Corinne Okada Design

Slot Shelters Installation Studies Continued

2012-01-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

Yet another rough idea for the installation for launching Slot Shelters. This design would make use of a variation of materials for the modular units. I would like the roof units to be translucent material. I am wondering if it is possible to embed led lights in the roof material and have mood or motion sensors below for people to interact with and have reflected in the action of the lights. There would be additional sections of the structure connecting and extending outward. I envision sparse use of pattern and color. Large scale colorful student slot cards with their pattern designs would also be printed and will be available to the public to build additional structures near this one.

more pattern studies below:

Seeking Shelter/Slot Shelters continued brainstorming

2012-01-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

Engage shelter would have some pinwheel pieces spin in the wind or by hand. Refresh shelter would collect water and it would musically collect down rain catch chains.

Seeking Shelter/Slot Shelters Installation: I have been thinking more about the connecting unit shapes for structure installation of Slot Shelters. This structure will be an exclamation point and question mark inserted into the public landscape to excite people about the possibilities for what a bus shelter can be.

A design challenge for youth will launch at the same time.
The challenge will invite youth to envision the bus shelter as more than a waiting space.
How can the bus shelter function in replenishing/refreshing, engaging and enriching the community? How can the space be designed to invite community connection, gathering and sharing? How can it be a node in environmental and community needs such as solar collecting, water collecting, digital device recharging, food growing? This challenge will be hosted on the Slot Shelters website.

The installation will playfully introduce the general themes: refresh, engage, and enrich. I will design and install a shelter in which each wall represents one of the three themes.
The Engage Wall will have units which spin by touch and wind.
The Refresh Wall will collect water from the slanted roof and the water will descend musically through rain catches (made of the building units cut from metal and folded into cones).

The Enrich Wall will have the building units printed with elementary student pattern art (from this academic year's Slot Shelter participants) along with their statements describing how their patterns reflect their neighborhood. Perhaps people could add to the art – so that itis an ever changing piece. They coulddraw or leave notes & messages. Perhaps it is poetry they are writing down. It is a way to connect to people you may never meet.

very rough concept sketch of what a basic shelter might look like using the new slot units.

Two alternative shapes for the basic unit shape. One of these will be selected to work from.

The unit pieces I am creating (and still refining) will fold and connect to build the structure. The main basic unit shape will integrate both angular forms and organic shapes.
The organic shapes within it reflects on identity and place... cells and aerial view of Bay (together referencing a large span in scale).
The angular shape in the pattern unit is the standard pinwheel. It references green design and the ingredient of playful experimentation necessary for innovation design in Silicon Valley. As a basic quilting pattern, this angular shape also references the quilt work of cultures pieced together to form our unique community.

The basic shape design will have several variations or slight "mutational" forms that will be laser cut so that resulting pattern has a dynamic texture of variation within the repeating pattern. Two examples below:

These new pattern shapes will be used in conjunction with the original patterns created for the classrooms. There will be a free issuu book for students to download and print the card pieces.

Ideas for installation of Slot Shleters/Seeking Shelter

2012-01-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

paper model of slot shelter units assembled into a structure with a roof using new card designs.

I am exploring the creation of two new pieces that will be repeating units in a Slot Shelters installation. The above model is a early prototype of what these two units might look like. I would scale up the large piece to be twice the size of the square connector piece. The tab connection here works great so I won't be modifying that much. I will also make a test unit that looks more like the top quilt-like pinwheel pattern unit. These designs were inspired by designs I saw posted by students at this site: http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news19027.html

I hope to create the final designs as a CAD file at the TechShop and then have these two units laser cut from cardboard.


A pyramid-like building is under construction in the square of Fujian University of Technology, Fuzhou, East China's Fujian province on May 10,2011.[Photo/CFP]

Student Patterns for Freeway Art

2012-01-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

Two pattern designs for concrete form lines. The designs will be used as concrete impressions along freeway 101 and bike and pedestrian overpass at both Tully and Capitol Expressway exchanges. These student designs are by Noemi V. and Raquel V. at Renaissance Academy in San Jose, CA. Below are the original art by the students. Project supported by the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs and the VTA. Landscape Architecture firm is HMH.

Below are three sets of designs for the laser cut pillars.


Pattern set above by Anagolis R., Dung P. and Alyna C..

Pattern set above by Ayana J., Dominque W. and Alexis R.

Pattern set above by Jacqueline C., Vanessa C., and Jacqueline A.

Studies for Mural Fence Wrap in Japantown San Jose

2012-01-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to create studies for a digitally printed fence wrap mural in San Jose, California. I am one of several artists invited by Rasteriods Design to contribute art to this fence which surrounds what was once San Jose's last Chinatown, Heinlenville, and what is today a part of Japantown. We are also looking to incorporate large bold graphics inspired by Studio Cochae.

Incorporated into the pattern designs above are images of actual artifacts (Japanese porcelain bowl and cow bones) dug up in an archeological excavation behind the fence. The cow bone slices are examples of how Chinese re-cut Western meats smaller to incorporate into Chinese cooking. Many fragments of both porcelain and re-cut cow bone were found at the site and graciously lent to me by the Sonoma State Anthropological Studies Center.

Tonight I submitted an application for a Donor Circle for the Arts Grant with Next Vista for Learning to engage youth of the Japantown community in contributing poetry, spoken word and interviews to the project. I envision student works being QR code linked on posters and on the fence wrap itself to connect public with student reflections online.

In this mural concept I am attempting to metaphorically bridge the past with the present and bring the artifacts to life in a modern day context. The girl is dressed in clothing of today and is blowing on a bowl of soup. The bowl in her hand is the pieced together bowl from the bowl fragment in the pattern behind her. The soup she is cooling contains beef broth and it is echoed in the bone pattern visible in the steam and in the child as she drinks it. The steam itself is a connection to the past as it references the incense burned to honor and remember ancestors. On this steam I will be illustrating floating objects representing the life of this community past and present.

The several blocks of fencing that the fence wrap will encase. Most recently this area was a municipal bus yard. Before that it was Heinlenville, a walled Chinese enclave.

Journey Exhibit in Singapore; Cupertino Students Participate

2011-12-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

Cupertino, California 5th Grade student radial patterns reflecting on local community. These patterns were created for the Slot Shelters project and are translated here into ATC cards (Artist Trading Cards). These cards will be exhibited in an exciting international student art show, Journey, at the Jurong Regional Library in Singapore. Some of the Cupertino students created pattens reflecting on the industry that brought their family to journey to California. Otherstudents reflected on their heritage from distant lands and some reflected on the journey Cupertino has taken from agriculture to a technology driven community. I am very grateful for the opportunity for these students to participate in this innovative international student showcase! I found out about this project through the Art Education 2.0 NING, a wonderful resource for art educators around the world.

Laser Cutting Student Art in Steel

2011-12-05T19:24:00.001-08:00

I am beginning to prep San Jose student works for laser cuttings for steel designs to be incorporated into freeway art. The student art will be traced in Illustrator and exported as CAD compatible files. A test file is being sent to the laser cutters to see if I correctly create the file. Keeping my fingers crossed!

More Student Work for Freeeway Project

2011-12-01T22:23:00.001-08:00

Studies using 6th Grade student pattern art for concrete impressions for side of freeway walls for Highway 101 in San Jose, California.

Student Design Integration into Freeway Public Art

2011-11-30T20:52:00.001-08:00

It is an interesting challenge to begin to explore ways to integrate student patterns into designs for concrete and laser cut metal. The freeway public art project that will incorporate student reflections on community is now at a phase where we need to address fabrication constraints. There will be metal "gateway" pillars and concrete wall patterns at the 101/Tulley and 101/Capitol Expressway freeway passes in San Jose, California built in April 2012. We are using Repper Pro to create the digital patterns from photos for some of the components.

Below are a few student sketches and beginning studies for fabrication. I am hoping that student statements about their designs will also be somehow linked at City of San Jose website.
Renaissance Academy, 6th Grade Student Radial Pattern sampling:

"Tamales" by Alyna C.

"Viva la Comunidad de Mexico en San Jose"
by Vanessa C.

"Cherry Blossom" by Ayana J.

"Nature Awaken" by Dominique

"Hot Delicious Food" by Dung P.

"Our Community of the Sun" by Luis C.

"Las Paletas" by Anayolis R.

Below: rough concept studies for large laser cut metal patterns for gateway pillars. (Yes, ligatures are needed so that there are no floating pieces, but these sketches are simply for concept and need to be refined a lot for fabrication. Designs will be digitally re rendered as vector based files (in Illustrator) and exported as either .DWG or .DXF files (AutoCAD format) for laser cutting.

Each of three panel designs will fall along a theme of either food, culture/celebration or environment/nature. The pattern studies below draw from selected student paper designs and from student digital photo patterns created in Repper Pro.

Surfboard Resin Applied to Food Wrapper Sculpture

2011-11-22T13:35:00.001-08:00

I have begun to apply Everclear, a surfboard resin (with UV inhibitors) to the components of the Spring Thoughts sculpture. Man, is this stuff toxic smelling! I don't have a ventilated studio, but the driveway works well enough. The catalyst doesn't work in temperatures below 65 degrees and it is 66 outside so I had to work quickly in the sun. The main flower part I will coat with the resin tomorrow. The will be 38" x 42" and 1.25" deep and will be displayed against white fabric in a plexi glass box in the third floor elevator lobby of John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek, California.

Spring Thoughts Sculpture; more process images

2011-11-17T10:18:00.001-08:00

Central flower papered with origami paper and food wrappers as of 11/19/11

Leaves papered as of 11/19/11.

Earlier process photo.

Here are some updated process images of the Spring Thoughts sculpture. In these images, the buds and the stems and vine elements are mostly completed. I used Asian food wrappers (Chinese preserved fruit wrappers, Japanese paper chopstick wrappers, origami paper and Chinese olive wrappers.) The leaves and the main central flower are the next elements that will be worked on tonight. I am very happy to be creating art for hospitals again and creating art for neonatal and pediatric installations is particularly rewarding. This piece will be 38" x 42" x 1.25". Previous blog on this piece is at this posting. I will be experimenting with UV resistant surfboard resin as the final glaze.

Student Pattern Reflections on Community

2011-11-14T13:06:00.001-08:00

In the past few weeks I have been working with the 6th Grade Students of Renaissance Academy in Alum Rock, San Jose, California. Renaissance Academy Art Instructor, Jesus Guerra, has been very generous in coordinating the class workshops times and in assisting with the computer art lab set up in his room for the digital pattern workshops. The students explored the visual identity of their local community in hand drawn radial pattern designs as well as in digital patterns created in Repper Pro photos they took of their community.

