However you got to this URL, welcome. My name is Shana Dressler and I am New York based multimedia artist, producer, and the founder of the Global Giving Circle.
This site is set up to present my journey to date, as an artist and as a person. For those of you who want a quick overview, please note the icons at the bottom of each page. You will also see tabs at the top that will lead you to the more complex aspects of the site:
EXPLORE: How exploration to 40+ countries has shaped my thoughts and creative endeavors.
- Outer World: The five photography and four music projects that I created from 1995-2009
- Inner World: My visual diaries from 1987 to 1990 and a meditation on personal transformation and how that leads to fulfilling on one's dreams
NAVIGATE: A graphic timeline of my projects from 1995-2009
INSPIRE: The people, places and things that have inspired me
GIVE: The creation of the Global Giving Circle, a network of individuals who come together to support creative and innovative solutions to alleviate poverty through tangible grassroots initiatives both locally and internationally.
In the site I share every aspect of what is to dream: from day dreaming, to struggling with the meaning of a dream, to dreaming of a better world.
My career as a documentary journalist and producer has spanned a wide range of forms, from stills to video to multimedia. In 2004 I founded Swimming Elephant Productions which is a multimedia company through which I produce all of my projects. My most recent endeavor, Discovering Ganesh, explores the Hindu elephant-headed deity through a multimedia exhibition, book and website. Ganesh, one of India's most beloved Gods, has been revered for millennia as the Remover of Obstacles, the Lord of Beginnings and the Patron of the Arts. The work-in-progress has been showcased at the United Nations, the National Arts Club in New York, the Lille International Arts Festival in France, The International Houston Arts Festival, and at the Jan Larsen Art Gallery in Brooklyn. From March to September 2009 the photography portion of the project will be exhibited at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California.
In addition to Discovering Ganesh, I exhibited photographs from If Only It Were Love at New York University's gallery space, Casa Italiana, in 2004. The project tells the story of an unrequited love affair I had with one of Jacques Cousteau's underwater photographers while living in Rome in the early 1990s. From 1995 to 2000 I created The Spirit That Runs Through The Holy Tabernacle Church, a photo essay that captured the spiritual life of a Pentecostal church in Harlem. A portfolio of this work is part of the permanent collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
As a video journalist I directed and co-produced Can't Wait 'Til Sunday, with National Geographic photographer/cameraman Bob Sacha. This 10-minute documentary, which profiles Carl J. Graham, the pastor of Harlem's Holy Tabernacle Church,
I also covered the "Drumming In The New Millenium" festival in Cairo, Egypt for World Entertainment Network and filmed station spots of world music stars such as Baaba Maal, Habib Koite, and Afro Celt Sound System for Link TV. Additionally I created three video shorts for Discovering Ganesh and am currently working on the exhibition's video installation, a montage of 25 Mumbai residents' stories of how Ganesh has removed significant obstacles related to their physical, romantic and financial well-being.
As a producer, I have worked on "The Spirit of Fes," a 17-city US tour of world sacred music, which included pre-concert colloquium on world peace by a panel of experts; a 10-part world music lecture and performance series entitled "Around the Globe in 10 Weeks"; and a photography project for teenage girls called "Around the World in New York City" with the Lower East Side Girls Club. I have been a consultant for the Global Peace Initiative of Women on their international youth summits, Link TV's Music and Cultural Programming Department, and have consulted for many major music labels and entertainment companies in their new media departments in New York. As a social entrepreneur I am the driving force behind the Global Giving Circle.
Education and training: I studied photojournalism at New York's International Center of Photography from 1993-1996 and comparative religion and anthropology at Columbia University from 1991-1994. I graduated from Vassar College in 1989, with a B.A. in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Websites: www.shanadressler.com, www.swimmingelephant.com, www.discoveringganesh.com, www.ifonlyitwerelove.com
