7/29/08

We spent all day today preparing for a community design meeting held at a local church this evening. Students have been working in two  groups to prepare mural designs along with power point presentations to present to residents of the maypole block. During class we made final edits to our presentations and rehearsed with each other. 

Community Design Meeting: This event was held at 6:30 at a Revival Fellowship Church.  Each group of students presented their projects by explaining different elements of their mural designs and how our community research process led them to include specific elements: words, photos, drawings, stencils, etc.  The presentations were followed by a reception where community members had the opportunity to give the students feedback on their designs. The event was very helpful for our design process and the students did an AMAZING job!!

7/23/08

Today were working on our group projects, designing pictures and putting photos together to share with the community on Tuesday. We are working in two groups of five to create drawings. We had some students from the neighborhood group gardening core come, so that we could explain a little bit about what it is we are doing in our program. 

-J

7/22/08

Today we are working on our presentations for the community meeting on next week. We are planning great pictures and ideas to share with the rest of the community. The reason for this presentation is to gain ideas and opinions from the maypole community about this mural design. In order to design this mural we think that it is very important that voices other than ours are heard. Yesterday we created flyers telling people in the community that our meeting will be held at Revival Fellowship Church on next Tuesday on the 26th at 6:30pm. stencils were also a big contribution in helping design these flyers that will be handed to the community later this afternoon.

-J

Week 3 Day 1

Yesterday we created flyers 2 hand out 2 people in the community, letting them kknow that we will be stopping by 2 visit and talk 2 them about what changes are being made 2 better the Maypole community. These flyers were 2 show the maypole community that positive changes can still be made 2 better the neighborhood. But in order 4 these great changes to be made, we have 2 work 2gether and put forth a lot of effort 2 make sure that these changes are made and not just discussed.

Overall, making a better Maypole has been fun. We’ve learned a lot of things, we can take with us in the future. For instance, knowing/learning about eh community History and how it has changed over a period of time. Also how music has influenced murals. We have learned what murals are, how they influence the community and how you can express what you’re feeling, and how the community influences the murals.

Week 2 Day 4

Today we worked with Neighborhood Youth Garden Corps to being the install of a paver patio. We dug the area out for the patio, leveled it, and then continued to lay a layer of gravel followed by a layer of sand. We leveled off the surface so that the pavers would be ready to be installed the next morning.
After our lunch break we met in small groups to discuss individual assignments for the weekend.

Week 2 Day 3

This morning we reflected and talked about yesterday’s mural tour. We then moved on to discuss with each student what interested him or her most about the mural design process and what role in the process that they wanted to take responsibility for.

In the afternoon we continued to work on our design by drawing and taking photos. We met with a community leader and elder to discuss the past and the future of the 26-2700 block of Maypole. This conversation gave students an idea of what the current issues in the neighborhood as well as a sense of history of the area and people. This discussion served as a way to ground and give context to the students’ ideas about the mural design.

Week 2 Day 2

We took a tour of Chicago’s South Side looking at a variety of murals; Stephen Saunders guided our tour, Mr. Saunders is a artist and resident of the South Side. We learned about the rich history of mural painting in Chicago including: origins, methods, styles, community interaction, identity, activism, advertising and much more.

Week 2 Day 1

Today we worked with Neighborhood Youth Garden Corps. (An Openlands group youth job training program that focuses is in landscaping.) We spent the day cleaning up the lot and spreading mulch on the lot. After working on the garden we gathered to discuss presentations to the community by looking at students work from the previous year. We then moved on to prepare questions to ask on tomorrow's south side mural tour.

Week one of the second year

Over the past week we have begun the process of designing a mural for the Maypole Garden Project. This project again involves high school age youth from Chicago who are enrolled in a vocational training class through Chicago Public School's Education to Careers Program.
We spent the first week of class looking through mural books, familiarizing ourselves with the history, methods, styles and approaches of mural painting. Spending time in the neighborhood was important to beginning our research process. Students took photographs of interesting elements in area, ranging from stained glass windows to residents of the neighborhood.
After collecting imagery from the neighborhood students worked to develop patterns, designs and ideas for the mural.
This week we generated questions to ask members of the community, which will help to inform our design process.

Christmas Tree

A Christmas tree has been put up and decorated by the residents of the 26-2700 blocks of Maypole. The tree looks great!

