El Anatsui, artist

El Anatsui was born in Ghana and has been working in Nigeria for many years. His works made from recycled bottle tops and other metal pieces have been exhibited around the world. His large-scale curtain-like installations are the inspiration for our recycled bag works.

Soft sculpture

At Edison, inspired by works by African Artist El Anatsui, we started to make soft architectural shapes out of recycled plastic bags. By ironing them in between sheets of wax paper, the plastic fuses and becomes leather-like. Perfect for a giant curtain/room divider, and also for constructing messenger bags and tote bags! Much better than tossing these in the trash. 

Drawing in space

We began our projects at Little Haiti Cultural Center by using the art room and patio as our drawing paper. Tape lines criss cross the 3D space, from floors to walls to furniture. Loukreishia and Ryan really got into it!

Silk screen demonstration at LHCC

Marie Vickles of Little Haiti Cultural Center gave our group - and others! - a demonstration of silk screen printing. Brick by Brick participants will get to print on paper and fabric this spring. We'll transfer images printed on transparencies to the screen using photo emulsion exposed to light.

Edison HS group TAPE TILES

Mondays and Wednesdays after school, a group of students from Edison HS meet in Ms. Money's art room to participate in Brick by Brick with artist Michelle Weinberg. This was the result of our first meeting. We used tape to create linear designs on tiles. Stay tuned for some stop motion animations made with the tiles.

Celluloid Curtain at Girl Power

We finished our Celluloid Curtain, which looks great on the front door at Girl Power! We will be taking it down to exhibit it at the Little Haiti Cultural Center later this year, but in the meantime, everybody's loving it at GP.

 Students who worked on this project include: 
Ariel, Ayanna, Daeja, Janieca, Precious, Tiffany, Aundrea, Jutovie, Zaria,

Kassie, Sarah, AntTanika, Audrey, Nadracar, Jasmine, Aaliyah, Jai-Nysha

Girl Power Definitely on a Roll

Both groups at Girl Power have worked together on this project

Once the strips are finished, we started to assemble them as a celluloid curtain to exhibit at the entrance to Girl Power

It keeps growing...

and growing...

BXB IS HERE!

Our group at  Mater Academy.

We meet for the first time this past Thursday with BXB artist Nereida Garcia Ferraz.
Genesis, Darcey, Ireti, Natalie, Aiton, Maria, Ale, Aneulin, the Akinde sisters and more to come!

Everyone is ready to make sculptures in open areas, photograph, create videos,
make some cool drawings and color the air with the projects coming up.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Stay tune.

Brick x Brick Starts on a Roll at Girl Power

Our first project of the year started at Girl Power.  

This project is based on the work that we learned about from our instructor, 

artist Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez (Ms D).  

Ms D makes films by scratching on the filmstrip and coloring the images with Sharpies. 

Some of her films have cartoons and old TV commercials in them. 

After looking at her films, we got to work.

Our project also involves film, but instead of using regular movie film,
we are using something called microfilm.
These little rolls of film were used in libraries a long time ago
to watch "movies" in a special viewing machine
 .

The microfilms we are working on have scenes from famous operas on them.  

But we are changing them by drawing & writing on frames with scratching tools and markers.

Because our theme for this year is "Landmark" instead of making a movie with it, 

we are going to make a curtain and install it somewhere inside Girl Power as a Landmark.

But first, it will be on view at our final exhibition at Little Haiti Cultural Center.

Getting ready for Brick by Brick 2013

We're happy to report that BxB will return starting January 2013. We will be working at new sites in Little Haiti, in addition to happily re-uniting with our friends at Mater Academy in Little Havana and Girl Power in Liberty City. Be sure to visit our facebook page in the meantime and friend Brickby Brick.