Brick x Brick's end of the year festivities

Miami is such a spread out city, and our four community sites are each very busy, that it is a rare and fantastic event to get us all together in the same place at the same time! Marking the second year of Brick x Brick, we exhibited works made by students during the course of our program, and we thanked everyone for making the year a success. We had great sandwiches and watched the collaborative video produced by all four groups, "MIA In the House". Look for that video to be posted here on our blog soon! Wishing everyone a healthy and productive summer, we look forward to seeing you all again - and welcoming new faces - at Brick x Brick in 2010. Huge thanks go to Miami Art Museum for producing such a great program - and to our funders, Heckscher Foundation for Children and JP Morgan

Transferring our patterns to bold paint at the Barnyard

Using the overhead projector, our original patterns are enlarged, traced and then they become brilliant large paintings. Courtesy of Shari, Kenyan and Sean.

Enlarging images and painting LARGE at Little Havana

Shari's Wall

When Shari from Coconut Grove set out to transform this tagged-up wall in Liberty City, she went at it virtually, using Corel Painter Essentials along with a drawing pad. Shari managed to collaborate with the original artists who had tagged this wall by preserving the integrity of the original work, embellishing it with some color, and then adding a few digital effects.

Some other flat pack designs

We can experiment with our own designs for flat pack construction. Here are some ideas.

Recycling computer keyboards

Can't wait to put these to good use! Tiles with letters and symbols on them suggest all kinds of possibilities....



Thanks to Sylvia at the Barnyard in Coconut Grove - if anyone else wants to harvest their old keyboard keys, feel free to make a donation....

Some "Flat Pack" designs

by Daisy and Josue, Little Havana

www.JacksonPollock.org

An award winning interactive art-making website, inspired by a groundbreaking original artist!
Open the site and draw, using your mouse. As you hold down the mouse, the ink flow increases, move faster and it forms thin lines. Each click produces a new color.

Josue at Little Havana was impressed- his all-black composition is really creative!

Using color and pattern to design a facade

Beginning with a design by British architect Will Alsop for a "Flat Pack House for a Rural Guerrilla", groups in Little Havana and Coconut Grove envisioned surface designs for their versions of this structure.

Another project coming up

Recycling old computer keyboards from the Barnyard and harvesting the keys will give us a new mosaic tile material to glue and form into new objects, both functional and purely fun! Keep checking back here to see our progress...!

Skate Park takes shape

Kenyan, at the Barnyard in Coconut Grove, is on his way to mastering Sketchup. His skatepark is precision-designed, and so creative. A sculpture to ride on.

domes

We'll take a look at some ways to build dome by folding and pasting paper.

Digital Design at Barnyard

In Coconut Grove, Shari transforms the face of a wall in Liberty City using Corel Painter to paint over a photograph taken at Girl Power.


Kenyan continues to modify the skateboard park he has been designing in SketchUp.

Domino City in Development at Girl Power

The Domino City gets a colorful new look at Girl Power.





Let's start finishing up our domino buildings in time for our upcoming exhibition at the Haitian Cultural Center!

Highlights of our work with Mike Genovese

The sign collection is growing

Ritza, Chester and Catherine at Little Havana Institute came up with statements that they wanted to paint, and Mike Genovese provided step-by-step instructions and demonstration.


They did layout, measuring and lettering, and used spray paint, a Mahl stick for balance, and tempera paint.

Three newly trained sign painters!

Sign Painting with Mike

Mike's next project is painting signs with original words by the students. After describing the pencil guides for each letter like the "skeleton of the body", Mike shows Lisette how to gracefully stroke the brush in a downward motion for each letter, and then to add contrasting shadow lines to make the letters stand out. A little fluorescent spray paint underneath kicks it up a bit more. Let's see what sayings the rest of the groups come up with. We're already thinking about our end of year exhibition.

Signs are everywhere in cities, advertising stores and properties. We've done a lot of our own research on signs, and now we have the chance to make our own.

Coconut Grove adds their mark to the aluminum panels

Now artist Mike Genovese's collaborative project has put in an appearance at all four Brick x Brick sites. Here at the Barnyard, Merrill, Kenyan and Shari are engraving. They also learned how to transfer found images from magazines using a small perforating tool and dusting it with a pounce bag, a traditional sign painter's technique.