Picture this

Not to brag, but I was a heck of a photojournalist during high school at Menlo-Atherton. I think I had one photo published during my entire four years. Of a pep rally.

I should have gone to Sacred Heart. Seven advanced photography students there have been shooting rallies, too -- rallies about immigration issues. In fact, they've been getting very close to these hot-button topics by documenting life here in the Bay Area Mexican and Central American immigrant communities.

To top that, five of them took a photography trip to Tijuana in March. There, they spent five days at the Casa del Migrante, a Catholic refuge that shelters and feeds migrants and deportees. It sounds like their teacher, Lars Howlett, gave them a rare opportunity for insight into a complex international issue. If only we all had the time (and finances) to step outside our borders this way.

The seven students currently are exhibiting 80 of their black-and-white photos from this project at the SPUR Projects gallery in Portola Valley. A book may be forthcoming as well.

One of the photographers, Shannon Hamilton, will also grace the pages of the Weekly on June 6. She won first prize in the youth category of the Weekly's annual photo contest this year.

Pictured:

Top: This photo by Shannon Hamilton shows a migrant on a Tijuana street, most likely worn out from a long trip to the border. "For many the greatest challenges and dangers are faced traveling through Mexico from Central American countries such as Honduras or El Salvador," Shannon says in a photo description.

Above: Marie Hamilton's photo depicts day laborers waiting for work outside a supermarket in the North Fair Oaks neighborhood near Redwood City. The neighborhood is known to some locals as Little Michoacan.

Shazam! The show must go on

Let us for a moment trip out of this Palo Alto bubble we live in, and take a look at some fabulously inspiring theater folk in San Jose.

Get this: the new musical "Thunderbabe" opens tonight at Theatre on San Pedro Square. But on Tuesday night some yutz broke into a crew truck and stole all the show's sets, which were canvas panels painted like comic-book pages. Kapow!

Fortunately, it sounds like everyone in this superhero show stayed in character, making a superhuman effort to replace everything right quick. (This is when I would have magically turned into SuperWhine.)

Says the show's writer and star, Peninsula actress Bobbi Fagone: "We got on the phone and got a few neighbors and friends together. The scenic designer quickly came up with another idea to replace the panels and literally worked all night to get the design done. ... The next day, volunteers arrived at my garage and the painting began. Meanwhile the tech crew continued to work on implementing the new design using photos off our web site."

Bobbi says about 80 percent of the set was finished yesterday, with the rest expected to come in tonight -- you know, just before curtain.

Excelsior! Y'all are my heroes. Break a leg tonight!

Pictured: Bobbi Fagone, saving the world. Photo courtesy of www.bjfcreative.com.

A man on a mission

Hey, kudos to Ben Wu, who just snagged a Student Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It's thanks to his Stanford master's thesis project, a documentary film he made called "Cross Your Eyes Keep Them Wide."

The film has a Bay Area angle, too: It's a profile of developmentally disabled artists at the Creativity Explored studios in San Francisco. "Through their own words the artists discuss their work, the difficulties they sometimes face in the outside world, and the community they've built through the center," says the Creativity Explored website.

Ben, who now lives in Brooklyn, was one of three filmmakers chosen in the documentary category and 11 overall. He'll find out at a June 9 ceremony if his Student Academy Award is a gold, silver or bronze.

Good to see a man on a quest get some props. By making docs, Ben is trying to "save his soul" after working for years in reality TV.

After suffering through "Grease: You're the One That I Want," I can get behind that.

Photo courtesy of Ben Wu.

Soaring off to the Continent

The fastest way to get me to read a press release is to include a reference to Hungary in it.

(Oh, now I've done it. In my in-box tomorrow: "Musician Who Thinks Hungary Is Rather Nice Tours Los Altos." "New Exhibit by Artist Who Once Saw A Picture of Budapest -- Or Was It Bucharest?")

Anyway, so I have to notice how many young Bay Area classical musicians play Budapest, my former city of residence, as part of a Central European tour. It's a pogacsa-packed rite of passage.

For example, the El Camino Youth Symphony went in 2005, and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra is headed there this summer. I also just got a press release about Gunn High School pianist prodigy Kenric Tam soloing with the San Jose Youth Symphony this summer at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. (Kenric and co. will preview their European concert on June 16 at the Heritage Theatre in Campbell.)

Even more than cruising the Danube, playing the Liszt Ferenc academy seems to be de rigueur for these musicians. And rightly so. The academy, which was founded in 1875 and has been in its present Art Nouveau building for a century, has a breathtaking large concert hall (look up). You can wander around the building forever, taking in frescoes and the graceful doors and windows and the sculpture of Liszt himself.

And perhaps you absorb some of the greatness of the academy's former teachers: Zoltan Kodaly, Bela Bartok, Imre Kalman...

You can make music in a cellar, or pluck out a timeless melody on a rubber band. But I imagine a violin bow or a singer's voice must simply soar in a jewel box like this.

Photo courtesy of budapest.hotelhungary.com.

An impossible island

Ooh, I just realized that in my Weekly story today on children's illustrator Kristin Abbott I left out the address of her Web site. You must check out her work at www.abbottillustration.com. Think of it as an escape from the tangled day you're having -- you can't help but beam like a kid at some of these.

It's also worth checking out the watercolor hues Kristin uses. In the newspaper world, we don't always get color on the pages we want, and disappointingly her story wound up in black and white in today's Weekly. Them's the breaks. Jump over to her site this minute.

The print above, "The Island Home," is one of the ones I can't stop gazing at. Kristin drew it in an "advanced perspective" art class.

She says her favorite compliments come from children who look at her works and say, "I want to go there." Oddly enough, I suddenly find myself wanting to be gardening atop an impossible island while flying a kite. Talk about an escape.

London calling

An exhibit catalogue popped by my desk the other day, sent by one of the most inspiring artists I've written about. Painter Klari Reis, who graced the Weekly's cover in May 2006, was sending word of her new solo show. It opens today at Gallery 27 in London.

This is surely a welcome jump across the pond for the artist, who grew up in Menlo Park and studied in London. It's also fitting that the exhibit is called "Hope."

Klari paints with wet plastic, making compelling patterns of swirls and blobs and blips. Her art represents the structures of medications, blown up huge and dosed with fanciful color.

Klari's work took on this theme when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and put on a frightening quantity of pills. Then she went beyond her own medicines to paint a world of pharmacology: painkillers, cholesterol-lowering drugs, HIV treatments.

It's a rare person who can paint her way out of a health scare, and find a cheerful lining of epoxy polymer. But there you have it.

As Klari's exhibit catalogue reads: "The intent is to deflect the negativity, distrust and avoidance often associated with modern medicine. ... The images are organic, alive with movement and life-affirming."

Pictured: "Lipitor" by Klari Reis, a 40-by-30-inch painting on wood panel