Jess Rinker didn’t realize “writer” was a job title. It wasn’t until reading Harry Potter that she understood her love for jotting down stories could become a career. Daria Peoples-Riley tossed her first self-portrait into the kitchen trash can. Luckily her mother rescued the piece, which today hangs in Peoples-Riley’s parents’ living room. Although they hadn’t planned artistic careers, both women found their calling. Together they have released a new picture book for children titled Gloria Takes a Stand. The Author Jess Rinker The picture book is a spirited look at Gloria Steinem’s influential life. Rinker first found Steinem’s work during her 20s. She had married young, graduated college, and given birth to all three of her children by age 28. Often working minimal part-time jobs, Rinker spent the rest of her time caring for the young family. She loved being almost exclusively home, but did not nurture her own dreams. That all changed with a writing course. Not only did Rinker begin pursuing a career she loved, she also realized remaining in her first marriage was no longer possible. “Something clicked in that writing class and there was no turning back,” Rinker said. “Not only do I now have a writing career, I remarried and have an even larger family to love. In college my social group considered feminism a negative word and through association I didn’t think much about Gloria. Then I began reading her work and obviously my perspective changed. Her commitment to really listening to others and having the conversations we’d rather avoid is something …