Slot Shelters taking form

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

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

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

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

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

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

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