David R. Hodge, of Arizona (originally from Canada) pauses in the lobby to chat. Ineke Way approaches in the background.

Ineke Way and Sulki Chung. When they were doctoral students they worked with Brett Drake and Melissa Jonson-Reid on child welfare research.

Another photograph of Ineke and Sulki. They were very happy to see each other again.

Another fairly good photograph of David Hodge.

David Hodge, Michael Vaughn, Rita Chou, and I sat together on Friday night and had a long conversation.

The four of us (click to see David) had a good conversation for severals hours until after midnight. David, Michael, and Rita are inspiring thinkers.

Fred M. Ssewamala was very photogenic, so I have four pictures of him taken during his talk.

Here Fred Ssewamala is discussing economic empowerment.

If you click on this image you can see Fred is explaining where Uganda is.

Fred M. Ssewamala speaking at the Society for Social Work and Research Annual Meeting in New Orleans (2009).

Here is Larry M. Gant describing community development in Detroit.

Larry has good hand movements while he speaks about something he cares about, like community development.

Here is Trina Shanks giving a presentation at the SSWR meeting.

Trina gets things ready on the computer while Larry and Fred look on (click to see the larger image with Larry in it).

Donna-Mae Knights is giving her talk.

Trina Shanks worked for Larry Davis together when we were doctoral students. Back then she was Trina Williams.

Trina, like Fred, was pretty photogenic that day.

If you click on this image you can see Larry Gant as well.

Marlys Staudt is another old friend I know from when we were both doctoral students at the Brown School (GWB). She had a great poster at SSWR.

Michaela L. Zajicek-Farber presented a very fine poster on parent mentoring. She let me photograph her poster, and I said I'd share these pictures with her.

Here is Michaela standing by her poster at the SSWR meeting in New Orleans (2009).

I had many influental professors at Washington University who shaped my thinking about social work and social welfare. Ozawa, Sherraden, Rank, Heidenheimer, Morrow-Howell, Estes, Auslander, Parvis, and Yadama all contributed to how I approach social work. My most influental mentors were Larry Davis and Arlene Stiffman (above).

That's it for photographs from the SSWR meeting itself. From here on the rest of the photographs on this page are from the Prospect 1 art show that was going on in New Orleans during the SSWR meeting. I had some time on Thursday and Sunday (before and after the SSWR meeting) to check out the art. The photo above was the Hefler Warehouse welcome center.

Here is a player piano with a tree. This was in the old Mint in the French Quarter. Sanford Biggers created this work, which he named Blossom. It was odd, in an enjoyable way. Not an obvious communication, but it did make me smile. A joke. But there must be more to humor in this. The living tree has grown through the player piano, but the piano continues playing.

The New Orleans Art Museum had some Prospect 1 exhibits such as this series of scenes by Willie Birch, The Wedding. Birch is a local New Orleans artist who potrays life in the city. I especially like that romantic scene in the upper right of the bride and groom holding hands and looking at each other with love and joy.

The photograph of the young man looking out his window was taken by Zwelethu Mthethwa. The photograph is untitled, and was taken in 2008. It reminds me of the neighborhood in Kibera where I stayed for much of my time during my semester in Kenya back in 1988.

This is one of the paintings by Clare Rojas displayed at the Old Mint. I liked her style. It reminded me of Chris Ware's art, but as the curator had pointed out, the style is similar to those folk paintings typical of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In one painting she had two men in a acrobatic position that I think was inspired by the frolicking in the Bosch painting of the Garden of Earthly Delights. Two older women in the painting were sitting and watching the naked men, and laughing at them.

The Japnaese artist Yasumasa Morimura had an exhibit of photographs that all seemed to be staged re-creations of scenes painted or drawn by Goya. He also had a film about dictatorship and Adolf Hitler. The film was fun. I liked the Goya-inspired photographs as well. The one above, from Capricho 43, reminded me of Rene Dubos, because he began one of his lectures with a discussion of it.

Here is one of the works by Al-Anatsui of Anyako, Ghana. He takes objects he finds and cuts them up or pounds them into new shapes and then puts them together in these tapestries.

Anatsui lives in Nigeria now, where he is a professor at the University of Nigeria.

Click on the image above to see all the works installed. These are by Anne Boudreau, and they are made of wire, seine twine, linen, thread and acrylic paint. B-child (2002) is the big one on the left, La Luna (2006) is the purple flowery one, The Dippers (2006) are the green leaf-like things, and The Fates (2005) are the two objects on the far right.

This stuff is by Cynthia Scott. The hanging material is called Pipe Dreams, and it's made of urethane, monfilament, and hardware cloth. I can't help thinking of large intestines.

Here is a Burning Car by Srdjan Loncarwho also did the pile of money (Value). The fire is actually foam covered with photographs or orange and yellow stuff.

I guess Fred Tomaselli was my favoriate artist at Prospect 1. When I imagine abstract ideas I sometimes conceive of them as brightly colored shapes set against a dark background, and Tomaselli's work is very similar to those images I use to imagine things.

Wow, if you look carefully, you'll notice that Tomaselli uses eyes, birds, butterflies, hands, legs, and other objects as pieces of his art.

This work by Tomaselli is called Abductor.