Mixed media social practice artist Terry McClain works in alliance with organizations. For fifteen years, she offered first year students – some the first in their families to attend college – a segment entitled Art and Social Context. They chose situations to consider, discussed ideas and experimented with creative responses. Design, involving groups and destined for the public sphere, was the impetus for the segment. From the 1990s, access to personal recording equipment and the scope of the internet increased. The images illuminate atmospheres of those affected and those in alliance. These works are offered as a gifts – to the people, if alive, or to their families, or communities, organizations. To share and archive the stories, digital images are posted.

Terry has worked with The Womens Building, Food First, Wright Institute, Social Action Resource Center, Multicultural Institute. She has particularly been touched by music known as nueva canción and nueva trova, from the late 1950s forward, has been crucial to resistance efforts south of the US/Mexico border. La Peña in Berkeley, CA., was founded after Augusto Pinochet launched a coup in response to the democratically elected Socialist, Salvador Allende. Exiled Chileans allied with anti-imperialists in the US to create belonging. On staff a decade after the coup, Terry helped produce performances essential to community, a danger to regime.

Perseverance is imperative. She has visited Cuba three times and welcomes the approaches to education, medicine; the visual arts, the rich depth of Afro-Cuban son and rhumba traditions. Since 1959, in alliance with global and US initiatives, despite US government trespass, Cuba perseveres.