Local artist Clarissa Sligh will present and read from her recent book, Transforming Hate: An Artist’s Book, which evolved from a project in which the author folded origami cranes from the pages of white supremacist books. These cranes are part of an exhibition, Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate, by the Montana Human Rights Network and the Holter Art Museum in Helena, Montana.

From the author: "I am a black woman. I am an artist. In Transforming Hate: An Artist’s Book, I was exploring what it was like for me to turn the hateful words of the white supremacist books into a beautiful art object. That exploration helped me understand more fully the many levels of oppression and violence at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexual orientation. Creating the Transforming Hate book was not the first time I faced the tyranny of hate."

Upcoming shows of the Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate exhibit include:

• Jan. 17 to June 2, 2018 -- Springville Museum of Art, Springville, Utah
• Jun. 15 to Sept. 3, 2018 -- Union Station Museums, Ogden, Utah
• Sept. 21 to Dec. 30, 2018 -- Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana 

Clarissa Sligh makes photographic series, artists’ books and text-based installations to explore concepts and constructions of identity, transformation, the family snapshot and the documentary photograph. Projects vary, but all draw from experiences accumulated over a lifetime and on where I come from: the Southeast, a black blue-collar community, small white frame houses, the gospel music of summer revivals, rhythm and blues, James Baldwin and jazz. Framing the image is much like choosing a perception on which to base one’s reality.