Occupy minds

Stacey Alonzo is one of the originals in the Occupy Reno movement, visiting the occupiers on Wall Street and helping to organize the first general assembly in Reno. She’s a yoga instructor, and she graduated from UNR in 2009 with degrees in journalism, psychology and sociology. She’s preparing to apply to grad school for clinical psychology with an emphasis on mindfulness-based stress reduction. And now, she’s sort of a curator, working to make an art benefit for the Occupy Reno group. The show opens at L’Gallery, 720 Tahoe Street, at 6 p.m. on Nov. 19 and runs through Nov. 27.

Tell me a little about the show.

I got the idea for the art show in New York, seeing how their occupation works. They have people doing things like general assemblies and committee meetings, but there are also people there painting, playing music and doing yoga, and I just realized there was the whole other cultural side to the movement. … But it’s happening at L’Gallery. My friend Kelly Payton is an artist there, so she is letting us use the space. It’s called Occupy Through Art. On the 19th, we’ll have a benefit night where we’ll have some people speaking and kind of showing a video montage that different people in Occupy Reno have made about the movement. We were going to have Drinking with Clowns play at the benefit night, but we had some other bands that were interested, so they’ve actually started another thing going on that night called Occupy Through Music at Strega [310 S. Arlington Ave.]. So, Drinking with Clowns and Merkin are playing there, and that’s also going to be an Occupy benefit, later that night from 10 p.m. to whenever.

Sounds fun.

But as far as the show goes, we have a lot of different art. We have a lot of photography, so it’s kind of a visual history of what’s been going on, not only in Occupy Reno, but in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland. We have some fliers that have been made for different events that are really cool. The Occupy Oakland ones are great because they’re really tattered. We had some people from our movement visiting there, and they got there the night before the eviction notice went out. They were there for the shooting. You can see in those pieces how much character they have, and what they’ve been through. They show the weathering from the elements and everything. We have some poetry. We have some people that have sent in the Tumblr thing online—We are the 99 percent—people have sent in things like that, really touching stories that show the human element of this and who these people really are. So we’re putting all this stuff up, making it interactive thing. We’re going to have some news articles up. You can read the First Amendment, and you can go in there and open things and read through things. It’s not just something you walk into and look at. It’s really meant to grasp you and hold your interest for a good half an hour. They’re open 9 to 5 every day, so it might be better to go there to actually spend time there on another day than the benefit night. We actually have a donation center there as well, so we have a tent set up and a sleeping bag and a reusable water bottle and warm socks, two fire logs. Just kind of showing people what it’s like to step into an occupier’s tent, and at the same time, everything you see is something we can use a donation of.

Specifically, what local artists are participating?

I have a wall of my stuff from Occupy Wall Street, so you can put me down. [Others include] Kaitlin Bryson, Alex Feiner, Edward Hickey, Tilghman Wendel and Tom Livingston. Lauren and Ben Castro—they’re a couple, and she took all the photography, and he wrote a poem that kind of goes for all four pieces.