Vivien Sansour, puppeteer-clown-actor-organizer of the Olive Tree Circus, is back from the olive harvest tour of West Bank towns including Bethlehem, Hebron and surrounding villages. She will be removing her red nose and sharing with a large audience the slide show, video and personal experiences of the fourteen Arab, Jewish and non-Middle Eastern Americans who traveled together, creating puppets and performing for the children of the West Bank in the service of peace.

Cosponsored by the Iman Cultural Center and the American Friends Service Committee, Middle East Peace Education Program.

Free to the public, RSVPs strongly advised: 310.657.5511.

An exhibit by Ara Oshagan at the The Center for Experimental Art and Architecture through October 17, 2008

Born in Beirut of Armenian heritage, with his degrees in Physics and English Literature from UCLA and a degree in Geophysics from UC Berkley, by day Ara Oshagan is a geophysicist and at other times an accomplished documentary photographer. Scion of Armenian poets, writers and educators, Oshagan is also an avowed novelist manqué who uses photography to narrate his community’s stories—or in the case of “Identity and Community”—interwoven Armenian and Ethiopian narratives. With “three skeletons of novels in my head,” nearly a decade ago he began taking photography to a higher level and has held several solo and group exhibits.