Arts Splash! Montalvo Arts Center

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.

San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Installation

A few months ago I participated in the San Jose SubZero Festival by creating a visitor participatory semi-permanent art installation (yes, a mouthful!). The three banners are now up on the exterior facade windows. These were created quickly in a month and a half and originally I designed them to be banners hung higher up, that is why they do not fit perfectly in the windows.

There are a lot of things I would do differently now, but it was a good learning experience. I would love to expand and refine the concept of this project next year for Earth Day. I think it would be stunning to have all the windows covered in strands of only the woven diatoms and plastic bottle bottoms with some solar led lights illumination. I have started to conduct Earth Day assemblies in schools and envision an extension project in which students create the diatoms to be strung and hung in the museum windows. I'll be brewing on this idea.

Two of the banners got tagged. I kind of like it. Bu the things that stands out to me most is that the banners do not fit neatly into the windows and there are not enough participatory diatoms attached. Many people walked away with their creations and did not add them to the banners.



































































Below: Details of the elements the visitors created. I love the colors and textures. Each of these represent a diatom, a unicellular organism found in water. The plastics are all recycled and collected from creek clean ups and from three different schools in Cupertino and San Jose.

Visitor Participatory Diatom Project

Here is my step-by-step board for the woven diatom visitor project at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles for the Sub Zero Festival tomorrow. There will be a second activity which is creating diatoms from plastic bottle bottoms. All materials were collected from creek clean ups and schools.













Today I will be prepping the plastic bags into strips for the weaving. I will also have print out images of diatoms for inspiration.

Final Water Banners

Today photographer George R. Young took photos of my Water Banners for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. He did an artful job lighting each piece so that they really sang visually. George Young had been a friend of my family since he was stationed in Maui while he was in the military (he was a special diver on a nuclear sub). This was when my father was in college. George has been a photographer for many decades and has weathered the transition from film photography to digital photography with agility. He has been photographing my art since I started created little wire insects. Now he just shakes his head when I tell him I have three pieces that are 8ft tall. He had to scoot his camera stand to the very back of his studio in Palo Alto and the torri gate stand just barely fit into frame.

The elegant stands were created by Rob Bell. He made two for me. I'd love a third, but cannot afford it right now. These were a big investment for me, but well worth it as I can easily break down and set these up and use them for gallery shows, dance and in other settings. I just love them. I love it, too, that he used all scrap wood that had been laying about his studio for years to build these. Way to repurpose!























Detail image below:























Each banner will be decorated with diatoms made by visitors to the Sub Zero Festival on June 5th. The inspiration for the color and designs were ariel views of waterways as well as Japanese textile patterns. On the orange tapestry is a large hat that will be removed and worn by dancer Christina Braun during the festival. The hat was inspired by diatoms, and Japanese dance and rain hats. Each tapestry had light up led elements.
The banners will be later installed on the facade of the museum. The stands I will keep for future art shows and dance collaborations.
Orange banner below:

Preschool Mother's Day Card Workshop

Today I conducted a workshop at my daughter's preschool. It was refreshing and fun to teach such young artists. I love watching their chubby little hands assembling the parts. All the pictures I took make me smile but I am only posting a few. The last time I taught at a preschool was way back when my son was in preschool and we did a paper making workshop. The kids had a blast with the water and sponges. Today was more sedate and the preschoolers made Mother's Day cards using a mixture recycled Asian food wrappers.




















Below: My daughter showing her creation. She came into this three year old class to help me do the workshop. She handed out materials and assisted. She has been attending my art workshops since she was two years old and perhaps she will retain some memory of the experiences. She is a good helper now and looks forward to handing stuff out and helping other children.














































Below: Materials such as chopstick sleeves, plastic sushi grass and Chinese food wrappers made up the flowers.



















