Plastic Bag Collection for Sub Zero Festival Project

I have begun collecting plastic bags and bottles from schools and a creek clean up. Above are some of the bags. I will cut these and link them into strips to create "yarn" for visitors to weave into diatom shapes.
This poster below went out the sculpture art classes at Lynnbrook High School in Cupertino. I will be visiting James Lick in East San Jose as well. I have been collecting from Stevens Creek Elementary and will also solicit from Horace Cureton in Alum Rock.























I know no one at James Lick, but will be contacting their art department to at least talk with them. I am curious to know more about their art program. It is such a busy time for schools right now. They are wrapping things up, there are tons of events going on and I expect I will be lucky to get a handful of bags from each school. Happily I just got a bunch of produce netting in the mail from The Wing Luke Museum. I also get a lot of this netting from mom friends and teachers at my son's school, Stevens Creek Elementary. I will be using this plastic in the banners, too.

Below: some of the plastic used on the base banner tapestries. Not a great shot and I have two here stacked as I need my building board for the third banner.
























I have been researching semi permanent installations and light festivals. I found this. I think the beauty of the installation is partly in the lovely old buildings:
http://www.valgusfestival.ee/eng/hansaflux.html

















I also found this and was pretty excited.
http://www.valgusfestival.ee/eng/virmalised.html









































The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textile activity for the Sub Zero Festival will also use plastic bottles. The visitor will be using only the bottoms of the plastic bottles, decorate them with colored permanent markers and attach them to the banners. Some of these plastic "diatoms" will light up with led lights I got at IKEA. I had hoped to purchase the solar powered led lights but they are completely sold out everywhere. I was surprised but I guess I shouldn't have been. They were well designed, simple and elegant. Below are the small battery powered led lights I purchased instead. I will just have to switch these on during the festival. I had really wanted solar powered led lights and will keep exploring that for future illuminated outdoor projects. This initial disappointment in not being able to get these led me to research light festivals and how others incorporte light into their semi permanent art.

Butoh Water Dance Concept

I was asked by a San Jose museum to brainstorm on ideas for a public participatory activity that tied into Bay Area water issues and textiles for the SUBZERO Festival in June.

I have been thinking of a project that would incorporate small amounts of local water into a very large dramatic outdoor hanging “tapestry”. The tapestry would be composed of hundreds of recycled snack sized clear ziplock bags folded and partially filled with water. Each bag would suspend from an earring hook that is pre-attached to a large metal grid. At night this hanging “tapestry” could be lit up really fantastically. The project would work like this:

1. Visitor receives a zip lock bag.

2. Visitor cuts out a water related shape (ie: fish) from recycled scraps of fabric. Maybe writes something about water conservation?

3. This small shape is placed into the bag.

4. Visitor partially fills bag from water provided (buckets will be there labeled with what the source was)

5. Bag is folded in half and hung from an earring hook on large outdoor vertical grid.

I thought it would be also interesting to create a dramatic garment composed of local water filled baggies (recycled baggies) that a butoh dancer wears and breaks as she moves to music concrete made up of sounds from water sources in the Bay Area. Maybe part of the garment would be plastic bags reclaimed from creek and Bay water clean ups.

Butoh dancer I am thinking of is Christina Braun. She is a choreographer/producer of SF Butoh LAB and Co-producer of BUTOH SanFrancisco's "80/08" Butoh Dance :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlux/246283848/in/set-72157594472240023/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlux/173103389/in/set-72157594472240023/

I envision the tapestry illuminated at night, but not at a high cost so I have been thinking of solar options. The dance performance I would like to be in the evening as well or at least at dusk.

Possible solar lighting options:
Solar Glowing Globes by Frontgate: $49.99 each (shifts through different colors)


















I really enjoy these round floating lights as they remind me of the old Japanese glass fishing floats so prized in Hawaii when my dad was growing up. After big storms these glass floats would sometimes wash ashore unbroken. I remember at my grandma's house on Maui there were a few of these precious finds nested away in the garage.

Solig Solar lights from IKEA $7.99 each. Man, good price!














I need to see how luminous these are at night and I need to find out if they are study enough to be among foot traffic during the festival days.

It would be great to have a combination of each type of light...