'Lens Project' with The Hispanic Liaison

A few years ago, I did a series of projects with the Youth Group at The Hispanic Liaison, here in Siler City. As I never did share this project on the blog (which I probably started after), I thought I'd share a little bit here.

I was invited to do an art project with the youth group (10-15 latino High Schoolers) by their then Program Coordinator Carrie Fields (who was later to become my girlfriend), and Sandra Forester (title)

The three of us had previously discussed doing a mural on a wall that had been having problems with gang grafitti, on the side of a local 'tienda' in the same alley way that my studio also inhabits.

However, knowing well what an undertaking a collaborative mural is, I thought it might be best to start with something smaller..

So, after a series of discussions with Ms Fields, we agreed on a series of art projects incorporating  the medium of collage, each building off the previous, finally culminating in a group project.

I figured, if this group could prove themselves capable of undertaking this large group project, then I would consider undertaking a mural with them.

The first of our projects was what I called the Lens Project.

This utilized a collection of coffee lids that had once been donated to me by Donna Bianco, while I was  teaching the Arts & Literature summer camp, at Our Neighborhood Pizzaria/School (yes!) (now the Bella Donna).

The idea was that each of these white card board lids, each with a smooth rounded lip, would be fitted with an image(cut from magazine xeroxs), creating sort of image-tiles, that the students could then arrange, and rearrange, exploring approaches to visual story telling...

To create the images, Carrie and I poured through our collections of National Geographics, looking for interesting imagery. These pages we xeroxed, and presented as a grand pile of imagery for the students to dig through, and select.

Once they had selected an image, the student would color it in with markers, and then cut it size, to fit on the surface of the coffee cup lids.

Then the real fun began!

We would get three students to pick one 'image-tile' each, so that we had three images to work with. 

Then, I would challenge the students to create stories from the sequence of image tiles.

THEN, we would rearrange the tiles, to create a new story! It was pretty wild!

This was to be the youth group's introduction to visual story telling using collage. Later, we would expand on these ideas in our own personal projects, and even a larger group project! Perhaps I will discuss these another time.

Towards the end of our time together, I discovered a way to combine all of these circular image tiles together, in with in the frame of a bicycle tire (a favorite prop of mine).

The result that I was going for was that of a compound eye (such as that of a dragon fly), or a lens, perhaps a magnifying glass, as the tiles created a gentle bulge when fit with in the black frame of the tire. I left it to the youth group to arrange them. Here is Carrie, holding the complex of tiles, with out the bicycle tire frame. 

Though Carrie has since moved on, this collaborative artwork still hangs in the office of Sylvio, the new Coordinator of the Hispanic Liaison Youth Group, a testament of all of work together.

Wire Sculpture Artist in Residency at the Carrboro ArtsCenter

Well, we survived Wire Camp, yet again! No one got their an eye poked out, thanks to our vigilance and practice of good safety.

As I had expected, the younger after school students were a little bit too spastic to very successful.

Not that many of them did not try (and a few of those succeeded!)

But we did have some glorious accomplishments from the older group!

One obstacle that I encountered, was that wire can be hard to see. I found that it was difficult for the students to see my wire while demonstrating techniques. And also, because the tables in the Arts Center's Jane Filer Painting Studio's are so (duely) covered with paint, it becomes difficult to see what you are doing, even 2 feet in front of you. To solve these problems, I elected to use some large electric wire, coated in red plastic, which I could hold up against a clean(ish) white wall, during my demonstrations. I also coated the draped the tables with butcher paper, which made a huge difference in reducing the visual clutter, which can at a height when working with wire (even with no paint splatters on your work surface).  

Unfortunately, the younger campers especially showed such an unquenchable thirst for tearing holes in this surface, that I had to wonder a) what is it in a child that abhors clean white surfaces?.. and b) perhaps a paper destroying workshop would be more successful..

These gals got into the electric wire!