The resulting patterns will be added to the Slot Shelters project in both the library of card patterns for download and as pattern surface textures in Google SketchUp. The most exciting application of the student work is that a selection of these Renaissance student designs may be integrated in some format into the hardscape design of freeway exchange at 101 Tully and 101 Capitol Expressway. This landscape/construction project by the Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of San Jose, the VTA and HMH will be completed in April 2012.

This project was made possible by a generous loan of laptop computers by the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College.
Below are a sampling of the student designs. Student statements about each pattern will accompany the designs.

Onions

This photo isof onions on a grill.

This representsmy community because when you pass by any market or home it is always the smellof carne and onions.

Thoughts on the 100 Cups of Anne Smith

2011-11-13T11:44:00.001-08:00

A week or so ago, I happened to look at a link sent to me by Selvedge Magazine and it took me to the wonderful illustrations of Anne Smith. Her 100 cups illustrations especially resonated with me. She is working on a book to showcase her art and I look forward to being able to purchase it. Each cup illustration on her websites is a lovely bit of visual poetry and I am eager to see all the 100 cups illustrations in her book.

Around the same time I discovered Anne Smith's work, I was contacted by Rasteriods Design in San Jose regarding a public art project of a fence wrap to go around a construction site of several block in Japantown, San Jose, California. These few blocks were once Heinlenville, the last of six Chinatowns in San Jose. I thought it would be really interesting to invite artists to each paint a cup reflecting some part of history of this area, as many fragments of tea cups and rice bowl were found in the site excavation conducted by Sonoma State Anthropological Studies Center.

It is the early stages of the conceptual ideas for the fence wrap and I think the theme of the designs will take a different turn, but I will tuck away in my mind the idea of cups for future projects. So often in these excavations, the echos of the past lives of Chinese and Japanese immigrants are in the form of pottery shards. Anchoring public art imagery in this site to tea cups or rice bowls both references historical relevant artifacts and creates a theme around objects poetically representing spaces to be filled with ideas and memories.
Below: Digital textile design I created from a Heinlenville shard fragment of a Japanese rice bowl and below that an image of the fence wrap site in Japantown, San Jose.

Spring Thoughts Sculpture

2011-11-13T10:55:00.001-08:00

I am in the process of creating a 38" x 42" floral sculpture commission for a hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am working with Roundtree Visuals on this project. The piece will be completed and delivered by December 1st, 2011 for framing and installation.

Step 2: The original sketch is printed at 100% scale and taped to cardboard. Wire is twisted with an electrician's wire twisting tool and then it is formed to follow the sketch lines on the paper. Holes are punched through the cardboard and the wire is tied down in place on the template.

Step 3: The beginnings of the leaves, stems and vine elements.

Step 4: Most of twisted wire form is completed. I am beginning to paper the form.

Step 5: Here is the sculpture, Spring Thoughts, as the wire form is beginnings to be covered with a base papering. I am using Chinese preserved fruit wrappers and will be adding fragments of other papers and food wrappers before I glaze with a two part epoxy glaze from Tap Plastics.It is difficult to see the scale here, but this piece is 38" x 42" large and 1.25" in depth.

TECHstlye SoftWEAR Blurb Book

2011-10-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

A blurb book, TECHstyle SoftWEAR , by Rasteriods Design is now available for purchase. This collaborative project was conducted with Colleen Quen and Rick Lee in 2010. Both artists were a joy to work with and it was an inspiring project to be a part of. I only wish that the project could be a traveling installation. Colleen's gowns are now part of the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles.

Dearly Beloved Forever Red Wine Label

2011-10-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

I was in Trader Joe's the other day and saw this beautiful wine bottle and just had to buy it. I am searching for who the artist is as some one in the store told me that the design was created by a San Francisco Bay Area Artist. This Dia de los Muertos inspired bottle is so lovely and the wine is pretty good, too. Currently this wine is only sold at Trader Joe's so I may be stocking up on it. If you know who the artist is, please send me a post. I would love to include a link to the artist's page. I hope that Trader Joe's makes a poster of this design!

Library 2.0 Worldwide Virtual Conference

2011-10-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday at noon I will be presenting the Slot Shelters Project in the Library 2.0 Worldwide Virtual Conference. This will be the first time I have presented using Blackboard Collaborate. Here is the link to the conference schedule of presentations. I tested out converting my Powerpoint slides to a Whiteboard document in a vRoom at Learning Central and I finally got it working after switching to another computer, so think I am almost set. I am looking forward to listening and participating in other sessions of the conference that day.

In the evening of that same day, I will be presenting the You Are Here Street Banner Project at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View for the Rambus/KCI Innovation Award Ceremony as I will be a representative from last year's program. Here is information on the inspiring winners of this year's Rambus/KCI Innovation Award for 2011.

Creative Compositions Student and Teacher Video Project

2011-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

I created this logo about a month ago for the Creative Compositions Contest project and it is in full swing now. I have been burning the midnight oil these last few days uploading student and teacher created videos to the education non-profit site, Next Vista for Learning, a free online library of youth curriculum videos created by and for students everywhere. Submissions are coming from all over the United States: Indiana, California, Hawaii and Michigan, to name a few. It is really inspiring to be a part of a project that invites students to creatively teach subject matter using digital video technology, their imagination and knowledge. Here are the videos uploaded so far (47) and the submissions keep coming in. I have maybe twenty more to upload from today. There is also a teacher strand in this project. The contest deadline is November 11th: http://www.nextvista.org/tag/creativecompositions/

More information in the contest at the contest guidelines page.

Art in Embassies Calendar: Homage to American Women Artists

2011-10-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

Today I received a package in the mail from Cairo, Egypt. It contained three U.S. Department of State calendars titled Homage to American Women Artists and my Poison Ivy Pump is featured in this calendar. A few years back this sculpture was in the Brussels American Embassy. The State Department Art in Embassies program is an interesting program for artists. I just found my bio on their site. In the future, I hope to be involved in their abroad programing teaching workshops. You can submit your bio and work for consideration on their newly designed website. The info is a link in the bottom menu bar of their site.

Innovation Textile Design Lab

2011-10-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles will be creating an innovation textile design lab in a space that is 18ft x 30ft. The space will be a multipurpose space with education programming for children and adults as well as an artist residency program. I am working with the museum to help identify possible equipment assets and digital tools programming possibilities to incorporate. One thing I would like to see is a ceiling mounted wii remote interactive surface set up so that we can use one whole wall as an interactive projection surface. Here is a super quick video I created of such a set up. (note: I say "wii" in the video, but should be saying "wii remote")

I have experimented with projections on garments and fabrics in my design process for the Fusionwear SV project research blog and just discovered another textile/pattern artist, Johanna Basford, who has taught a workshop using this process as well. I really like the outline of her lesson plan.

Some great space design ideas from the Stanford dSchool:

light cube

tag for marking project materials and space

Concept Sketches for Hospital Art Installation

2011-10-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

I have been working on sculpture proposal sketches today for a design firm that works with hospitals. These sketches are design ideas for an installation that is 30" x 42" x 1" which would be made of wire, Asian food wrappers, plastic sushi grass, silks and produce netting. The fuzzy colored areas in the digital sketches represent produce netting. If one of these are approved, I have a month to complete the piece before installation into the hospital.

pencil sketch

digital sketch

pencil sketch

digital sketch

Flowers and leaves I created for the Neonatal Department of Boston Children's Hospital a few years ago (an upholstery swatch was provided to me to match the work to. Swatch can be seen in the photo. I wish I had an installation shot, but only have this after gazing photo in my studio).

Videos for Slot Shelters

2011-10-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

As the Slot Shelter Site gets fleshed out for this academic year, I am slowly adding videos to the site. These videos will either be screencasts of how to use digital tools for the project or will be interviews with designers.

Early last spring I began to contact designers who work and brainstorm in three dimensional prototypes to see if perhaps they would engage in assemblies. As the project moved forward, I began to think video interviews would be a more flexible and accessible sharing of info, especially for schools far away. I see a great benefit to students in expanding their toolbox of communication and brainstorming tools through model constructions and physical tests of ideas. This interview below with an experience design engineer highlights the importance of creating small scale rough models before designers build real buildings and sets.

Creative Compositions Student Video Contest!

2011-10-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Next Vista Creative Compositions Student Video Contest has launched!

Deadline to enter is November, 11th 2011.
What is Next Vista for Learning?

"Next Vista works to make learning more engaging, with a focus on helping students start strong with any topic they study. Its central project is a free, online library of teacher- and student-made short videos for learners everywhere. Next Vista believes a strong four-minute video could save students days or weeks of frustration by providing a variety of presentations on the topics that give them trouble."

Slot Shelters Large Prototype Cards

2011-10-01T16:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I picked up large prototype Slot Cards from InPrintz. They did a beautiful job printing the files I created. The patterns and text on these cards come from the You Are Here Street Banner Project. In Printz also printed all the banners for that project. I do need to design the slots a bit wider for an easier fit, but these turned out beautifully and it is great to have physical models.
My daughter enjoyed assembling this with me!

Hopefully many of these cards will be made in the fall of 2012. These cards will be covered with student patterns and photos. In addition, QR codes will link to website pages of student audio and written reflections on community. The cards will be assembled into collaboratively built forts reflecting on structure/shelter needs locally and abroad. These large cards are an exploration in the development of the Slot Shelters project.

Krause Center for Innovation Textile Show Continued

2011-09-30T17:45:00.001-07:00

Today I completed the installation of the You Are Here Street Banner Project in the KCI Art Gallery.

Below is a Photosynth of the installation components in the middle of the gallery. These are digital textiles of the initial explorations in radial pattern design which the San Jose and Hawaii students created. On this webpage is the lesson as a video (towards the middle of the page) and as embedded Scribd worksheets (at the bottom).

These fabrics reflecting on community are grouped into two islands reaching out to each other:

I am so very grateful to the Krause Center for Innovation for investing in my technology training as an educator. The depth and reach of my work with youth has been transformed by my experience in the KCI Merit Scholar Program. Many doors besides these gallery doors have been so graciously and generously opened for me by KCI.

Below is another Photosynth of the entire gallery space showing two street banners and digital prints of the student street banners. There are 17 designs in all. 17 additional full scale street banners hang along Alum Rock Avenue in San Jose, CA.

TechShop Comes to San Jose!

2011-09-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the grand opening of the TechShop in San Jose. This open access tools shop is amazing. On large chalk boards they engaged the public with the question "What would you make if you could make ANYTHING?" This was a great question to hold in one's head as one entered the space.

I liked how they describe themselves on their website:

"You can think of TechShop like a fitness club, but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko's for makers, or a Xerox PARC for the rest of us.
TechShop is designed for everyone, regardless of their skill level."

Above: Vacuum form machine. Our engaging TechShop tour guide said "This is where clone troopers are born".

