Adding To Instructables

In unit 3 of my Rapid Prototyping course, we learned about life hacks, and how they can make someone’s life a lot easier. For FEs we went to the Sullivan Center building in downtown Chicago, where we made lamps from paper and LED lights. We also went to The Wasteshed, where we were able to buy materials for our projects. What was good is we also looked at safety rules when in a workshop, where there are many tools. This was to prepare us for our action project so we don’t get hurt. Leading me to the action project, we had to create anything we wanted using scraps we found and have it be something useful to the new GCE Building. My partner and I wanted to make a laser cutter, but due to time we couldn’t. Instead we decided to make a bike, guitar, and skateboard rack out of pallets that people threw away. This was really fun and very stressful to work on, mainly due to time. Please enjoy our creation and check out the Instructables page and maybe you can make your own guitar and bike racks!

NVA "Bike Rack" (2016) GCE Lab School

Our project was creating a bike rack for students/teachers to use and the guitar rack will be for our after school club, Music Makers. The Skateboard rack will also be used for students/teachers.

When we went to The Wasteshed and talked to Eleanor, she said “Our store gets things that society throws out, that actually are still useful.” Basically she said that we throw out so many things that we can still use but refuse to, and don’t think/realize what they could also be used for. It is kind of like one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. This relates to my project a lot, because we grabbed pallets that a company had lying out in the snow to throw away. We decided to take them and repurpose them. Even though we bought stuff at The Wasteshed, it still counts, because it was originally thrown away and reused.

For a reference/inspiration we used Wooden Pallet - Bike and Scooter Rack by Davinci2K1, this basically has the same concept, but my partner and I just made some personal adjustments.

My timelapse video was originally 6 minutes and 44 seconds but I used an app on my phone called Video Lapse, which will take your video and convert it to a timelapse. My video went from 6 minutes and 44 seconds to 1 minute and 47 seconds. To get the frame rate I would have to divide 404 seconds, which is 6 min and 44 sec in seconds and 107 seconds, which is 1 min and 47 sec in seconds, and that is 3.77, which is the frame rate. One thing thing that was disappointing about it was that it sped up the audio with it, so I went to Wevideo and silenced it and put a track that I personally made over it.

To take apart the pallet boards to get the planks of wood, my partner and I used a crowbar to take the pieces off, then we used a hammer to hammer out the nails, and the backside of a hammer to pull out the nails. All of this involves a lot of leverage, and having to use leverage to make pulling out all the objects a lot easier. We also used screwdrivers to put in screws after pulling out the nails. This process uses this concept called torque, which is leverage, but leverage that is applied to a circular motion. Something that could make it easier is having a longer handle, that will take away the heaviness of the object. Like holding a hammer from the bottom of the handle, rather than holding in the center.

In this project we used X-Acto knives and hammers, and a lot of power tools. All of them can cause safety problems, so it is very important to be careful when using any type of tool. When cutting, make sure to go slow and easy, this way it will protect you more. When using a hammer or any type of power tool, wear goggles to protect your eyes from something flying in there. For working in general, make sure you are very careful and aware, and if you are tired, maybe take a nap and then work. Making sure your health is in the highest state it can be in is most important for anything when working.

I had fun doing this project, and luckily because I followed all of these safety tips, I was able to finish coming out unharmed. I did learn a lot from this project, and here are five suggestions/tips to focus on when working on this for yourself:

1. Be awake, as this is a lot of work and there is a lot of cutting and hammering, so being awake and aware is very important.

2. Wear gloves if the pallets you use are raggedy, so you don’t get splinters.

3. If you use the the side of the crowbar that has a little curve to it, and hold on to the longer end, you have much more leverage.

4. Always wear goggles when using a power tool that is cutting something.

5. Sand down any wood to make sure that, when the racks are in use, no one gets a splinter.

Finally Overcoming The Wave

In unit 3 of my If These Could Talk course, we focused on the making of the mural that we planned during unit 2. In addition to the creation of the mural, we were also tasked with writing an artist statement and creating a short video to reflect on the experience. I enjoyed creating the mural and getting to see how beautiful it became. GCE is moving into a new building and this mural will be put in there, and something I didn’t like was with the new space, it required us to make a lot changes to our idea. Please enjoy watching the process of making this wonderful mural for my school!

