And a New Year Begins for Brick x Brick

Happy New Year to everyone. And a big welcome to students at Mater Academy in Little Havana and Girl Power in Liberty City. Girl Power has been with us since the beginning. Now, in the third year of Brick x Brick, we are planning many new projects to raise our awareness of the urban environment right here in our own Miami neighborhoods. We plan to use digital technology and to creatively re-use recyclable materials to make art and design together.




Brick x Brick artists Michelle Weinberg and Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez are once again joined by Mike Genovese. We'd also like to welcome artist Nereida Garcia-Ferraz to the team.

Please check this blog each week to see our progress - and leave us comments! We'd love some feedback!

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.