I was particularly interested in their textile equipment. They had an industrial single stitch sewing machine, two walking foot industrial sewing machines, several regular sewing machines, an industrial serger, a digital CNC embroidery machine and this free arm quilting machine below. It was exciting to learn that their etching machine (in another room) can etch fabric as I would love to experiment with velveteen etching.

They have a lot of software on their computers and have a partnership with Autodesk. This has enabled the TechShop to have about 20,000 worth of equipment on each computer. I signed up for their 3 month membership special yesterday and look forward to experimenting with the wealth of resources in both tools and people expertise. Everyone there was so friendly.

Krause Center for Innovation Art Gallery Show

2011-09-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

I am very excited to be a part of celebrating the You Are Here Street Banner project in a gallery setting at the Krause Center for Innovation on October 18th 5-7, 2011. Show is up until October 24th, 2011. The last reception for this project was the August 13th street unveiling of the installed student designed banners on Alum Rock Avenue. Prior to that there was an installation of the San Jose students' textiles at Montalvo Art Center Artist Residency Commons in April of 2011. This new showing at the KCI art gallery will showcase textiles (digital printing through Spoonflower) created by student participants in the project from both Hawaii and San Jose. I am hoping to also have a laptop in the gallery to showcase the videos and website created in the workshop series. This project was a joyful collaboration between teachers Arlene U. Illa, Kelsey Rothrock (both at Cureton Elementary in San Jose, CA) and Cobey Doi in in Waimea, Hawaii.

ATC Trading Cards with Second Graders

2011-09-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

This summer I was introduced to ATC (artist trading cards) on the blog of arts educator, Nicole Hahn: mini matisse. She organized an arts educator swap leveraging both Art Education 2.0 and SwapBot. I tried it out and received this amazing card above, Day at the Beach, in the trade from a Canadian arts educator Stewart Charlesbois. It is beautifully crafted. He fused recycled plastics and stitched his card on a sewing machine. It is so stunning. I am going to frame it soon.What a wonderful introduction to the world of ATC cards!

I am now working with a Second Grade class in Cupertino, CA in creating artist trading cards with the theme of Fall. These will be traded in a student swap organized by Ms. Hahn in SwapBot. We will be trading with another elementary school class. So far the other schools in the swap are from Canada, Tennessee, Minnesota and Georgia. The last day to join the swap is September 30th and the last day to send out the cards to the assigned school is October 14th.

I will be sending these two above samples along for the teacher of the class we trade with. The one on the left has a Soviet Union stamp (CCCP). I wanted to integrate one word on the card that reflected a double meaning to the theme of fall; "tumble" refers to falling leaves and to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 2001. The card on the right is a sample for the students to see the use of asymmetrical balance and the use of one word reflecting fall, in this case a color. Chopstick wrappers and Chinese preserved apricot wrappers were used. Initially, I had intended for the students to also integrate a word (I printed out fortune cookie like strips of paper with dashed lines on them), but looking at the students' cards after the first workshop I am wondering if it might be best to leave the words off and just have the student designs. Below are a few images of some of the cards created for the swap. These cards will be completed sometime in the next few weeks.
Materials: tissue paper cut into squares, Q-tips, white glue, tagboard, colored papers, tracers of leaves and pumpkins (optional), food wrappers (I use a lot of Asian food wrappers in my work so I brought these in), scissor and stamps. I have a collection of very old used stamps and each student was allowed to pick one and I made the mistake of not first removing the very large stamps from the selection which might eclipse the cards design. It took some time to trade some very large stamps with student for smaller stamps.

Step 1: Discuss what the word "Theme" means. Discuss what imagery might represent fall. Discuss asymmetrical composition as each card will have an asymmetrical composition.
Step 2: Students take bits of tissue paper squares and using a Q-tip apply glue to tag board cut into 2.5" x 3.5" rectangles(in this case we used recycled food boxes).Carefully students trim off extra tissue papers.

Step 3: Students cut out a shape representing fall. And glue this to their card.

Step 4: Students each create 2 cards as we need to create 50 for the trade. They can add a stamp to one of the cards they create. Some chose to place the stamp on the back of the trading card.
Step 5: Students fill out an informational card that is glued to the back of their ATC cards.

Above: Four of the completed student cards before they are glazed.

I'm not a natural math lover, but...

2011-09-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

As a child, I always struggled with math, so I am always eager to find ways to connect art lessons with math. Many of the project I conduct with elementary students blend in components of geometry and fractions. Today, as I was fleshing out some ideas for a Google SketchUp collaboration, I found this site: http://www.mathopenref.com/
through this interactive page: http://www.mathopenref.com/coplanar.html
I am in love! I added this site link to the Slot Shelters website in the Collaborate section and will have links to each interactive definition for orbit, coplanar and non-coplanar, vector, congruent, perpendicular, tangent and angles.

Slot Shelters taking form

2011-09-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

Well the idea Slot Shelters, that percolated last spring now has a site and five schools engaged. Hurray! I know it will be a long and twisty path to bring the first year to completion, but it is exciting to be taking steps down that road. Slot Shelters is a collaborative project engaging elementary school students in thinking about local and global shelter needs in innovative ways both online and off line through simple slot building cards and though joint designs in Google SketchUp. A better description is on the site: Slot Shelters

The lessons are still being fleshed out and rubrics being made. I also need to iron out some upload image features, but the Azerbaijan school and Hawaii school are beginning the first "explore" lessons. Many of the lesson draw upon tools I used in the You Are Here Street Banner Project last year, but one tool is new to me. I am excited to learn more about Google Sketch Up and see what the students create in it using their unique photographic textures created in Repper Pro. What is Repper? Check it out and have fun creating patterns: Repper
We will also be using VoiceThread, a great communication tool for discussions around videos or images.

Artist/Arts Educator Pantea Karimi will be teaching lessons with me here locally and we applied for an NEA Media Arts Grant through the Zero1 Art & Technology Network to support the project as it grows, but we won't find out results of application until May 2012.

Conceal & Reveal: Explorations into Identity

2011-09-05T20:48:00.001-07:00

The highlight of my summer was attending the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum in Seattle and the most fun part of the forum was meeting 100 amazingly innovative teachers from around the United States. As part of the forum, we were grouped into Learning teams and were assigned to go on an excursion to a Seattle point of interest and collaboratively develop some sort of technology integrated project which we would all engage in this year with our students. It was a relief to complete and submit the project, Concealing and Revealing, and do final revisions to the shell of our wordpress site last week. There will be a selection from all the teams submissions and the winning project will attend the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington, D.C. in early November. I had the great fortune to work with two educators from Seattle, a student from Seattle and an amazing arts educator from Utah in creating this project.

Student Film Festival Logo Design

2011-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

One of the projects I have been working this week is logo design. I have not done this in a long time and it was quite fun to work up pencil sketches and digital designs. The designs are for student video contests hosted by Next Vista for Learning. I thought film strip imagery and fruit imagery symbolic of where judging was taken place would be fitting. Here are a few initial sketches below and above are the more final digital sketches. The treble clef is for an upcoming student video contest which will be judged at a Tennessee educational conference in November.

Wing Luke Museum Call for Artists

2011-08-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share this interesting gaming/art exhibit opportunity:
Asian American Arcade
The Wing Luke Museum's call for entries is due September 30th, 2011.
One artist who came to mind is Michelle Higa. I think her work is very interesting.

ATC Cards Using Swap-Bot

2011-08-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

I am excited to participate in my first ATC (Artist Trading Card) project. The project is designed by Arts Educator Nic Hahn in Minnesota. I have been follow her blog after seeing this video announcement of her Swap-bot/ATC project: http://minimatisse.blogspot.com/2011/07/anyone-else-interested.html

She created a second mini-trade which I am participating in. The theme is "What I did this summer." Below are both sides of my first ATC card. The side on the left includes a QR code linking to some images and info about an exhibit at a Museum I visited in Seattle. (check out the amazing QR codes you can make with Microsoft Tag!) This card is made from a Japanese candy box, Chinese preserved fruit wrapper and chopstick wrapper. I visited Seattle a few weeks ago for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Forum and I visited the Space Needle (that's what the thing on the right is supposed to be) and the Wing Luke Museum which focuses on the Asian Pacific American Experience. Below is a detailed image of the QR code I created which links to an exhibit page at the Wing Luke Museum: http://www.wingluke.org/exhibitions/yellowterror.html . The QR image was created from an image I found on flickr with a creative commons attribution licensing from the amazing graphic and illustration resource site 50 Watt. more images here:
http://50watts.com/1102202/Taking-Tiger-Mountain-By-Strategy
Below, my first MicrosoftTag QR code image:

Boston Children's Hospital Exhibit

2011-07-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Betty Bothereau of L'Attitude Gallery in Boston who coordinates art installations for various hospitals. Boston Children's Hospital would like to showcase a collection of my sculptural shoes and hats. I just mailed off the last set of 4 hats to accompany the 5 shoes and 1 hat I send a few weeks ago. I look forward to seeing what the installation looks like. There is nothing more gratifying than showing in a hospital.
Here are a few images of the pieces which will be in the installation.

Below: photo by Lori Paladino and garments by Colleen Quen. Hats came off of tapestries at an artist residency I had at the de Young Museum. The image below shows the tapestry the ginkgo leaf hats were a part of.
Below:
Fortune: mixed media tapestry created for de Young Museum Artist in Residence. The two floral/obi elements remove from the tapestry and are hats. The bottom left hat was sent for the Boston Children's show.
Photo: George R. Young

This piece is inspired by the intersecting histories of Japanese American Internment experiences, the Japanese Tea Garden of Golden Gate Park and the creation of the Fortune cookie.

Dimensions: 55" x 56" x 10"
Below: Plantation Tabi
Below: 1942 Shoe.

QR Codes continued

2011-07-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

I am doing more explorations on QR codes. I created this poster to place in public spaces in Alum Rock San Jose so that the public might know where to go to get more info on the student created banners which just were installed today. Below: poster in bus shelter in Alum Rock.Below: Starbucks in Alum Rock.Below: window in King section of Alum Rock Ave.
Below: window in sporting goods store in White/Manning section of Alum Rock.Below: My little helper and below that is an image of one of the 17 banners installed along Alum Rock Avenues, San Jose, CA.To see more pictures of the banners visit the project site: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/exhibit.html

Barcodes and Sites

2011-06-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago someone mentioned to me that you can create a weblinked barcode that is scanable by a mobile phone. I have created one at Mobile Barcode Link Generator and have pasted it here to see if it works.
This one below goes to my artist website. My husband tested it out with the free iPhone QR code reader app NeoReader : http://news.cnet.com/qr-code-readers-for-iphone and it worked fine. I would love to put QR codes on each of the Slot Shelter cards and have each QR code link to a webpage with info and video explaining the content behind the card design.

