Day Three of Claymation

Today the students finished up their tween frames and eight students shot their animation sequences. Here are all of the animations filmed today. I will play with the speed a bit later but wanted to get the animation up so that the children could see it. Each sequence was roughly 16 frames. I will have two cameras on tripods and two stages tomorrow so that we can film twice as much in one day. (Thanks Melanie for lending my your digital camera and tripod!)


Here is the first group of three rotating through the roles of animator, director, and camera person. On Thursday I will be back at Horace Cureton to film more and will start the sound recording of the voices. I was looking at my project outline last night and realized that I was over ambitious in what we could accomplish in eight classes. In re evaluation I have decide to eliminate the set design component and the importing of the images into Premiere Elements. I will demo to them how I do this at the end of the classes, though.

The egg cartons are working out great.

Day Two of Animation Workshop

Before animation class today I stopped over at Olivera Egg Ranch to pickup donated egg cartons for the children's clay parts. I had contacted the egg ranch on Friday and they set aside 30 cartons for me. It was very conveient as they are just three miles away from the school. It was great to have these as they don't take up much room and the kids could set in the parts and see the sequencing from frame to frame.


















Above: Ms. Illa's clay parts for the transition of a cube to a snail to a star.

First we reviewed vocabulary and concepts from Class 1 and then it was time to hand out the clay. It took me a while to get all the start and end cubes set up for each child and the sequencing from one child to another documented but once they got started they were really focused and had fun. You just can't have a bad time with bright clay! They had a blast creating their little creatures and objects. They enjoyed using the pasta maker and the clay extruder tool I purchased specifically for their claymation. Tomorrow they will be completing their tween clay parts and hopefully some will begin filming.























Above: Pasta Maker. It will never see pasta. It will always be a dedicated clay tool.

Kite Handles for Wornick Jewish Day School Workshop

Above: kite handles

May is a busy month. I think many schools schedule their art programming towards the end of the year. I have a fun artist residency coming up on Wednesday atThe Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City. I will be conducting kite making workshops. There will be about a hundred students participating.











I made a hundred kite handles from cardboard cereal boxes, tea boxes, and cracker boxes. I could have bought plastic kite handles, but making them reflects the way kites are made in most of the world...with recycled objects.

Emily and I added bits of Asian food wrappers to each kite handle to pretty them up and to illustrate that we can use mundane artifacts from our daily lives to make things.

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.

Nectar Performance at Tenderloin National Forest Opening

Yesterday my family and I attended a portion of the all day celebrations at the Grand Opening of The Tenderloin National Forest. We enjoyed the hot bread made on the spot in the clay oven, the interesting video installations, vibrant murals and art all around. At the entrance Michael Swaine was stationed with his mobile sewing cart and he was sewing Tenderloin National Forest patches onto garments people brought. Every 15th of the month he is here with his mobile sewing machine.






















































































We especially enjoyed the butoh performance by dancer Christina Braun and musician Jeffery Scott Perry.























Christina Braun before her performance. I loved the green eye make up and her expression. She is wearing my small Sky Viewing Hat made of Asian food wrappers and Japanese ear cleaners.
Above photo taken by Shizue Seigel, an AAWAA artist friend of mine who is a photographer, writer and painter.
http://shizueseigel.com/Index.htm























Above: Christina begins her performance with fabric dramatically wrapped around her.























Above: Christina on the lawn area.























Above: I almost forgot to get out of the way here. Shizue documented this moment. I was so entranced that I only realized when her face was super close, that, "Oh, I got to move out of the way!" The picture below is the one I took right before I moved. She must have been thinking that she was going to have to hop over me!
























It was fun to see how the music and dance interacted in this improv piece. It was improv in the sense that they had not rehearsed it together at all, but had collaborated via email sending concept ideas and music files.

Below: Mr. Perry on his electric guitar.











































Mr. Perry's music was lovely with Christina's movements and the alley park vibrated and pulsated with the piece. Below: Curious residents peek out their window to listen and watch the performance.

















Above photo taken by Jennifer de Graaf, a landscape architect friend.
Below photo by Shizue Seigel














































Above: I got a chance to talk with Jeff Brown, one of the landscape architects responsible for the beautiful park. I only got to hear a little bit about the history of the site and its development. I know there is a wonderful long story behind it all. I also got a chance to talk with Rigo, the mosaic/painter artist responsible mosaic pathway. I heard him speak years ago at Fort Mason and it was really nice to just tell him how much I enjoy his work. Many of his murals grace San Francisco and are iconic landmarks.

Below: Christina and Scott after their performance.























More pictures of the event at my Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corinne_o/sets/72157617888260009/

Christina has named our collaborative work Nectar. Nectar's next project is at the Sub Zero Festival in San Jose on June 5th. One performance will be at 9pm and one at 10pm in front of The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. We'll be right next to the "Absolve Your Sins" dunk tank. Really. I am looking forward to seeing what that looks like. It is all an adventure and I am glad that quite a few friends and familiar faces were at The Tenderloin Opening.