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.

Claymation Day Four

Here are 19 of the 29 animation sequences. I will be filming a few more at lunchtime tomorrow at Horace Cureton Elementary then again on Tuesday. Luckily I was able to borrow a second digital camera and camera stand from my friend, Melanie Woodard. She has been so generous with supplies for so many of my workshops. I have purchased a second camera, but it will take a while to ship so this worked out well. I also have been lucky to have great lights lent to me from De Anza College's Euphrat Museum's Arts In The Schools Program. I purchased various lights from Ikea in addition to the two lent from De Anza and the set up seems to be working fine. I have had to adjust the levels just a bit in Photoshop on a few animation sequences and I erased out fingers and blocks of clay in a few to make it appear that objects float. Some day it would be nice to have a longer workshop series at the school and lots of computers to show the kids how to do this image editing themselves.



BREATHER SEQUENCES
I am having the students brainstorm on breather sequences, or sequences to break up the monotony of the continuous box morphing. I am hoping to film two of these sequences on Tuesday.

SOUND RECORDING
I also hope to start the sound recording on Tuesday. This I will have to refine a bit as I need to have very short phrases or statements from each child to go with each animation and as you can see, the animations flash by fast. I think I will have to have lengthen the time lingered on one of their object morphs to get the animation to match the voice length.

INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL
I am hoping that we can enter the completed animation into the International Student Media Festival. It would be really wonderful for these student to feel a part of a larger creative community. I have asked the festival for a deadline extension, so we will see if we can enter. The deadline is May 30th and we need a bit more time to complete it and ship out the DVD. I would really love for the kids to be aware of these festivals and check out other student created movies and animations from other parts of the United States and from around the world. The exciting thing is if their movie gets selected as a finalist, it will be screened at the festival.

I noticed that this above uploaded animation in Flash is kind of blurry and that my previous Windows Media player ones were clearer, but some people were having problems viewing the Windows Media Player so I am hoping that the Flash above is more universally viewable.

Water Tapestry Banners

I have begun the first of the water tapestry banners for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.
Below: wire frame built upon a black foam core support.























The pattern is modified off of a Japanese kimono print and it reminded me of water undulating.
Each banner will be around 7ft x 3ft x 5" deep. Here is the first one started. I hope I don't run out of wire. This stuff is expensive now and I double it up by twisting it with a drill. I will be covering some areas with colored mesh donated by Walker Bag of San Francisco. Most of the detail elements of the diatoms will be created and added by visitors to the Sub Zero Festival. I will be creating some larger elements that light up and one will remove as a hat for the butoh dancer.

Mesh in process of being added. Note the blue painter's tape outline I am using. The tape enables me to transfer the design to the grid on the foam core for each particular banner. I then take the tape off and reapply the tape to create the next banner's mesh pattern. This way I can use the same foam core for all banners.























Below: Banner removed from black foam core and temporarily attached to T stand. The color is not as vibrant off of the foam core, but I am hoping when it is suspended in front of the tinted windows of the museum the mesh will appear as vibrant as it did on the foam core. I am hoping we can hang them a few inches away from the glass to highlight the airy nature of the grid. I also hope people don't mess with it! This is the first time I have created exterior public art and I just hope no one is tempted to test how flexible the wire is. I kind of wish these could hang above arm reach and then I wouldn't worry.























I am approaching this as both a design challenge (keep the and labor and material costs down as much as possible) and as a learning ground on how to outreach for a public art project in a very short period of time. I have started contacting four schools soliciting donations of colored grocery bags and I will provided them with info regarding the water exhibit at the museum, the Sub Zero Festival and the "impaired" status of our Coyote Creek and Guadalupe River. The cost of this project is really is in the labor of the banners and the materials prep. I am doing this project really for the experience of an outdoor public art display. I have only created interior public art before and this will be a good test for me.

Detail of prelim sketch on black foam core:























Below: Mesh donated by Walker Bag of San Francisco. I have been fortunate enough to have benefited from the generosity of several businesses in the past and have stored up on some pretty special materials that I have be able to use for public art.




















Some of this mesh was used at De Anza College for the construction fence around the site of the new Visual and Performing Arts Center.
http://www.deanza.edu/euphrat/collaborations.html


























Above: Diatom test for visitor participatory component of banners. Visitors will decorate these cut off bottoms of plastic bottles with permanent markers. They will decorate them to look like diatoms. I have a large collection of these plastic bottles collected from a Guadalupe River clean up last weekend and from a Walk-a-Thon from Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino. I have contacted a high school in Cupertino through its art department and they have agreed to collect plastic bags. I have also contacted an elementary school in Alum Rock and will be soon contacting a high school in Alum Rock regarding this project.