I am stewing on idea on how to integrate this technique into art installations that have both physical and web based components.

Below is a barcode I will be using in fliers for stores and telephone poles explaining a street banner project. This code links to the project site:

Along the same thread of thought on barcodes, a year ago I was exploring and found this site: http://www.barcode-plantage.com/index.htm which creates beautiful graphical displays about product manufacturing from info on barcode.

Teaching Sites for Presentations

2011-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

In March I spoke at SVcue (Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators) T3 Teach Through Technology. I presented on two topics: Claymation made Simple and Digital Textiles: Explorations into Geometry and Pattern. I have not put this links up on my site yet but thought I would post them here on the blog as links.

Slot Shelters

2011-06-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

Besides wrapping up two art projects with elementary schools, I am in the process of designing a collaborative student art project for next year. I have been stewing on this idea for a while as I was inspired to expand upon ideas and processes I developed in the You Are Here Banner Project. I will be working with artist Pantea Karimi. She will be teaching some of the lesson workshops in San Jose and Cupertino. Here is a very rough draft of a Prezi presentation on the project. I will be looking for grant funding for this project and hope to be working with several Silicon Valley elementary schools and schools abroad. We have interest from a school in Hawaii and one in Mumbai, India. We are also looking for a Scandinavian school to participate.

I will be building out shell of the site soon and fleshing out this Prezi. One image that I will be swapping out is the screen grab of the Google Sketch Up; this sketch up test does not accurately represent what the students will be doing. They will be building buildings, not leaning cards. They will be using unique textures they create and the results will be a patchwork of interesting surfaces and textures on their collaborative buildings.

Likewise, the large scale slot cards will different in the final product...they will be dramatically printed (by In Printz in Sunnyvale) with the student's photos and Repper Pro patterns.

I am looking forward to working with Pantea. She has already had the great idea of creating specific themes and categories for students to explore through their pattens and photos. It have been great to have another artist to brainstorm with and who can visualize the challenges and path of the project lessons.

The project will result in: student designed slot playing cards which are downloadable from the website, Google Sketch Up collaborative buildings, and large scale slot cards for public art installations.

I first began thinking of slot cards several years ago when I saw Todd Gilens' work with slot cards and then this past year in Sweden saw Totem cards by the Dutch company, Kidsonroof. I began to brew on this idea which really jumps off of the You Are Here Street Banner Project investigation of community in pattern and photography.

Microsoft 2011 Innovative Education Forum

2011-06-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

The Microsoft 2011 Innovative Education Forum showcases 100 of the nation's innovative education projects. I am excited to participate in July. The project I will be presenting is the You Are Here Street Banner Project. Here as some of the final collaborative banner designs create by the students:
http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/exploration-6-collaborate.html

Tracking Time!

2011-05-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

This month I am busy with projects in three school districts. I find myself driving from one end of the Peninsula to the other and am eating lunch in the car. Two of these projects are grant funded so I am looking to keep good track of time for future reference. I am also working on a grant project that entails envisioning and bringing to life a digital textile lab. For all of theses projects I need to keep very accurate track of my time and Keeptempo was recommended to me by my sister as she uses it in her multiple project tracking at Clif Bar. She really likes it.

I look forward to using this tool in the coming weeks and over the summer.

Montalvo Art Splash Installation

2011-04-14T23:54:00.001-07:00

Today I spent a few hours with installer Dan of Montalvo Arts Center putting up the Cureton Elementary student textile works. The student work is in the Artist Residency Knight Commons above. The wisteria is in full bloom and smells wonderful! I cannot wait for the students to see their fabrics hanging in this beautiful space. I will also have a video of the art running on the TV in the Residency Commons. The students will be teaching a workshop on radial pattern design on Saturday for the Art Splash Student Showcase. They will be conducting this workshop across from the residency in the new Creekside Studio space area. This is a special place to be situated as we will be enacting the space for the first time, basically initiating the space and area for much art programming to come in that spot.

90 Square Foot Apartment

2011-04-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

I saw this today and thought it was wonderful.

Spoonflower fabrics for Hawaii and San Jose Students

2011-04-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Many yards of fabric!

I was so excited to return from Sweden and see a big box from Spoonflower. In it were all the initial textile patterns of the Alum Rock, San Jose students and the Hawaii students in the You Are Here Street Banner Project. Some of the fabric will be cut into square and hemmed to create furoshiki wrapping cloths. I will be teaching the students how to use their custom fabrics as eco friendly carry bags. The Japanese Ministry of Environment has been promoting the tradition on their website: http://www.env.go.jp/en/focus/attach/060403-5.html

The remainder of the fabric will be used for an art installation at Montalvo Art Splash, a showcase of student art. The purchase of the fabric has been made possible by a MERIT mini grant from the Krause Center for Innovation. The project site for the You Are Here Street Banner is at this link: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/

Project Selvage Voting!

2011-03-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

Spoonflower's Project Selvage textile contest is under way. Vote here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters/new?contest_id=78

The winner will receive a design contract with Michael Miller Fabrics.

Scavanger Artists with a Message

2011-03-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I have received emails from my dad and a friend sharing with me several amazing artists who use repurposed materials. Artist and educator Victor Kobayashi was featured in the Hawaii Star Advertiser. He makes beautiful mosaic ceramic art incorporating found objects. His works are at the Koa Gallery in Honolulu. The Koa Gallery is honoring Kobayashi with the 2011 KOA Award, a lifetime achievement honor for dedication to the arts. The award is accompanied by an exhibition; Kobayashi's "New Alchemy, Zen & Art" is showing at the gallery through April 14.

The National Parks Traveler featured the work of Richard James who has collected discarded bottles along the shore at Point Reyes and had created a dramatic site specific installation with them. More images of these bottles are at Donald Kinney's blog.

Konsfack

2011-03-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I visited Konstfack , University College of Arts, Craft and Design. It is an amazing space. The school is in a converted Ericsson factory.Shibori exhibit at Konsfack. Video below:

Sweden visit: a workshop on Urban Tools

2011-03-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

I am in Sweden this week for a design workshop series titled Urban Tools at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Kungliga Konsthogskolan. In the presentation Artistic Strategies with the As Found, I shared my use of repurposed materials and collaborative art experiments in both my fine art and in my teaching. It is very exciting to be here and meet Mr. Arvind Gupta who is leading the workshops. He has a wonderful site called Toys from Trash which I have referred to in various projects. My father, a commercial toy designer with a childhood on Maui making toys from found materials also presented. Michael Dudley, a professor at the Royal Institute of Art, also gave a very interesting presentation, Papanek's Imperative, on Victor Papanek. The graduate students in this program have a week to create small scale solutions using found materials. Here is an excerpt from the course description:
This workshop has a two fold aim - to explore needs in the urban environment that could be enabled through a "middle scale" of tools or toys, while simultaneously investigating the "left-overs" in society that could be reused, re-evaluated or filled with new purposes. We will explore these possibilities by building of full-scale prototypes of models during the workshop week.

Explore and identify the present and new needs or functions in the Indian or Swedish urban context and propose small-scale urban solutions for them. Use only found materials to construct the full scale models of your ideas. Work in groups of two to four people.

Student work above. A little figure inflates when you place items in the recycling can.

It has been a very inspiring and educational visit for me so far. The other guest speakers have been fabulous. Mr. Gupta had such an engaging participatory presentation as did my dad and yesterday Alexander Kulanski's lecture, The Urban Playground, introduced us to his thought provoking work using site specific materials. He is work is in very public spaces, engages the public in innovative ways that invites us to reflect in different ways upon urban spaces.

Donor Circle for the Arts Pitch, Part 2

2011-02-25T20:49:00.000-08:00

Backstage at the Dragon Theater: Ms. Kim Mesa of the Alum Rock Education Foundation and Ms. Arlene U. Illa, 5th Grade teacher of Cureton Elementary in Alum Rock, San Jose, CA.

On Wednesday, I was a part of the Donor Circle for the Arts grant presentations for the final round of grant applicants for 2011. It was a very nerve racking and exciting privilege to be there among the other artists and arts groups. My digital textile banner project was the very last presentation of the night! Each grant proposal pitch was to be limited to three minutes. Kim Mesa, Arlene Illa and I practiced over an over in the lower lobby of Palo Alto's City Hall before we headed over to the Dragon Theater to join the other presenters. Here are photos I took back stage of Kim and Arlene waiting.

I think we did a pretty good job. We at least stuck to the three minutes which was a challenge and I was grateful to have them with me to share the You Are Here Banner Project vision.
For the grant pitch we wore scarps of fabrics from a past digital textile project and I had the dramatic prop of an 8 foot by 2.5 foot street banner. The Redevelopment Agency of San Jose loaned two banners to me for the presentation. I will be using them again in a presentation to the Alum Rock Village Business Association on Monday.

On Tuesday, I was lucky to meet Stephen Yeager who works for the city and he installs every single street banner in San Jose. That is over a 1,000 banners citywide! He told me that the banner program has been in place for 22 years and that there are only two neighborhoods that take advantage of banner funds set aside for the community business associations: Alum Rock and Japantown. I actually know the talented designer of the Japantown banners. She is Tamiko Rast of Rasteroids. On Tuesday, Steve Yeager took me on a tour of the storage rooms of the city banners. I was surprised to learn that they are stored in storage rooms built into the Market Street Garage in downtown San Jose. It was cool to see all the banners rolled up and store neatly in these facilities. I enjoyed the visual texture of the tight rolls of banners.

Project Selvage

2011-02-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

I just received an email notice that Spoonflower is teaming up with Michael Miller Fabrics to present Project Selvage, a competition in which the winner will go on to sign a contract with Michael Miller and produce a collection of fabrics to debut at the Fall Quilt Market in October 2011. The theme of this competition is baby boy prints. They are accepting entries from today through March 24th. On March 31st, they will announce the 75 finalists chosen by judges from Michael Miller and Spoonflower and you'll have a chance to vote for the designs that will go on to the final round.

Michael Miller Fabrics has nice contemporary designs, but the contest site does not reflect the artistry or sophistication and whimsy of their collections. It was kind of a turn off to see the goofy illustration on the project site. The project homepage would look a lot better without this image. At any rate, having conducted an online textile project last year, I am interested in seeing how this project goes. I think it may be a wonderful opportunity for artists to enter in the profession of textile design.

Amazing Flash portfolio

2011-02-23T07:39:00.000-08:00

I was blow away by this website. An amazingly elegant and simple brush stroke feel to it...it was created in 2006 using Flash....a great example of tools serving the idea and not the other way around!

http://www.jonathanyuen.com/main.html

Donor Circle for the Arts Pitch

2011-02-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

I am working on a 3 minute live grant pitch to the Donor Circle for the Art grant funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. I recorded a screen casting (using Camtasia) of my powerpoint run thorough. The final presentation will be more dynamic as there will be three of us talking and I will have props of fabric and other materials to share. Hopefully we can get a hold of an existing street banner to show, too.

