Sunday, March 29, 2009

BxB field trip!

We toured some varied neighborhoods in Miami, noting how the environment changed. In each location, we visited an art venue - ArtCenter/South Florida on Lincoln Road -


and then we went to Museo Vault in Wynwood where property owner David Lombardi gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of his museum-quality art storage facility. Artist Sheila Elias was on hand, and she gave us a really great talk on her works and process.

We ended up at Locust Projects, where BxB artist facilitator Michelle Weinberg's mural, HandPainted Warehouse is on view, and we saw an exhibition about mapping and recording neighborhoods - Subanageographica: transvirtual perspectives in a semi-tropical environment- by artists Paul Bartow and Richard Metzgar.


We documented our field visit with digital, film and video cameras - let's see what we can do with the raw shots and footage when we get back into the classroom. Thanks to Miami Art Museum's Kerry Keeler for a great lunch - and a bus ride!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Sheri's Transparent Building

Sheri in Coconut Grove created this 3-D animation using Sketchup.

Miami Nightscape

In Liberty City, Keisha created this beautiful scratchboard rendering of a view of Miami at night...



photo by Antoinette

The Domino City Expands



Domino neighborhood at Girl Power... (photo by Antoinette)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Artist Mike Genovese will work with BxB


Mike is a trained sign painter who uses some professional sign painting techniques in his work. He will do a project with Brick by Brick groups in April - but you might want to check out his website now to see what he's done in the past.

Mike's Website

His artwork is inspired by signs and lettering in everyday urban locations - and on everyday objects you see in the street!


Brick x Brick in the New York Times

A writer for the New York Times wrote about museums across the United States providing cool educational opportunities for students. She interviewed Terence Riley, Miami Art Museum's Director, and included a link to this blog in the article. You can read the whole article by clicking here. Needless to say, we're very proud. A great photo of the group at Girl Power in Liberty City is featured online.

Photo: Cindy Karp for The New York Times
Caption: In Miami, students tackle computer graphics, with Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez of the Miami Art Museum.

New Billboards in Liberty City

Cat & Zedrina


Little Havana gets a Little Facelift

Para que se vea mas linda....

Lulu & Ritza


Chester

Paul

Changing the Face of Overtown

Breann


Ashley

Monday, March 23, 2009

Moon Store Sign Edit by: Lissette C



Hello, I am Lissette, and this is a sign from Moon's Corner Store that I have edited to my liking. The picture was taken by one of the clubhouse members during our walk through Overtown.

Here is a little background information about this piece.

The little person in this piece was made by me on MS Paint without using a doll base. In other words it was made entirely by scratch.

I used Adobe Photoshop to edit and alter this sign.
I used one brush from The-Bulldozer at DeviantArt.

By watching a lot of anime (Japanese animation) and reading a lot of manga (Japanese comics), that inspired me to use the pharse, "Who are you" into this piece. What I mean by that pharse is, who are we really? Who are we on the inside, but most of all who are we as a human being.

This sign leads me to wonder, who am I? I already know the answer to that question though, and I am a graphic designer.

Karla Turcios visits BxB


Visual artist Karla Turcios working with students at Barnyard in Coconut Grove. Karla taught us how to do mask layers in Photoshop to insert our own images into photographs that we have taken during our walkaround shooting trips. With Karla's help, we've been doing "virtual tagging" of local walls in our neighborhoods.

It was great to work with a cool local artist who went to high school right here in Miami!

Karla's work is all about transformation, preservation and appropriation of imagery from urban landscapes. The way that she looks at cities, and the things that she preserves from them are way cool. Karla takes pictures of hand-painted signs from buildings in urban neighborhoods and re-inserts them into other urban landscapes in those same cities - especially in cases where the original imagery comes from a building that is destined for demolition, or where the buildings have been sold and the hand-painted signs on their walls will be done away with. In this way, she is helping to preserve the visual and cultural legacy of the city's neighborhoods. Karla has done this in several cities including Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Charlotte, Tegucigalpa (Honduras) and here in Miami.

Virtual Tagging

Deon transformed a typical street scene in Overtown




Sheri leaves her mark on a building in Coconut Grove

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

From photo to pattern to - swimming pool!

Ashley from Girl Power used her photo as a tile for a fantasy she calls Swirl Mania.

She designed this using SketchUp.



Tuesday, March 3, 2009

BxB Guest Artist Karla Turcios

Karla does very cool visual art work that has to do with the transformation of cities and urban landscapes. Below is the invitation for the exhibition she recently opened at a gallery in the Wynwood Arts District. Karla will be visiting the Brick x Brick sites from March 16-20 and will help us do some transformation of urban landscapes in our neighborhoods using Photoshop and Corel Painter. Don't miss this opportunity to work with a very cool artist! Click here to visit Karla's site

The Domino City

This is a collaborative project that we are all doing together: building a city from dominoes. In the end, we will use our model city in some video and animation work.