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.

King Me!

In unit 2 of Rapid Prototyping, we learned all about 3D printers and what different kinds there are. We also looked at Riemann Sums and impossible objects, and how those can relate to 3D printers. For an FE we went VisMed3D, which makes body parts out of 3D printers for people. For our action project we had to create three 3D models of a chess piece with a partner. My partner and I chose the king piece, and with that we had to create it out of clay, using 123D Make program, and with a 3D printer. The reason that it looks different was that we had to follow the pattern that each piece is made from the top part that everyone identifies with each piece; like a pawn will be all circles, so our piece is all crosses. What I liked about this project was getting to see a 3D printer print something my partner and I personally made. Something I didn't like about this project, was really having to make all these models in a week, because we had some tech issues. Please enjoy the King Piece we made!!

Overcoming The Wave

In unit 2 of If These Could Talk we looked at murals from 1910-until the present. We focused the Mexican Mural Movement and how art was used a weapon. We also looked at graffiti and how it became popular, and the importance of art being illegal, especially when it is meant to start a revolution. We went to Pilsen, a neighborhood in Chicago, on a FE, and how each mural has a message. For the action project we got in groups of 5 people and we took the images we created for the first Action Project to create a sketch that incorporates each of our ideas. I enjoyed experimenting with different types of paints and seeing which would work best in conveying the message of the group sketch. It was challenging having to make change our original design to make it even more simple, but carry the same message. Please enjoy LL, BKJ, AG, MF’s and my artwork!

                                                                                                                          

NVA, AG, MF, BKJ, LL
Overcoming the Wave
December, 2015
11” x 4” and 11” x 4.5”
Acrylic Painting/ Spray Paint

NVA, BKJ, AG, LL, MF "Overcoming the wave sketch" (2015) GCE Lab School 

The sketch that we created shows a wave coming up and a boat caught in the middle of the wave. The wave is symbolizing the traditional school system and its approach at education, and how they are all the same with using standardized testing and the way they break down learning. The boat that is going toward the wave symbolizes our school and how we are changing what is seen as the “norm” for our educational system. This concept of our sketch is considered revolt art. Our school is really trying to break the norm of our system that we have created. This is also a tribute mural to our school, because we create this mural to recognize the changes we are trying to make. This sketch was inspired from murals we looked at in unit 1 and 2, from the concept of using our peers different styles and mixing them. Also we looked at acrylic murals in unit 2 a lot and wanted to use that in our own piece. This is much different than our last sketch, we changed it because our teacher wanted us to have the same message but have less in it, to make it more simplistic.

NVA "Acrylic Paint Swatches" (2015) GCE Lab School 

In our group, we divided the sketch into five sections and each person chose two sections to use in creating a material swatch. I chose acrylic paint, because my group wanted to use many different acrylic mediums, and wanted to see how it would look without external mediums changing the style. I chose to use the paint as is, skipping the addition of acrylic media to show my group what the paint would look like on its own. I like the challenge of turning little into more and greater. It was also very simple to use,because I had nothing to add to the paint, making it very easy to handle and manipulate. I thought the resulting image was cool, because it has this simple and old artistic style to it. I think the way I used the colors and moved them up and around, made the wave look very powerful, and in a very simple way. When talking about colors, my group looked at many different wave painting and in one we saw that they stuck to using different shades of blue to keep that ocean feel, and that is what we wanted to do. I used the white when the wave is building and then building again, because water when moving and splashing within itself, it makes a white-ish blue color. We do plan to use this in final painting. my group liked the blue sky, and its color, because we didn’t want the sky to stand out, but more settle in, so it won’t look bad.

The resulting image of my swatches came out very detailed, colorful, and really how I wanted them to come out. Also the depth of it was very nice, because it had this feel to it, of the wave really coming up and showing it is going to be real and powerful. This was something I really wanted to see, while painting. I thought the medium was very easy to work with, it was very easy to control. All I had to do was work with my color choices which was fun, and it was cool to see how nice they came out. Also how really simple of a process it took to get such a nice and clean looking image; that still has depth to it, being able to use the colors to create depth is very thing to learn.