The Awesome Foundation

2011-02-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

In my attempts to find ways to fund the street banner project in Alum Rock, San Jose, I have been lucky to get a lot of feedback on how to both approach "crowd funding" better and other online grant opportunities. A friend told me about the Awesome Foundation and with a name like that, how can you not check it out! I applied a few weeks ago and will see what happens.

I had an interview with a writer of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers a few weeks ago and they may be running a story after the 25th. I hope so as it could drive up visits to my Kickstarter: http://kck.st/fhbHwt

Next Wednesday I will be giving a second round grant pitch for the banner project to the Donor Circle for the Arts, a grant provided by funders of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. I will be presenting with two others: a teacher from Alum Rock and a representative of the Alum Rock Education Foundation. This is an unusual stage setting and only three minutes to present. I have a lot of work cut out to make an engaging presentation...we are the last presenters of the evening and I know the donors will be so exhausted from listening to all the presenters at that point.

Eye Writer....art with a purpose

2011-02-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

I was looking up the term "Pecha-Kucha" (reading about it in Presentation Zen) and found this video....blew my mind. It shows how technology coupled with the sheer passion, creativity and determination of a creative team can profoundly impact an individual's ability to communicate. I had to watch over and over. I love how the project enabled an individual to communicate creatively once again with the world. I have mixed feelings about graffiti, but really like this digital version in which anything can be the canvas, spectators can watch the art as it is created and the wall remains unmarked. Elegant and moving on so many levels.

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/210

Zach Lieberman is the artist who created the above Eye Writer presentation. Here is his website: http://thesystemis.com/

Here is another video about the project:

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

foundation to donate to for the project: http://notimpossiblefoundation.org/

Kickstarter, continued

2011-02-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Well, today I officially have 31 days left to my Kickstarter effort.
The You Are Here Street Banner Project http://kck.st/fhbHwt

I have also applied for four other grants to fund this project and won't know if anything has come through to fund this vision until March. I did learn yesterday that my application partnering with the Alum Rock Education Foundation passed the first round of the Donor Circle for The Arts Grant. This grant program is funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. We will be giving a 3 minute presentation on the project idea in a black box theater in Palo Alto on February 23rd.

Like all the education projects I become involved with, I am in a big learning curve!

Great environmental animations

2011-02-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

Here are a few environmental animations. I am beginning to research these for a project next year. I will be sharing these with students:

Sharing and learning technology tools

2011-02-02T19:43:00.001-08:00

Last week I gave a Google Calendar presentation and now know how to share my powerpoint online. It was a very step by step session. There is no audio here as it was an on site demo. I like it that you can view it full screen if you go to slideshare and click on the full screen button.

Google calendar presentation

View more presentations from Corinne Takara.

Digital Banner Textiles with Children

2011-02-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned before, I am crafting a workshop series that will introduce children to textile design and which will hopefully result in street banners in the spring of 2011. I am in the last month of a Kickstarter drive to raise funds for this project.
Students at a San Jose, California school and at a Hawaii school have participated in the lead in introductory components of the project.
I have set up a website for the You Are Here workshop series.
Here are samples of the student work:
Hawaii 4th grade student radial pattern explorations

and here:
San Jose 5th grade student radial pattern explorations

Sashiko Stitching continued...sashiko artist reaches out

2011-01-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

I love having a blog as sometimes people contact me through it who have really wonderful art to share. Sylvia Pippen of Sylvia Pipen Designs commented on an older posting on my exploration into sashiko stitching. I just looked at her website. Wow!! Her work is truly amazing and inspiring and I greatly appreciate her gift in taking an old tradition and giving it a modern twist through her own artistic perspective and techniques. I will be studying her site for a while and hope to take a workshop from her sometime.

Below: Quilt creations by Sylvia Pipen.

Furoshiki Security Check Series

2011-01-29T21:52:00.001-08:00

I am exploring creating furoshiki that reflects on modern airplane travel. Furoshiki are eco-friendly traditional Japanese cloth wraps from an era when traveling was simpler. I painted the objects with gauche and then scanned them. I wanted a hand drawn feel to the textiles patterns.
Click on above image to see it as a Spoonflower fabric.
The design features banned items such as scissors, needles, nail clippers, cigarette lighters, and oddly, snow globes.Below: the fabric wrapping a package as a furoshiki.

Below: A design showing bins at security check with shoes and other items in them on the way to the scanner. Click on image below to see it as a spoonflower fabric.

Human Flora

2010-12-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

In researching my next focus for textile patterns, I came across the Human Microbiome Project.

I have been reading how our human cells are outnumbered by bacterial cells in our bodies by 10 to 1. We are in essence scaffolding for a zoo of bacteria... such an interesting filter through which to examine our identity as organisms.

Here is an interesting Youtube video on the HMP project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfeNTQxxn0w

I enjoy following Australian artist, Jonathan McCabe's generative pattern work on both Flickr and Spoonflower, the most recent of which has a very cellular and bacterial reference.

I will be exploring creating a textile series, Human Flora, that reflects on various facets of our relationship with the organisms we host.

Of course, I knew that there would be art already out there exploring these themes. I especially liked this one using petri dishes and images of bacteria to form a human body: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbe ckett/3290581741 /in/photostream/Art installation: designed by Julia Lohmann with the help of Prof Michael Wilson and Dr Derren Ready, UCL Eastman Dental Institute, University College London. Photos by Lee Mauire.

And finally, here is an amazing image contest by the Wellcome Image Trust

San Jose Bans Plastic Bags!

2010-12-14T21:41:00.001-08:00

San Jose has today banned plastic carry out bags in grocery stores. The ban will take effect in 2012. I was surprised to read this development in a San Jose Mercury News Article. I have used plastic bags in my art and it amazed me a few years ago when I visited a local creek to collect trash for projects and saw many nests of plastic bags tangled in the water and surrounding bushes. This ban is a wonderful development for our community...no more of this urban tumbleweed! I will be nice to no longer see empty bags blow up against fences and drifting along the streets.

I have met an entrepreneur who is the son of a plastic bag manufacture. This son now has a business selling the eco friendly Japanese cloth wrappers called furoshiki through http://furoshiki.com/ His furoshiki are a lovely collection of local and Japanese designs.

Anyway, musing on plastic bags and am grateful that they will be a thing of the past. I do have a purse somewhere made of woven together Safeway plastic bags. It was made by a friend of my grandma in Hawaii. Such hobbies utilizing this waste will move onto other medium, I suppose.

At any rate, good news today on the plastic bag ban!

2010-12-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I just launched my Kickstarter project to raise funds for student created community street banners. Here is the link:
http://kck.st/fhbHwt

It seems that such crowd fundraising may be a good alternative to the traditional grant route. A few days ago the Wall Street Journal wrote an article, Tapping the Crowds for Funds, about this growing way of fundraising and the article mentioned Kickstarter.

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Kickstarter

2010-11-30T23:40:00.000-08:00

I have submitted my project idea to the funding site, Kickstarter. Once your idea is accepted, this site requires a video and a detailed description of the project. Here is what I have so far for my video. The student project site for the project is: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/

Get Your Project Funded

2010-11-28T21:47:00.000-08:00

In the Fall I was working with a group (Socks Inc.) who received public donations for their arts project through Kickstarter. I was intrigued by this site and went through the steps to submit a project idea. I am hoping to receive funding to conduct a collaborative art project with students resulting in street banners. The project is called "You Are Here" and I have created a site for the various steps of the workshops: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/

After submitting your basic idea to Kickstarter they review it and approve you to submit the full project idea. This entails creating a video to explain one's project. It is fascinating to review other people's ideas for projects and the diversity of styles for presenting one's project idea. This looks like a great alternative way to explore funding. I will be adding posts to this as I complete my submission to the site.

Pattern Generation Tool :Repper

2010-11-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine introduced me to the pattern generation tool, Repper, today. This is an amazing site that enables you to take photos and create patterns in a simple interface. I have used both Photoshop and SumoPaint to create repeat pattern tiles, but Repper seems to me to be the best tool to have students work with.

Project wins KCI Rambus Award in Innovation

2010-10-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

I was excited to learn last Friday that the Picking Strawberries on Gold Mountain workshop series won First Place in the KCI Rambus 2010 Innovation Award. I conducted this workshop series in four classes at two schools last spring. It is a wonderful honor to have the project celebrated in this way.

Pattern Repeat!

2010-10-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

I will be teaching a digital textile workshop in a few weeks and wanted to post a step by step on how to create a repeat pattern the old fashioned way.

STEPS:
1. Draw a design in the middle of your page. Be sure your drawing does not touch the edges of your paper!
2. Once you finish this drawing, cut the paper in quarters.
3. Move halves to opposite sides so outside edges are now facing eachother.

4. Move top two pieces to the bottom so now all outside edges are facing inward.5. Tape together (tape pieces together from the back).

6. Fill in the middle section with the rest of your pattern. You can see below that I filled in the new center (the former edges of the paper) with a leaf, more children, clouds and butterflies. Now I have a perfectly repeating pattern tile. 7. Here is the pattern below.8. On the computer, using either Photoshop or SumoPaint, you can use the Offset Filter to create this repeat pattern effect without having to cut your drawing at all.

Paint Chip Bats

2010-09-29T21:42:00.001-07:00

Above: Still from Sherwin Williams animated color chip ad.

I have long use paint chips to teach value and hue to students so when I saw the Sherwin-Williams Paint Chip animated paint chip ads I knew there was a great jumping off point for a lesson plan. Here are the two animations http://www.youtube.com/user/sherwinwilliams

In this Kinder lesson students will learn: to trace around shapes and cut out, will learn about value and hue, will make their own bat paint chip collages.

Materials: pencils, scissors three different hued paint chip swatches per child, glue, hole punch and string if you want to hang (If you hang, I would glue a button to bottom left corner to counter the weight of the tree branches on the other side).

Resources: The Sherwin Williams ads (link above) and Jeff Wilson's Paint Chip Collage 2, Arlington Public Library. http://www.flickr.com/photos/arlib/with/3409548593/Vocabulary: hue, value, collage

KQED features O1SJ Art & Technology Biennial

2010-09-20T21:21:00.001-07:00

KQED featured the 01SJ Biennial in their Gallery Crawl show.
The collaborative installation which Colleen Quen, Rick Lee and I created is displayed towards the end of the video. More on our Techstyle SoftWEAR: Surface & Shape installation is at my textile blog, TechFusionFabrics.

