About this project
Collaborating with students at Cuerton Elementary in San Jose I wish to conduct a workshop series exploring community and identity through photography and digital pattern design. The synthesis of the project will be dramatic street banners hanging along Alum Rock Avenue reflecting student ideas on community. The project website will share the various steps of the project so that it can be replicated in other towns. http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/engage.html There are banner posts on the light poles in this part of San Jose but currently only two banners are displayed: salsa festival and holiday banners. I am hoping that with a process in place and a round of student created banners installed, a new tradition will emerge in which the street banners become a public canvas for the exploration of collaborative art projects extending to other groups and schools.
I believe that in order to appreciate our wider world and to have empathy for others across the globe, we must first have an anchored sense of self in our surroundings. Art is a powerful way to have students think about identity, visual vocabularies and the relationship between ourselves and the broader communities we are a part of. I want to share my growing knowledge of pattern design and digital freeware tools as a way to engage in this conversation with students. The resulting street banners will carry that conversation out into the community in a powerful way.
I am a working artist who loves to collaborate with children and believe passionately in the value of our unique imaginations. I am drawn to sharing my art in Alum Rock, an area on the edge of Silicon Valley, as it echoes a recent agricultural past just as my Hawaii Japanese plantation roots do. I believe that it is important to engage these students into using art technology tools as a way to expanding their computer literacy, for they have little exposure to the cyenergy of art and technology which drives Silicon Valley.
The money I raise here through Kickstarter will go directly towards digitally printing and installing the street banners, workshop development, purchasing single use cameras for students, ordering of CD’s and prints, fabric and fabric transfer paper to print studies. Any additional funds will go towards an artist reception for all participating students, T-shirts with student designs printed on them, extension workshops and talks. It would be wonderful to be able to purchase some of the digital fabrics for the students to keep themselves and display at their school.
This pledge campaign will end at the end of March 2011. I’m envisioning roughly two months of prep. The bulk of the project will begin in May and end in mid June with student collaborative banner presentations to the Alum Rock Village Business Association and to San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs. Banners will be printed and installed in July. The accompanying Blurb book will be completed in September as I will want to include photos of the installed banners in the book.
Thank you so much for reading this far and please keep in touch!
I'll be posting updates and photos frequently on the project website: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/engage.html
Please visit my artist site to get a feel for my past work and projects: http://www.okadadesign.com/ and here a site documenting the dipping of my toes into public participatory digital textile project last year: http://techfusionfabrics.weebly.com//
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31
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$1,526
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Funding Unsuccessful
This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on March 12, 2011.
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A great big Thank You and high five! Please share project site with others. Your name credited on project website and in Blurb book.
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Thank you for your generous support. In addition to all of the above, receive a 6" x 6" digital textile swatch from the project.
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Wow! Thank you! In addition to all of the above you will also receive a project photo postcard.
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This is no small sum. In addition to all of the above, receive the soft cover Blurb book documenting the project.
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Thank you for your faith in this project. In gratitude for your support you will receive the above and four additional digital textile swatches (for a total of five swatches).
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Thank you for your great faith in the vision of this project. Your generosity will be rewarded with a copy of the hardcover Blurb project book and eight digital textile swatches. You will also have special mention in the credits of the Blurb Book and project website.
Project By
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I blend precious fabrics, rice bags and simple discards such as food wrappers to bring to light the cascade of cultures people experience through the sharing of food, clothing, and tales. My sculptures explore the disassembling and reassembling of modern day artifacts. My works range greatly in size from large eight foot tall kimonos and butterflies for the main lobbies of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Clara and Boston Children's Hospital to small floral broaches and hats for fashion events. These pieces have shown in galleries across the country and are in private collections in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Paris.
My art aims to inspire reflection upon the reuse and recycling traditions of generations past, and to encourage viewers to celebrate the beauty in the creative reuse of materials. The intimate histories, legends and cultural metaphors in my work also inform viewers of histories often overlooked or under examined.
An early work, Jan Ken Pon Kimono, is the first piece in the Peabody Essex Museum’s Asian American Artist Collection. In 2009 and 2010, I embarked on a textile design project that engaged the online public (http://fusionwearsv.sjquiltmuseum.org/ )to reflect on the visual identity of Silicon Valley through pattern design. The resulting installation, TECHstlye SoftWEAR:Surface & Shape is documented on my research site: http://techfusionfabrics.weebly.com/index.html This project followed up my December 2008/January 2009 artist residency, Rhythms in Space, at the de Young Museum.
I have contributed much to the arts enrichment of Santa Clara and San Francisco through a range of exhibitions, public art installations, art lectures, workshops and assemblies for both schools and museums. Many of my workshops launch off of an examination of my family’s personal experiences of textile repurposing in Plantation Era Hawaii. The examination of the blending of cultures in Hawaii is a useful mirror through which children can examine the unique evolving and blending cultures of their communities.
In the past year I have been fortunate to have had projects supported by a NEA Access to Excellence Grant, an Applied Materials Excellence in Arts Grant and a Creative Connections James Irvine Foundation Grant.
