Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Mesh banner at Girl Power

Today at Girl Power, we added color and pattern to our hand-sewn mesh banner via spray paint. We're thinking about layers, about using the spray paint to add pattern using silhouettes from found objects. A vacant lot is a fantastic workplace!

This work will be accompanied by another more rugged banner - perhaps we're creating a backdrop for more 3D works to come. We're starting to think about our installation for Brick by Brick's end of the year exhibition on June 9!




Vizcaya's Gardens





Here some more images from last Friday's visit to Vizcaya.
Enjoy them!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Field Trip to Vizcaya!

We spent an unforgettable day during our "Pink-T-Shirt Invasion" at Vizcaya, where we were lucky enough to meet Ernesto Oroza, the artist who currently has an exhibit there as part of Vizcaya's Contemporary Art Program.









Vizcaya is undoubtedly one of Miami's most interesting locations, and we really enjoyed our visit there. The building is really interesting, as well as the contents of the mansion (we were only allowed to take pictures outside) and the gardens were totally amazing! Some of us walked the maze in the Maze Garden - it wasn't as easy at it looked!

Clay Projects at Mater Academy

We started out by creating our own clay brick factory. We mass-produced hundreds of tiny bricks, then used them to build our amazing projects.




Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Girl Power works on a mesh banner


Inspired by a construction cover for a building during renovation by Landscape Architect Ken Smith, the girls at Girl Power set to work transforming their own giant piece of mesh. Using found fabric flowers and thread, the mesh banner is a work in progress. Needlework skills are being picked up along the way.



Monday, April 4, 2011

Visit to the local library

We took a walk to the Hispanic Branch of the library to see the current exhibition there by artist Angela Valella, which includes large paper photographs and an overhead projection. We all wrote down some quick comments to offer as feedback for the artist. The comments are included below.





"At first I only saw images that I did not understand. However, the way you chose to arrange and express the images appears to have some sort of deeper meaning. I have always liked the emphasis in differences between light and dark, destruction and creation, life and death. The photos in black and white manage to do that in a way that seems unreal. 'Through destruction there can be creation.' That is the message produced and expressed through the images. Many of the people in the group appear to have different ways of interpreting this particular piece. However, they all seem to like it and I enjoyed it."

"One of the pictures that interests me was the one with Miami city, even though they are of Miami, but when I see this picture I see clouds but I also see a valley behind it, a place that was beautiful but still is becoming something else... but the history and beauty will live on no matter how it changes."

"I truly love that one picture that looks like a building in space. It's truly lovely. Another one I like is that one picture of Miami. The city looks covered in snow with dark clouds crowding the sky. I really like that one. If I could, I would love to hang it in my room and just stare at it forever."

"Construct, destruct, construct, destruct, construct, destruct, construct."

"Modern, Zoom, Focus, Editing, Original, Segmented, Effects, Stadium, Twilight, Neighborhood"

"Zoom, Focus, Photoshop, Editing, Nikon, Hipster, New, Tiles, Mechanical, Urban, Stars"

"Development, ruins, planets, access, time actual and fiction, layers of technological information, projections. What you are telling is very real and well-placed in this library."

"I love the overhead projection. It seems to fill in the blanks raised by the photographic images."

Altering Images at Mater



New work at Mater Academy. In the exercise below, we all used the same photograph as a starting point, and each of us created a different image from the same source.




Girl Power works on image isolations

We tore apart magazines on fashion, art and design and blacked or whited out all but one or two iconic images. This process of isolation forced us to see the photos of models, furniture and products as icons. The girls at Girl Power produced more than 150 of these icons in two days! Next step, to understand how billboards and posters on the street work on our imaginations. Stay tuned.