Self Portraits

2010-09-19T17:32:00.001-07:00

Above: Quick child's drawing without mirror.

Above and below: Careful pencil portrait study by six year old child with a mirror.

One of the most interesting and challenging art classes to teach is self portraits. We tend to get self conscious and want our creations to look just
like us. The key to loosening up people is to first have them draw a happy face or generic face in 30 seconds...then have them take their time creating their portrait with a mirror while using principals of facial proportions...these second drawings always end up much more expressive and capture better the essence of a face. The artist feels accomplishment at the end when assessing the difference between his/her first drawing and second drawing.

As an introduction to self portrait drawing, my lesson will visit the portrait works of Johannes Vermeer we will look at how he used light and shadow to define the face. Using the interactive whiteboard, we will overlay lines demonstrating principals of facial proportion.

Above: Johannes Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring. (from arteyfotografia.com)
overlaying principals of facial proportions.

Introduction to Johannes Vermeer:
We will visit the Essential Vermeer , a fabulous site with much information to explore as one rolls over the painting with the cursor. One can even listen to snippets of music from Vermeer's contemporaries at this site. There is also information on the theory that Vermeer used the camera obscura in the creations of his painting.Above: Camera obscura portrait. Observe the blurry lines, soft edges and strong darks. Do you think there is similarity with Veermer's softness of painting?

If we have time we will be looking at http://www.flong.com/projects/zoo/ as a site showing unique examples of contemporary digital portraiture and we will briefly discuss the use of value to create contours both in the digital art and works of Vermeer and van Eyck.

LESSON PLAN: PORTRAIT DRAWING

Step 1: Fold a piece of paper in half. Draw the simplest of faces, a happy face, in one half. Draw a quick portrait of yourself on the other half. (timed one minute) Compare the two. Is there a big difference?

Step 2. You will now create a more detailed portrait using a mirror for reference. But first, we need to think of composition: symmetrical or asymmetrical? Is your face peering at you as if through a window and we only see part of your face? Does your face fill the page? Or are you quietly sitting in the middle of the page?
Step 3: Draw lightly the egg shape of your face where you want it on the page.
Step 4: Lightly divide that egg shape in half horizontally. Your eyes will go on this half way line.(complete step by step lesson info will be posted here soon.)

Assessment:
Did the student's portrait use principals of facial proportions properly?
Did the student use a dynamic composition?
Did the student use proper hatching techniques?
Did the student pick a consistent light source for shading?

Students walk around tables and give critique of each other's work. Have them say what they find interesting about each portrait. Then have them address above assessment questions.

Extension Project: Simple Camera Obscura:

As an extension project, students can create these at home and observe for themselves how camera obscura images share the deep darks and soft lines of Vermeer's paintings.
Detailed instructions are here at Make It.
I stuck a digital still camera into the camera box to take the round photo portrait at beginning of posting. I will be bringing in my inelegant camera obscura to school for the kids to test out. I think the key to making it work well is to also drape viewer and much of camera box with a black cloth.

Above: tube with black paper on one end and wax paper on the other.

Above: Wax Paper covers one end of tube.Above: Black paper covers the other end. Punch a push pin in the middle of the black paper to create a tiny hole.

Box to stick tube in. I first wrapped tube in a paper cone and then stuck it in the box.

See below:
Below:The end of the tube with the push pin hole faces out the back.

Contrast, Pattern & Evolution

2010-09-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

MOTH PATTERN PRINTS
Overview: We will examine pattern, texture and value shifts in nature. We will look at two artists work and we will be creating mixed media rubbings of moths using lace, crayon and paper.

Elements of Art addressed: texture and value
Science component: VoiceThread observations of industrial melanism. This component addresses California 3rd grade Science, Life Sciences Standards 3.0.
Art History: Francisco de Goya and contemporary artist Robert Hague

Lead in:
Animals often have interesting textures and patterns. What role do these features have?
The black and patterned peppered moth populations changed drastically during the Industrial Revolution in England. Soot blackened the trees and killed the lichen growing on the trees. The new darkened environment set into motion changes in the number of patterned moths and the number of black moths. How? This is a classic example of industrial melanism, or genetic darkening of species in response to pollutants. I have posted a VoiceThread exercise for students. (link will be by invitation only once project begins).
Source images for moths: Olaf Leillinger, Wikimedia Commons.
Source image for bark: Chris Luczkow.

ARTIST INSPIRATION:
In each class we will be briefly exploring other artist's works. Here are two for this project:
Contemporary artist Robert Hague created these pieces below. They beautifully illustrate pattern and value shifts while both unveiling and hiding ghostly silhouettes. The lace patterns evoke the era of late 1880s's and the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

Francisco de Goya's uses texture and value contrast to create focal points, balance and tension in his political and allegorical images .

Credit: Francisco de la Goya, Donde hay ganas hay mana. National Galleries of Scotland

Credit: Francisco de la Goya, No llegan a tiempo. Arno Schmidt Reference Library
LESSON PLAN PROCEDURE:
Using crayons, coffee cup holder and lace scraps, students will create their own moth rubbings exploring texture and contrast.
1. Hand out texture boards (matt boards with lace or flattened coffee cup holders glued to them)
2. Students choose one colored crayon. Students place piece of paper over rubbing board.
3. Students peel crayon wrapper back half way and brush flat side of crayon over paper to create rubbing.
4. Students take another piece of paper and create a rubbing using same crayon but a different texture board.
One of these two rubbings should be darker than the other.
5. Students cut out a moth shape from one piece of paper.
6. Students cut out a factory or tree shape from the other piece of paper.
7. Students glue background rubbing (tree or factory shape) to a white piece of paper.
8. The moth shape is glued on top.
9. Students answer questions on VoiceThread as to which moth they would eat in frame A and frame B if they were a bird.

CLOSURE:
1. Is the moth visible in your collage? Why or why not?
2. How does value impact visibility of objects in the rubbings, in Goya work, in Hague's work?
3. How did the soot impact the visibility of moths on the trees?

Assessment Based on Objectives:
Did student create a piece including all components requested?
Did student successful record voice or written thoughts on VoiceThread?
Did student answer VoiceThread questions correctly?
Did student successfully create an image with value shifts strong enough to define the outline of the moth against the background?

Fish Mobile

2010-09-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

I am working on an introductory art project to conduct in K-3 classes. This mobile project can be scaled for various grades and it engages problem solving (identify balancing points for shapes and for resulting hanging form). It is inspired by Alexander Calder's work.
Elements of art addressed:
line white line sketch on black paper.
shape 2-D paper cut outs
3-D forms in space created by final assembled paper suspended shapes.
One could also discuss focal point created by a small colored shape and one can discuss negative space created by the spaces between the floating elements.
Artists to inspire: Calder and Matisse.
Good prep for future more elaborate projects such as a very inspiring High School collaborative kinetic art project on Edutopia
Materials: white pencil, black paper, colored paper scraps, scissors, push pins, beads, floral wire or pipe cleaners, pliers (optional), tape and heavy weight quilting thread (the mono filament pictured here I discovered was too difficult for K-3 to work with and pieces would not hang straight from it so don't us it).

Step 1: Sketch fish with white pencil on black paper.
Revision to lesson: student can draw a second fish in extra space on paper.

Step 2: Cut out shape of fish.
Revision to lesson: second fish is also cut out as above but does not go through step 3 and 4.
Step 3: Sketch dividing lines vertically through fish.
Step 4: Cut through dividing lines to create segments.
Step 5: Cut out smaller shapes: What does your fish eat? What is in its environment? What food chain is it a part of? (can use colored pieces of paper or cut from scraps)
Step 6: Poke holes into top of each fish piece and each piece you want to hang. The trick is to experiment and find out where the balancing point is. You can do this by pushing the push pin all the way through and then letting the piece pivot on the pin and see if the piece hangs in the balanced way you want it to.
Step 7: Lay out your fish pieces in order on a piece of paper. Be sure the tops are facing up. Take a piece of floral wire or pipe cleaner and make a kink in the wire at each spot you will tie the shape to. Also be sure to make a twisted loop towards the middle through which to attach the next hanging wire. Tape wire down on background paper Tie a short string (five inches) through each hole on the black shapes. Adjust string length and tie the loose end to each corresponding kink in the wire. Remove tape from wire.
Step 8: pass another wire through the center hanging loop. make a kink and then attach a bead a the far end of one end. Experiment on length of wire arm to see how the mobile changes.

FEEDBACK:
Quickly before I forget, here is some of feedback I got today. I am going to first post the negative and if I have time later will post the positive.

Student Feedback:
First Graders: "I didn't like having to cut up my fish." Two students felt this way. During the class one child was crying that she had to cut up her fish. I suggested that she could trace her fish and cut out only the second fish, but she was too upset to continue. In the wrap up, a boy suggested that the kids be able to suspend one fish that is cut up and one that is whole. Awesome suggestion!! I will make that an option for this workshop here on out.

Kinder: Lots of frustration with tying string knots. This was way out of their skill set range. One student decided to hole punched holes and strung his parts along the pipe cleaner. Seeing that great alternative, we switched mid lesson and had all the students do the same. It was much easier. We also did this modified construction in the First Grade class. (I will added the step by step images of this modified version soon.)

Second Graders: I was surprised that even in Second Grade many students had difficulty in tying a knot in thread (I have more experience teaching 4-5 and up, so this was eye opening). They enjoyed using the floral wire instead of the pipe cleaners. A few students offered to help other students needing help on various steps. I was so impressed.

Teacher feedback:
Have a detailed process board!I will be sure to have one by tomorrow.
Have students draw in the air fish shapes....model the form before they even put pencil to the black paper.
Have materials set up in one spot that is easily accessible to children returning the supplies.

My own observations:
In the Kinder class I handed out some materials too soon. ...beads make awesome rattles in cups! Best to wait and have students come and get their counter weight bead at the end of the project! The kinder teacher jumped in and used a simple small chalkboard to quickly sketch shapes of fish for the children. Loved it!

I had an hour in each class. The Kinders completed despite the mid course modification. About half of the Second Grade class completed in an hour and wished to continue on it next week. In the First Grade class I believe half completed their project. This was a challenging art exercise for the children. The next class will be a simpler project...watercolor studies of leaves.

Gaming Project

2010-08-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

I am working with the Euphrat Museum's Arts & Schools Program in designing a game board activity. This project will be conducted at a community fair and participants will be invited to go across the street and do an extension activity at the Euphart Museum (making dice).

I thought a big sign would help attract visitors to our table. A chess horse seemed a clear reference to gaming. Luckily for me, my dad was in town this past weekend and helped me on this sculptural sign...actually he kind of took over this creation and I am so thrilled with it! It certainly would not have looked this good if I did it all. I budgeted 3 hrs. The total hours ended up being 7 hrs. My children had so much fun getting inside it and hopping around.