Saturday: Block Party

Saturday was the block party, we worked with the community to plant a raised bed garden. We installed the design board and portraits, we grilled, we hung out, we tied surveyors tape to the fence, we ate and made friends.

Friday: Installing Posts and Finishing Painting

Today we installed the posts to support the design board. Chris from Z Construction helped us pour the concrete after we dug the holes. After we finished with this more students from The School of the Art Institute worked with members of the community to clean the rest of the lot and weed the proposed site for the garden. After installing the posts we went to a studio to finish painting the background fot the design board, mount the portraits and designs as well as finish any prep work for install the next morning.

Day Twenty Two and Three: Finishing and Painting Designs

We wrapped up the course finalizing designs and transfering them to a 40"x20" board to be displayed on the site. The students did an amazing job visualizing their designs and transfering them into paint. The design boards will be used to present the students designs to the community and will be presented at a block party and BBQ.

Day Twenty One: Finishing Portraits, Display and Garden Design Work

We finished our portraits today, and let me say that they look great. We also really began cranking out our final designs, doing scale and color drawings of our plans. After lunch we all met to discuss the possibilities for designs and layouts of our presentation board that will be installed on the garden site. After reviewing several proposals for designs and layouts of our outdoor exibition and design presentation we discussed what designs we liked the most and then those who decided they wanted to participate in the design of the presentation picked up templates to layout the portrait and designs on as well add design and decorative elements to the template. As we wrapped up the day with design work we put it aside and as students left class we had them vote on the new designs that were developed in class to get a more clear understanding of what fashion the students wanted to see their work presented in. A few volenteers and teachers stayed beheind to wait for supplies for the presentation board as well as to begin painting the lettering for the board.

Day Twenty: Portrait Painting and Design Work

Today we continued our self portraits. We met in our 2 design teams during the day so that those who finished with their portraits could move along with design work and have a sense of the intentions of the overall group. The School of the Art Instistute students, volenteers and teachers began to discuss the plans for the display of the student work on the lot located at Northeast corner of California Ave. and Maypole Ave where the garden site will be.

Day Nineteen: Portrait Painting

We transfered our drawings from a pounced piece of tracing paper onto a piece of primed masonite this morning. After we transfered the defining elements of our drawings we traced over the charcoal lines with a watered down blue paint. We sat and talked about value and color and ways to mix paint for a short while and then we took off painting. The talent of the students was evident right away, everyone did an amazing job!

Day Eighteen: Portriat drawing, tracing and pouncing

Today we all got the basics down for our portraits, we used a scale and grid system to transfer draw our portraits on 15 inch square pieces of paper. After drawing out our portraits from our selected photo we laid tracing paper over the drawings and copied the defining lines of our portraits. We then used a pouncing tool to perforate these lines in preparation to transfer our outlines onto a primed piece of masonite to paint our portraits that will be displayed next to our garden designs on the proposed garden sit at California and Maypole.

Day Seventeen: Portrait photos and drawing excersize

Today we started the day off with a short artist presentation of my history as an artist. Directly after showing images of portrait work that I had done we moved straight into technical instruction on how to determine the proportions when drawing freehand. Until lunch we practiced what we learned about drawing faces. While we were practicing drawing students also took individuals aside and took several potraits of each of the students and teachers.
After lunch we had the kids break into new design teams by nominating group leaders and voting on those who were nominated. The nominated group leaders then picked their teamates. The next activity was a demonstration on how to use a grid and scale ruler to enlarge their portraits from the print outs of photos that we took that morning. The rest of the day we spent picking photos of ourselves to draw and laying out our grids to do our drawings.

Day Sixteen: Mulching

We spent today laying down mulch in the lot to keep the weeds down while the lot is in a transitional stage. During the process of putting mulch on the lot we traced out a possible path leading around the garden. By laying out the path it gave a much more clear visual sense of the space in the lot. While we were out working on the lot we we approached by a developer in the area who runs an iron works shop down the block and may be able to provide us with a fence. To see the way things come together when you are working on a project like this is quite amazing.

Day Fifteen: Visit to downtown

Today we spent the day downtown looking at all of the different types of parks and gardens. We walked through the vegetable and rose gardens, the prairie landscaping, Buckingham fountain in grant park. We visited Millennium park, the south garden of the Art Institute, Gallery 37 and the Chicago Architecture Gallery.