NVA, BKJ, LL, MF, AG

Overcoming The Wave

29.33’ x 37.33’

Acrylic paint, spray paint, wheatpaste

This mural shows a big wave and the boat going against it, and the wave are regular schools in our society. The boat symbolizes our school and how we try to break the “norm” of the teaching style of today. In the mural we used acrylic and spray paint, and made our image on paper, that we wheat pasted onto the wall. In the mural we use all blue with different shades mainly to keep that ocean feel and make the boat pop with that gold color to it. Since this is in the front of the building where people will always see it, it keeps the message of GCE and how we are trying to break the “norm” of our school system today.

Working on this was difficult, we had a hard trouble with having time to go in and paint, because the new GCE building, that we are moving int0, was still in construction when having/needing to paint now and then. My role mainly in working with this mural was drawing out the image with BKJ, and making any revisions we needed to make to it. Then we found out that the construction being done in the new building was not to where we wanted, that our wall that we needed to paint on had to much stuff in front of it and we wouldn’t have time to move it. So we changed our plan, and instead of painting it straight on the wall we had to paint it on paper and then wheatpaste that. So my new role for a while, was holding up paper so my group could trace the image on the paper. Next to those roles, we also set roles for everyone before hand for each day. There was a documentor, an artist director, a mule, and a director of ops. Each role was different for each day. Then for painting was the man who had to replicate some of the foam part that our group member LL did, that missed a day and I had to do my best to replicate it. My favorite role was having to trace it and painting the foam, because I felt my group really trusted my artistic skills. My least favorite was being the mule, which is part of having to hold the paper while people traced, while also being a part of me having to do whatever someone told me to do. If I could change anything about this experience it would be to have more time, one to paint, and two to clear the junk that is blocking our wall.

Video Script:

If These Walls Could Talk is a course about murals. We defined the term, mural and examined how murals can change the spaces that the occupy. For the last project in the course, we created a mural to install in our new school building. I thought this was really fun. It started out very smoothly, because we came up with the idea of what the mural would be so quickly. Then we chose our materials so quickly and we all loved the idea. Then we came to the problem of finding out we would need to separate the image because the part that we could paint on was separated into four panels. Then we had to redesign it, to scale the image properly to go up on the wall. Next, because the space wasn’t cleaned in time, we found out we couldn’t paint straight on the wall and we would have to paint on paper and then wheatpaste that up onto the wall. This really frustrated our group, because the image wouldn’t work with the space as much as it could really have. We wanted the painting to go off the panels a little to create popping out effect, but we couldn’t do that anymore. I think our mural and the idea of it was great but the space not being available was a huge let down. Then another problem was that, when we had to change the process of how the mural would be put up, our group started to fight, because all our perspectives had changed when the way of putting up the mural changed.

If I could change anything, I think I would try to have people working in sync better, everyone was everywhere, because as I said before the way the mural would be put up onto the wall changed. Changing everyone's thought about it. For example one fight we had was how we should paint, one group member started painting first and was making all straight lines, and would fix someone’s lines if they weren’t straight. This was frustrating to BKJ and I, because water isn’t straight, but it was to late to change that due to time restrictions. Besides that I still had fun, I did really like the concept of our painting and the message it has. I think my group was wonderful. We all worked together very nicely, I couldn’t think of anyone I would want to take out of our group, and yes we did have some hiccups, but that comes with having to work in a group. I still think the image looks amazing, even though it’s not going to be straight on the wall. Thank you!

Life In Italian

In my second Italian class, we learned how to say directions, stuff we do everyday, and how to describe a person by there looks. For this project we had to create a video doing something, either making food that we made in class, describing your day or just describing a painting. I chose to do describing my day, because it was the most simple, but I liked that I could drawings of my day. Please enjoy learning about an average day for me, in Italian.