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

Barcodes and Sites

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

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

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

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!

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.