Yesterday I was at a meeting of an Asian women artists group (AAWAA) up in San Francisco and I learned that quite a few had postponed their art for decades as they raised their children. It is difficult to pursue one's artistic visions while raising children. Being an artist can be quite a selfish pursuit and as a mom it is easy to feel frivolous and guilty pursing one's art. But I believe it is worthwhile to at least attempt to strike a balance being both an artist and a mom. I make chicken soup from scratch when my children are sick, cook every dinner and pick the children up from school and drive them to all their activities, but I am by no means successful in my balancing act! There are times when I know I am too absorbed in my work or feel I am dragging my kids to my various art teaching activities or drag them to some sort of scarp yard for materials. There are times when I am really tired and grumpy in the morning because I stayed up late working. Sometimes being an artist and a mom is a messy intertwined journey. I certainly felt that way this past year.

My father is a toy designer and my fondest memories are of the random and a bit crazy adventures we had related to his unique job. I hope my kids will feel the same about their childhood... that my passions enriched their lives and their perspective on the world. I want them grow never questioning the value of their own creativity and I want them to grow with the desire to give voice their inner thoughts. These were of gifts of my childhood. If I fail at my juggling act here, at least they will have good fodder to be writers and can weave fantastic, absurd and true tales about their crazy upbring! Ah, just reflections as Mother's Day approaches.























I like this child's card below. She received an extra petal and did her own thing. There is no such thing as wrong in art! It looks great.

Guadalupe River Clean Up, Collecting Materials for Banners

On the recommendation of the Friends of Guadalupe River Park and Gardens, I joined a Rotary Club creek clean up in San Jose at Taylor Bridge to collect materials for the visitor participator banners I will create for the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textiles at the SubZero event in June. I was amazed by how the garbage, mostly shreds of plastic grocery bags, mixed with plant fibers and created swirling nests clogging the water. In places where the creek was low, these nests dry and are frozen swaying in an invisible current.























































































Below: materials I collected from this creek clean up and from what students collected at a Walk-a-Thon at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino.

Obon Lanterns of Juice Cartons and Kadomatsu

I was just researching recycled art projects and came upon this Amsterdam artist, Anke Weiss. I first saw her work on this blog. http://projectfidgetyfingers.blogspot.com/2008/09/packaging-lights-by-anke-weiss.html Wow! Amazing work. I love how the pin pricks transform the cartons into beautiful unique art. So simple, clever and elegant.

Art below created by Anke Weiss














































Tonight I am brainstorming on high school craft projects for a Japanese Hawaiian themed workshop for a San Francisco high school's International Day in late April . I need to present three concepts. One of the ideas I am thinking of is a Japanese Obon lantern project (creating recycled carton art like the above, and dropping in battery powered tea lights). I like this idea because: 1. It is gender neutral, 2. uses recycled materials and 3. juice boxes have the same form as the Toro Nagashi Obon lanterns. 4. These look so cool. We would add a floating base and a modified roof element. Here is a nice video on the Obon Festival ritual adapted to Memorial Day in Hawaii.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FkxRCMAyLc


















Above, Toro Nagashi lanterns off Oahu and below in Japan.













My second project idea is the Kadomatsu. In Hawaii these are still made large and with real bamboo. In Japan, Kadomatsu in general are small, plastic and fit on top of the TV. These are a Japanese New Year decorations full of symbolism and like so many objects in ritual and celebration, evolved from a practical object: large sections of bamboo used to be filled with water and kept out side Japanese homes and were used to put out house fires.
http://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/12/01/features/garden.html

Here is an early sample I worked up for a young children's project on this theme. If I did this with teens I would really refine it significantly. I would also incorporate some of the more elaborate elements. The matsu (pine element) is not included in this prototype and the pine is really important. We would use real pine and make elegant cording knots and refined fans. Instead of green construction paper for the bamboo, we'd cover the paper tubes in manga and paint with a green wash so that some of the manga imagery would come through. My dad made lovely bases for a kadomatsu project at the de Young Museum and I still have quite a few left over.
young children workshop prototype























Below is the real thing in Japan. Note the plastic flowers.




















The third project idea is lahala weaving with manga, candy wrappers and plastic sushi grass. I'll make a prototype soon.