Kickstarter

What do you get when you mix meters of empty concrete walls, chalk drawings of animals, skateboarders, flowers, cars, and Michael Jackson; smashed floor tiles; hammers; cups made of the bottoms of sawed off water bottles; buckets of mortar; table knives and tongue depressors; and 25 kids ages 12-18?

"Ah, o que nós aprendemos foi que...a gente pode aprender qualquer coisas assim, fazendo as coisas. Como temos um monte de piso.  Pode, olha, tudo que a gente quiser a gente pode fazer. A gente pode ter o nosso sonho."

"Ah, what we learned was that ... we can learn many things as we are doing this. Like you have a stack of tiles. You can look, create whatever you want. You can have your dream."

 In 2009 and 2010 we traveled to the Pantanal region in Brazil and made broken tile mosaics with at-risk kids. We taught them the basics and then watched and helped as a fish, a horse, or a jaguar came to life on a wall.

"Eu pense que é super legal. A gente pegar desde o começo as coisas é criar, é bem legal."

 “I think it’s super cool. We start putting things together and things are created. It’s really cool.”

 We have often wondered what it is about mosaics that intrigues the kids so much that they will work incessantly on their pieces.

 “It’s a little hard to do, but it’s cool to do the mosaic. It’s like chess. It needs a lot of concentration. We need to be very calm because you never know if each tile will follow another tile. If you paste a piece wrong, everything is messed up. You have to take it off and do it again.”

So we took a camera and a voice recorder so that we could bring what we all learned about broken tiles and art, about the environment, about struggle, and about accomplishment.

 “I guess I think a lot more about the children who will come see the mosaics. Because adults will look and say, “Wow! That’s interesting.” But the kids, no, they say, “Wow! Cool! A bird!” And after that, like the child, the adults will look and say, “Wow! This is a work of art!”

The book starts with the words, “A mosaic starts with a place and a concept. A wall, a story to be told.” This book is the same. Right now we’re working on the pieces of design, editing, getting help with translations, tweaking photographs. We really appreciate your support in helping us tell the story of these kids, their place, and their art.