Below is rough concept for the gameboard which the children will assemble. The gameboard will consist of two mat boards hinged together in the middle with tape. The edges of the board will be extended with tape. These edges will be hole punched and stung to make handles. I will be thinking next on guidelines for what the theme of the children invented games will be:
The Bridges Conference 2010 in Hungary had an interesting game artist exhibiting artists Olivier Perriquet & Lou Galopa's game board participatory art.
Below: My Fourth grader's sketch ideas for the large chess piece (the final one you can get inside as well) My first grader took a video of the creation of the cardboard horse in process. Here is the video above.Below: Her sketch ideas for the chess piece design.

Digital Textile Designs

2010-06-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

I am in full swing in designing the textiles for the fusionwear sv project. Here are a few of my designs. These will be printed on cotton, bamboo/cotton and silk. More info on these textile are at my fabric blog: http://techfusionfabrics.weebly.com/fabric-blog.html

Heinlenville Rediscovered Animations

2010-05-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

The stop motion animation history projects which I am conducting at two schools are starting to come together. I conceived this project about a past Chinatown in San Jose after reading an article in The San Jose Mercury News last year about an archeological dig of a Chinatown in the middle of Japantown. I did not know that there had been 6 Chinatowns in San Jose. I did not know that at one time the Chinese laborers made up 75% of agricultural labor in California, nor did I know that at one time, San Jose's Chinatown was the largest outside of San Francisco. It has been fun to explore this history with the students. Here is the project site: http://strawberriesongoldmountain.weebly.com/

Yesterday a 4/5 combo class at Stevens Creek Elementary spent 45 minutes in the computer lab experimenting with iMovies. They composed the still image sequences, added Chinese music recorded from Meyerholz Elementary and added their own voices. I am compiling their final movie in Premiere Elements. This test above does not have their narration yet and the image pacing will be adjusted a bit.

The 3rd grade class of Mrs. Weber at Stevens Creek composed their animation in iMovies as well. They are compiling their final animation in iMovies in the school computer lab.

At Cureton Elementary in Alum Rock, San Jose, we will be using the freeware animation tool MonkeyJam. Students will import their images and sound and compose their movies with this tool. I will be compiling their final animation in Premeire Elements.

fusionwear sv is LIVE!

2010-05-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

Last Monday (May 4th) an online public participatory art project I conceived with The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles launched. fusionwear sv is a project inviting the public to reflect on the visual identity of Silicon Valley and how that might be expressed in textile design. People upload image to a Flickr group to participate. One can submit either inspiration images or textile designs.

I worked with Rasteroids Design to design this online component of the project. They have been great and will also be designing a BLURB book and an ISSUU magazine for the project.

Thinking Outside The Box wins Best Fine Art Movie in California Student Media Festival!

2010-04-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

I was very excited to learn today that Thinking Outside the Box is a winner in the 44th Annual California Student Media Festival. It won the Elementary School Fine Arts category. There is only one winner in each category for the entire state of California. It is now eligible for the Grand Prize which is $1,000. 00; money which would be well used at Cureton Elementary in Alum Rock, San Jose.

You can see the movie here at SchoolTube. I am very proud of all the Fourth and Fifth Grade students at Cureton Elementary School who created this animation with me last spring and am very grateful to Ms. Arlene U. Illa for opening up her 4/5 combo classroom to so many sessions of my workshop animation project. It takes a great leap of faith for a teacher to gift his/her teaching time to an arts instructor and I take that gift of time seriously and try to put my best effort into creating useful curriculum in the time I have with the students.

More on the concept behind this animation on this posting and this one.

Reflections on local history in sashiko

2010-04-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

Above: study for sashiko textile reflecting on San Jose history and culture

Sashiko stitching has fascinated me since I was a child. I saw it on old plantation work clothes hanging in relatives closest, on patched quilts and on purses and on Christmas ornaments. I knew that the origins of this now decorative stitch was in practicality; its function stemmed from the need to repair and reinforce cotton and hemp work clothes.

I suspect that the Japanese agricultural workers in Santa Clara also used sashiko stitching in their work clothes. It will be interesting to research this. A few years back I learned that the current San Jose airport was once a cauliflower field. Japanese Americans were the primary laborers.

In 1940 a bond passed to fund the airport construction. In 1942 Executive Order 9066 let to the removal of Japanese Americans from Santa Clara County. After Internment, many San Jose Japanese Americans returned to Japantown. Today, San Jose's Japantown is the only California Japantown which returned to its exact prewar location.

In the digital sketch at the top of this posting, the bounding line between the blue and while background represents the this time of transition in 1940 and 1942. The circular shapes on the loop tracking back to the cauliflower represents the Japanese returning to San Jose to create a Japantown on its original location. I would like to create a sashiko piece reflecting this history. I took images of young cauliflower as reference for this a few years back and have been stewing on this project. Recreating in sashiko stitching the fractal like patterns of the plant would reflect on culture, the past agricultural economy and the technology industries which replaced it.

More of these thoughts are at my textile blog: http://techfusionfabrics.weebly.com/index.html

Arts Splash! Montalvo Arts Center

2010-04-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I participated in a student art festival at the Montalvo Arts Center. I had a drop in recycled art workshop station for children of all ages. Using recycled water bottle bottoms, cardboard, tea bag tags, food wrappers, produce netting, wire and an assortment of other recycled materials, people created nature related art pieces.

Above: project sample bookmark. Media: recycled cardboard, tea bag tag, Japanese comics and plastic sushi grass. A "L" shaped slit is made in the cardboard and the tea bag tag's string slips into it.

Above: Bookmarks created by children in the workshop. I had a wallpaper sample books that the visitors used. You can see elements of these wallpaper papers in the right hand bookmark.
Below: visitor create diatoms (water born algae with silica skeletons). I had sample images for each table of what these water born algae look like so that the children could draw inspiration from the elaborate silica skeletons of these creatures. I explained to them how such algae can bloom in abundance when our local creeks are clog with plastics.

Above and below: A child's creation with wire and produce netting. She patiently sat working on this creature for quite a while.We had one table station set up to be for wire work. I had many mini pliers set out and the children looked at pictures of locally endangered creatures as well as drew from their own imagination for inspiration.

Above: A child artist created this car made of water bottle bottoms. I like the green person made of produce netting!

Above: A student sketches ants as he designs the construction of his wire creature.

Above: The student displays his final creation.
Below: using a template, visitors created flowers from wallpaper sample books and leaves from recycled sushi grass.

Below: Foam packing sculptures created by Rainbow Art in Cupertino

Above: a sculpture created by Ann Weber. Her amazing works are of cardboard. Yesterday she had a workshop in which children could get creative with staplers and an unlimited supply of cardboard. A small warrior tests out his new armor and sword below.

Above: The few remaining scraps of cardboard remaining at the end of the day at Ann Weber's station. Children were still cobbling together wonderful creations up to the last moment.

My son and my daughter enjoyed the afternoon at Arts Splash with their dad as I worked. My son was on a speaking panel of student artists who discussed their creative process. He had a movie in the festival. It was very inspiring to see the beautiful student art, some of which was quiet large. Next year I hope to see some of the performance pieces for the festival. I enjoyed seeing proud students in matching T-shirts from their schools and arts organizations roam around.

2010-03-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

I visiting the Euphrat Museum at De Anza College today to drop off some items for an installation and to photograph images of my students' work to share with them. Today was the last day of workshop series I was conducting at Nimtiz Elementary in Sunnyvale, CA. The workshop series focused on exploring leadership skills through art. The goal was also to encouraging students to develop their personal visual and verbal vocabularies. I greatly enjoyed the children and hope to see them again next year in workshops.

Egyptian Headdress Craft at de Young Museum

2010-03-28T13:51:00.001-07:00

On Friday night I conducted an Egyptian Art Deco headdress activity at the de Young Museum for their closing Friday Night event for the King Tut exhibit. It was a blast. I had my children as my assistants. Here is a link to the PDF files if you want to print these out and try them out at home or in a class. These templates at a new textile blog site for my textile research. I haven't figured out how to embed Scribd files in Blogger and for the other blog I am using Weebly; it is easy to insert the files so you will find I have posted them there instead of here.

Anyway here are some images from the evening. It was so fun!! I will be adding more images soon.

Above: This woman was fabulous!
Below: My children were great models and assistants:

Below: This guy spent a long time perfecting his headdress. He and his friends were so dedicated to their creations that they sprawled out on the floor when there was no more room at the tables. I had printed 100 of each of the four designs and only had a small stack of maybe 30 afterward. I had also cut around 200 bands and we ran out around 7:40 (event ran close to 9:00 pm). We were able to get some white card stock paper and we cut those for the headband strips. (Thanks, intern, Alex!)

Below: This young artist was very creative.
She started to hole punch the gold paper and add the gold punched pieces as decorative elements to her design. Many visitors started to do this, too, after I shared with them what this artist had done.

Digital Textile Laser Cutting

2010-03-19T17:17:00.001-07:00

I have been doing online research in to digital laser cutting of fabrics. Ponoko can cut felt as well as other materials. And this blog, FABerzLOG has some images of really interesting textile work with laser cutting. Designer Elena Manferdini is a multifaceted designer featured in this blog.

Online Project Doucmentation and Outreach

2010-03-12T17:22:00.001-08:00

I am deep into planning out web documentation of two projects that I am embarking on and in the process I am leaning about various online tools to leverage.

Picking Strawberries on Gold Mountain is an elementary school history stop motion animation workshop series.

Cultural Tech-Fusion Fabrics will explore the ripples and echoes of immigrant cultures in Santa Clara through the canvas of ethnic textiles. The result of the research will be digital textile designs reinterpreting the blended visual vocabulary of Santa Clara County.

ONLINE TOOLS FOR DOCUMENTATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH:

Flickr is a perfect portal through which to document images and share images. It is perfect for me to location tag the streets on which I took photos of living textiles (what people are actually wearing). I will also be creating a Flickr Gallery (a collection of up to 18 images of other people's photos) and a Flickr Group (area people can join, comment and upload images all revolving around one theme.)
Weebly, an online web design tool, has enabled me to easily design and build these websites. I have been able to insert slide shows of my Flickr sets with tags relevant to each project. This is a very simple tool to use and since I don't know Dreamweaver, I am using this to build my sites.
ISSUU, wonderful online "magazine shop" One can print uploaded magazines for free. This is a good place to put up documentation for public sharing. Discussion forums and sharing features.
BLURB is another publishing site, but here one can upload and purchase one book or many. You can put your books up for sale to be sold to individuals online.
SPOONFLOWER: I will be using this site for some digital textile printing and to share my textile designs. People vote on textile competitions once a week here. I love the community feel they have built with their blog, competitions, Flickr site...I still have to explore all they offer.

