TEDx Coeur d'Alene: Comfortably uncomfortable

By JENNIFER PASSARO

Staff Writer

Over 200 people gathered Saturday at the Ray and Joan Kroc Center to immerse themselves in the comfortably uncomfortable world of challenging ideas.

TEDx gave a local stage to 13 speakers — all with ties to the Inland Northwest — 18 minutes to stoke excitement, empathy, and action for their particular innovative idea.

Art administrator and owner of the Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d’Alene Blair Williams spoke about creative placemaking.

“We all gain when we creative place-make, when we create spaces where we can gather and share ideas, stories,” Williams said.

Williams was speaking about the way communities can utilize physical space to foster a sense of authentic belonging. But her words stood as a metaphor for the entire TEDx process. The event seeks to make comfortable, welcoming spaces for ideas and the often-uncomfortable challenges that served as a catalyst for those innovations.

Lake City High School history teacher Eric Edmonds easily translated his passion for education to lead the event. Alongside Nick Swope, Mark Michaelis, and a crew of volunteers, Edmonds said he wanted to engage people in thought-provoking ideas.

“I want people to come and have a space where they can think critically,” Edmonds said. “Part of the goal is to show people in Coeur d’Alene other people in Coeur d’Alene. Networking happens accidentally. It’s really cool.”

“There is an edge to the talks to get people to think differently, so they get uncomfortable with how they’ve thought in the past,” Michaelis said. “TEDx is about thinking broadly, openly.”

Pianist and composer Seth Lowman explained how innovative technology from the Idaho Commission for the Blind allows him to compose film scores without his sight. After an internship with Jeff Drew at SayRoar Studios, Lowman will begin full-time work for the local film studio this summer.

“Film-composing begins with a story,” Lowman said. “Jeff would describe core scenes to me. Sometimes Jeff would wait to finish animation until I had composed the score. He wanted to animate to the music instead of composing to the animation.”

In this way, what might have limited Lowman’s creativity in another workplace, inspired Drew to shake up the status quo and produce a film score by new means.

Phil and Angela Lamb are Mountains in the Sea, a collaborative husband-and-wife team that quit their day jobs one year ago to play music full-time. They also compose music for SayRoar Studio.

The Lambs create the sound and feel of a full band by live-looping keyboard and guitar riffs and adding melodies throughout the song. Angela’s voice echoes her name, sifting between the notes.

“Communication is critical on stage,” Phil said.

“Being married helps a lot,” Angela added.

The couple often seeks collaboration with other musicians.

“Every time we’ve collaborated, we’ve grown so much,” Angela said. “We encourage you to think about collaborative projects you could do. What would our community look like if we all made beautiful projects together?”

Blanco, a street artist from the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, creates complex, collaborative street art throughout New York City. His work aims to humanize often-intangible political or social issues, filling vacant storefronts with bright maps of the destroyed Syrian city of Aleppo or holding crumbling brick to an abandoned warehouse with coats of thick white paint illuminated with the faces of refugees and immigrants living and working in the city. Beneath each stunning portrait, Blanco wrote the person’s occupation and home country.

“Really what I was trying to do was humanize people,” Blanco said. “Because I feel that a lot of times that is the problem when we talk about immigrants and the fear of this unknown other. I think, especially in a small community, if you can make people more familiar with a face and what somebody does, it can help people understand each other. That is my hope, at least.”

Blanco has a kind, steady demeanor and sarcastic wit about the legality of his artform. He began his TED talk acknowledging the Coeur d’Alene, Kootenai, and Shoshone tribes, whose historical land the event occupied.

“Blanco is the name that I use so I don’t get arrested,” he said. “We are taught that street art is inherently bad. I want to challenge that with commercial consumption. Generally, advertisements reinforce the status quo. Street art challenges the status quo. I don’t believe what I’m doing is wrong, so I don’t act like I’m wrong. I go out in the day time.”

Blanco begins his artwork with a black and white photograph. He divides each shade of gray into a stencil, painting white first in the streets and ending with black, a technique he uses for painting faces. He often finishes the torso with acrylic paint. Most faces he paints are people he cares about deeply.

“A lot of what I do is collaborative,” Blanco said. “It’s hard sometimes because you have to respect the point of view of the people whose story you’re trying to tell. It’s imperative that their voice is … that it’s what they want to say. I think that most of the time, passion comes from meeting people and working with them to tell and communicate their stories.”

“I work a lot with my friends,” he added. “All my friends are immigrants and refugees. Except my Indian friends. They’ve been here since time immemorial.”