Tipping Bowls and Steaming Rice In Process Photos

I have a few weeks to complete this piece. Here are process images of the work so far.
I found this Chinese Knot Cording site useful. I am using Tap Plastics' UV resistant Waterclear surfboard resin to coat the wire and paper components.

Wrap It Up Youth Video & Mural Project

I am working on an invite for the Wrap It Up Video & Mural project. There will be a street screening of the youth videos on May 4th in San Jose's Japantown. It has been a real pleasure to work with Mr. D.J. Ashford and his students at Burnett Middle School. I am hoping that we have a lot of people come out and celebrate the students' and public artists' works. The videos are part of the Next Vista video library collection: http://www.nextvista.org/projects/wrapitup/ and all the videos can be seen here.

Lesson plans can be found on the project site: http://wrapitupmurals.weebly.com/

I have 19 mesh murals to sew. I am excited to get them up on the fence mural site. Soon the youth video interviews will be embedded in the Japantown Mural Project mobile app. The app will link to the videos posted on Next Vista.

Thanks to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation Donor Circle for the Arts for funding and thank you to Next Vista for Learning for fiscal sponsorship of the project.

Tipping Bowls and Steaming Rice

Digital sketch of a commissioned wall sculpture for a San Francisco client. The art will be installed in a dining room with a beautiful gold ceiling and an incredible view of the San Francisco Bay. I am very excited to begin this project which will include sashiko stitching and a variety of fabrics and Asian food wrappers.

Youth Film Festival Logo Design

For the past two years I have enjoyed designing logos for Next Vista for Learning's youth video contests.

The upcoming spring contest is called the Creative Flight Video Contest. Students and teachers everywhere are invited to submit their creations (under 90 seconds in length). It has been inspiring and fun to view a diverse range of interesting submissions.








Below: initial rough sketch logo studies

Mapping Coummunity & Public Transit Refelctions

This week I am launching a youth art project, Special Spots, that will engage youth in mapping their personal transit routes and destinations. Hopefully the resulting art will inform the design for 11 new bus stops along the Santa Clara/Alum Rock BRT bus route in San Jose, California.

Here is the project site that I am building as we journey through the project: http://specialspots.weebly.com/

Using Tiny Planet Mobile App for Teen Art Project

Tiny Planet Japantown, San Jose

Tiny Planet Cupertino

Mayfair Community, San Jose Tiny Planet

Recently I have been exploring the mobile app Tiny Planet and, while it is kind of a novelty app, I think it can be used to engaging students in a discussion about the boundaries of neighborhoods and communities. Are these boundaries hard and fast? Are they blurred? In what contexts are neighborhood bounding lines fixed and in what ways are they blurry and moving? By taking photos of key landscapes in their communities and then taking the photos into the Tiny Planet app, students see their photos of neighborhood transformed into little planets, detailed swirly marbles floating in the sky. The resulting images speak to the notion of neighborhoods as worlds onto themselves.

A collage of these "neighborhood planets" in a public transit setting would playfully engage the viewer in questioning the existence of distinct edges to communities. These little planets are intriguing distortions of our environments. Perhaps this twisted lens can playfully highlight that we move through many communities in our daily lives and that our neighborhoods really are not islands or worlds onto themselves.

A wall of these planet would engage the viewer (waiting for the train or bus) in trying to identify the locations of the photos. The installation would invite the viewer to think about issues of community isolation, community openness, the youth perspective (as pictures are taken by teens), about the preciousness of neighborhoods, and perhaps can in some way engage the viewer to think about how we move through these spaces and connect them. We connect these dots. 

Concept Sketches for Reserch Center

Recently, I had the opportunity to submit design sketches for the creation of a large art installation to hang in the atrium of a new neurological research center. It will be exciting if this project comes to life. I would welcome the opportunity to reflect on cellular level forms in a large scale installation. A few years back I created an abstract Neuron Kimono that also reflected on neuron cells.

The wire frame of this new project would be covered with a mixture of old kimono fabrics, rice bags, recycled denim and Asian food wrappers. Layers of colored organza fabric would be stitched over the first layer of collage materials. The layered organza will reveal, in varying opacity, the textured materials below. I will also explore integrating Japanese sashiko stitching and Chinese knot cording to represent enzymes and electric impulses.

Below is the beginnings of a small scale model. Each banners will be 7 ft x 3 ft.