I am sure I will be posting more online tools and sites as I move along in my projects. As both of the above projects have a public component, it is important that I research and absorb as much as I can now in the formative stages.

Rob Bell's Studio...Animation Stages

2010-03-08T23:32:00.001-08:00

I visited Rob Bell's Zomadic Studio again last week. It is always so inspiring to see what he is working on. When I arrived his computer die cutter was working on cutting out segments for an architectural game.

I felt like I was watching a dance performance as I observed the mechanical arm moved about cutting the wooden lace-like discs.

I was visiting Rob to commission him to create a portable animation stage for the stop motion claymation classes I will be teaching at Cureton Elementary in Alum Rock, San Jose and in Cupertino in the spring and possibly in the Tenderloin of S.F. at some point. I recently completed teaching animation classes (using iMovies) at Montalvo Arts Center and am preparing to teach similar animation classes across the South Bay. The stage I have made are quite worn (made of cardboard) and it would be great to have a sturdy foldable one that I can transport easily. Here are a few sketch ideas Rob created on the fly while we were brainstorming in his studio:

After we discussed my project I got to look around his studio a bit. I really enjoyed the detail on this piece below. He told me I could provide an Illustrator file and he could translate that into something his machine could reference to create such intricate etch cutting. I've been dreaming about such detailing on my stage ever since!

Below is an image of a few of his building toy "blocks". We discussed getting together to think of ways to create elementary/junior high projects that would integrate these components into core curriculum projects. More on this later.

I also met an artist, Chris Palmer at Rob's studio. He gave me the coolest fold up business card, which should not have surprised me as he is an origami artist. I loved the title on his card "Designer Geometer Ornamentalist Folder" His website is www.shadowfolds.com. His work takes my breath away. It really relates to the textile exploration I will be doing as he folds in fabric as well as paper. I'll be exploring his Flickr site more soon!

Working with At Risk Youth

2010-02-25T23:51:00.001-08:00

(above: sample student art project. This was inspired by collaboration artworks "Paintographs" by Abe Menor and Sean Boyles)
I am currently working with De Anza College's Euphrat Museum of Art in their Arts & Schools program. Much of their programming outreaches to Title One schools. The program strives to engage students in expressing their thoughts through visual arts. One of the goals is to invite the students to develop and value their unique individual visual and verbal vocabularies. The Euphrat also bring youth to the De Anza campus to encourage them to envision college as a goal. Abe Menor (a photographer/educator/activist) and Lydia Sanchez (visual artist/arts educator) are two artists with much experience working with at risk youth. Funded by a Donor Circle for the Arts Grant from The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, we are exploring effective ways to engage at risk youth. Our lesson planning draws upon the art in the current exhibit, In Between/ The Tension and Attraction of Difference.
I wrote the curriculum for the tie in programming for elementary and middle school students.
http://www.deanza.edu/euphrat/collaborations.html

A few weeks ago, Abe Menor consulted with Lydia and me at Cafe Trieste (San Jose not North Beach) to discuss tips and lesson planning. Both Abe and Lydia had very insightful suggestions.
Here is an article about the resulting workshop and the larger program it was a part of:
http://www.mercurynews.com/cupertino/ci_14500755

Below: Artists Abe Menor and Lydia Sanchez

A few notes from our meeting with Abe on working with At Risk Youth:

Engage students in an icebreaker activity first.
Gain trust. If the project asks the students to share challenging experiences, instructor opens up and shares a personal experience first.
Let them know from the start that no one is going to judge them on what they create.
Use the word "we" so that they do not feel alone.
Use a student "scribe" to write things on the board. If there is a disruptive student, give him/her this task. The student will gain attention (which he/she craves) but in a constructive way and will feel a bit of ownership of the presentation. This has worked for me lots of times, but, of course, not always.
Students demonstrate the process of an activity instead of instructor explaining process alone, that way students are engaged in project from first moment of its introduction.
If the activity engages writing, you can sometimes have them write on strips of paper (not directly on art just yet) tell the students not to worry about spelling. They can perfect the spelling later, just get the ideas down first.
Utilize energizing activities for them to do when they start to drift off. Lydia suggested "walk arounds" which she uses in her class. Students clean up desks and place their project on the tables and all students get up from their chairs and walk around the room quietly looking at other students' art. I tried this out with an animation camp I taught and it worked wonderfully. Great suggestion for any group of kids or adults!
If you have handouts, keep them short (This is my personal challenge). Limit the number of instructions per page. Consider placing steps of project onto different sheets of paper rather than putting everything on one page so as not to overwhelm.

We will be meeting with Abe again to learn more from his insight in a few weeks. Another component we may be looking at is how we integrate formal aspects of design (composition, color theory, visual rhythm, etc.) into the lessons. Abe also suggested having a big sheet of paper or board always there to write key phrases on. I have more notes I will add later to this posting.

I have just started to research a few resources on the web.
Here is one YouthArts Toolkit.
I also believe there should be volunteer training for programs in which college students work with at risk youth. Case Western Reserve has a program called Project Step-Up in which college students volunteer in schools K-12 and they are require to go through a training seminar before they enter the classroom.

And Community Works West is an organization to look to for working with youth and prisons. Abe Menor has much experience working with and designing programs for youth in the correctional programs of California prisons.

History Animation Curriculum

2010-01-22T23:05:00.000-08:00

I have begun to build a website for a social studies student animation. Fourth Grade students at Cureton Elementary will study archeological shards, remnants of a San Jose Chinatown that has been buried under a city bus yard for decades. They will create an animation that explores what they learn. Below is a Google Earth test animation of that illustrations the path from China to San Jose.

The website is here:
http://strawberriesongoldmountain.weebly.com/

Green Valentine

2010-01-21T21:44:00.001-08:00

Here is a Valentine centerpiece idea that uses recycled tea bags. A friend gave me a bunch of these tea pouches and I realized that they would make nice hearts for Valentine's Day. I used string covered floral wire for the stem.

The paper tea tags make cute butterflies:

Step 1: fold a tea bag cover in half.

Step 2: trace half a heart onto teabag cover.

Step 3: Cut out folded heart.

Here is one my daughter cut out. If you keep part of the sides and bottom intact, the two sides of the valentine will hold together and need no glue. The floral wire can slip through the sides of the heart and twist around the base of the heart to hold the heart in place.

Above: Valentine helper
Below: A bit of produce netting and a few floral leaves fill out the arrangement. The stems are taped to the bottom of the vase and a thin layer of rice is on top.

de Young Museum Workshop

2010-01-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

At the final Friday Night event of the King Tut exhibit at the de Young I will teaching a fun Egyptian crown and circlet craft activity. This event is March 26th. Here are a few rough sketches. Here are sketches of a headdress activity. Visitors will color in bold Egyptian inspired motifs that are Xeroxed onto cardstock. They then cut out and assemble an assortment of these and attach them to a headband and embellish with beads, and foils. The graphics will have a bit of a stylized Art Deco flair (I would create the different motifs in Il lustrator).

Art with Cardboard

2010-01-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

Being a mom and an aritst, I have spent a fair amount of time cutting up cardboard boxes to the specifications of the children around me. I have created many a village, ship, Japanese temple and Medieval castle. I was thrilled to find this site, Cardboardia. It is a fun site to explore and from the map section one can view past Cardbordia events that occured in Russia and Finland ...posted on Flickr.

Zero Waste Pattern Design

2010-01-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

In researching a grant I might apply for, I found a few interesting sites that focus on fashion and zero waste pattern drafting. The pattern pieces fit the whole piece of fabric without any waste of material. The resulting images of interlocking pattern pieces are beautiful and it is fascinating to see how they fit perfectly into rectangles of fabric. It is interesting to see these pieces take on three dimensional form as sewn garments. Precarious Design is by a New Zealand artist. The Outsapop blog has a posting on zero waste fashion that is really interesting.

The artist Timo Rissanen, Assistant Professor in Fashion Design and Sustainability at Parsons N.Y., has a useful and inspiring blog. In fact, it was through his blog that I found many of the other resources. Below is a sample of Mr. Rissanen's work.

It is interesting to note that the Japanese kimono is a zero waste garment. A traditional bolt of kimono fabric is a standard width. This width determines the width of the two back panels, the two front panels and width of the kimono sleeves; they are all the same width.

Below: Image of pattern from Precarious Design.

Shoe Designing Fun!

2010-01-03T21:52:00.001-08:00

For several months now I have been researching digital textile design tools online and kind of as side research found that Za zzle has a great custom shoe design section. This feature has been around since early 2008 and I was unaware of it. I had a Zazzle account for several years but had not been checking in on the latest features. Tonight I took two of my textile designs and applied them to two different women's shoes: Ked's and Converse. It took just a few hours (I could have done it much quicker but was noodling around with color schemes, stitching, etc.) Growing up in L.A. in the late 70's and early 80's when slip on Vans were very popular, I never imagined I'd be able to design my own slip on canvas shoes. Pretty incredible how technology creates such opportunities.

Zazzle has a fantastic preview section. I got sucked in playing around with the numerous options. Great intuitive interface design at this site. Here is a screen capture below. You can look at your shoe from all angles and even view a pair of shoes of your design.

Above: You can apply your custom textile to the exterior canvas surfaces of of the shoe.
Below: You can view your custom textile design on the flat pattern pieces. You can also download these pattern templates so that you can create seamless designs that wrap from one section of the shoe to another.

The Snap2Objects blog has a great listing on different custom shoe sites.
I have created many sculptural shoes of Asian food wrappers, so it is fun for me to begin to create real shoes that people can wear.

Below are a few examples of my sculptural shoes. These are made of wrappers and wire and so cannot be worn (I've been asked many times and wish I could say "Yes, slip them on!")
Below: Poison Ivy Pump. This piece was exhibited at an Arts and Embassies Exhibit in Brussels last year.

Plantation Tabi sculptural shoes created of Morinaga Candy boxes and my grandfather's photos, seaweed candy wrappers and WWII bombing leaflets.

1942 Shoe: this piece was in a Fuller Craft Museum exhibit last year.

Stop Motion Animation with iMovies

2009-12-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

Today my five year old daughter and I created a test animation in iMovies . I normally use Premier Elements for the stop motion animation classes I teach. But for the workshops I will be teaching in February I will be using MACs and need to use iMovies. My daughter and I created this test in 20 minutes. Pretty impressive interface on iMovies and the sound recording feature while viewing images sequencing is fabulous. I'm sold! I want a MAC again!

Click above arrow to play this simple animation. You can also see this animation at larger resolution at YouTube.

I need to familiarize myself with the sound editing tools in iMovies as I wasn't able to get the fade out function on the two sound audio tracks to work in the controls.