Project H!

I was fortunate to stumble upon Project H this Friday , a group of
designers who work with homeless women downtown on Skid Row
http://projecthdesign.org/about.html . They invited us to come to one
of their meetings. I am excited about the idea of working closely with
them because they focus on building marketable skills and developing
multi-purpose designs that respond to the needs of the groups they are
working with. They build hammock-handbags that the women sew in skill
building workshops and a lot of multi-purpose projects along these
lines. They work a lot with textiles and want to work more with youth
because they have discovered a lot of the products they make are youth
oriented (silk screen studio-fabric...I see a connection!).

DIY Silk Screen Initiative

With Sculptor Olga Koumoundorouros we have begun planning to build a portable silk-screening studio to be used for the exhibition on January, 23rd and 18th Street and then left at the homeless drop in centre we have been working with.

production studio group discussion

screenprinting

can you make this bite-sized so everyone in our community can enjoi too please?

an inspiration from the "Topographies" show curated by Karen Moss

Relief Low Tech

"Two bodies of water surround El Monte in my United States"

Our maps act as a document for the dialogue we have had with each person. We guide them through the process of articulating their past & future. We listen to their journeys, we ask questions and they ask questions. They express this is a new experience for them, to retrace their steps & reflect on their geographies. One said to me today, as he took a step back from his constellation of homes he has lived in, “I had no idea the distance between them”. He seemed impressed with himself, possibly this realization will stay with him. He might now have a new sense of time and space and connections, relationships? We discussed each point on the map & studied the other lines drawn.

Another quote from last week, describing his work, as if to survey the instant beauty, " Two bodies of water surround El Monte in my United States"

work in progress!

Inspirations

Top:
A lovely work titled 'Indian Country Today' by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. This painting, acrylic with collage of newspaper clippings, is what she calls " coyote sneak-up". "The wash is to indicate a complete makeover of a land formerly roamed and named by other inhabitants " She overlays the clippings with iconographic contours of the United States to draw in the viewer, coyote-like.
Bottom:
Contact Sheet of images from the book of personal geographies used in our group discussions with the youth. By Katharine Harmon, ' You Are Here: Personal Geographies & other Maps of the Imagination'

A great first day with our collaborators! These are my drawings from our "eyes off the page" activity, contour lines that have two restraints , can't take pick up your pencil & can't look at your paper ! Inevitably, everyone giggles..