In the end, we will use acrylic paint (without additional medium) to create the sky, and the coarse pumice gel to create the foam at the top of the wave. Then the water and inside of the wave we use soft gel, which is something that creates a glossy look for water to pop out. For the boat and people we used spray paint, because we wanted a really clean and crisp look to that part so it can stand out very nicely.

NVA, BKJ, AG, LL, MF "Overcomign the wave( swatches put together)" (2015) GCE Lab School 

Spelling: Machine vs. Man

In unit 1 of my new class, Rapid Prototyping, we learned about vertices, traversable objects, shapes, and shapes’ interior angles. We also looked at different cutting machines and how they work, such as laser cutters, water cutters and blade cutters. Leading me to the action project, we received two different letters, either lower or upper case, and we had to cut those out from any material we chose, by hand and then with a blade cutter. The purpose of doing it both by hand and with a machine is to show the pluses and deltas in using a machine cutter. The letters I have are an uppercase “H” and a lowercase “v”. The purpose of doing it is that we are moving to a new location as a school, and everyone making these letters will help with signs that we might want to create for the new location. What I like about doing this is that we get to make the letters however we like, in whatever format, so people could have done them in cursive or even another language. 

          

Calling Lincoln Park

In unit 1 of If These Walls Could Talk, we looked at the history or murals, from Prehistory up until the Renaissance. We also looked at the visual styles of different murals, and how to classify murals based on its purpose. For the Action Project, we had picked a neighborhood in Chicago, and created a sketch for a mural that addresses a problem that neighborhood. To explain the image, we wrote an artist statement that clearly explains how the image addresses the problem we identified. The neighborhood I chose was Lincoln Park, and I believe that there is a lack of community in that neighborhood. The purpose of this was to learn about how murals are used and what they can do. Also since we are moving to a new space as a school, this is to help get an idea of how to make a mural for a new location. Please enjoy my art piece and artist statement!


NVA
“Calling Lincoln Park”
11-15-15
11’’ x 14’

Drawing

During the 1850s, Lincoln Park was home to many German truck farmers, helping Lincoln Park to earn the name “Cabbage Patch”. It was also home to many industrial workers, who worked in the neighborhood. The Germans started creating the community, but after the Great Chicago Fire, many Germans left and other ethnic groups began to move into the neighborhood, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans; moved into Lincoln Park for the cheap housing built after the fire. But how did a lack of community become a problem if the neighborhood was called home by so many different cultures? Well, the Great Depression the people of Old Town (Southeastern part of Lincoln Park) were worried it was becoming a slum. From housing stock deteriorating as the owners subsided and neglected their properties. So they formed The Old Town Triangle Association in 1948, which inspired the north side of Lincoln Park to form the Lincoln Park Conservation Association in 1954. Then in 1956, the neighborhood was designated as a conservation area. Then, because of the General Renewal Plan that was enforced in Lincoln Park, groups of people, like the Puerto Rican and African - Americans were bought out and forced to move. Then the property value increased drastically, forcing out the poor to make room for the wealthy. Making it, by the early 2000s, one of the neighborhoods with the highest status. 

Today, after a long history of culture and economic changes, Lincoln Park has lost its sense of community despite efforts to help its residents connect with each other. I would say it it isn’t working just because of technology as well, because it adds to the disconnection people build by themselves. I hope to draw attention to this problem through the mural I am proposing. 

In the sketch I drew a-over-the-shoulder view of a man looking at his phone, and on the screen it says, “Take off the headphones”. The headphones symbolize the reason there is a lack of community.Spending time in Lincoln Park and observing the people in the neighborhood, I saw many people with their headphones on and no one looked nor talked to each other. I was inspired by the use of realism, developed during the Renaissance. I chose to use realism as a visual technique because the scene I created is a real one; people in real life are always on their phones. I used a muted and dull color palette to show how boring the community has gotten because of the lack of community. I’ve created this image as a revolt to address the need to put your headphones in and ignore everything around you. 

This is a mural that I’d want to be put in the park or by the lake, these areas are where the most people hang out, and where the most wealthiest people live. From my mural, I want it to wake people up and have them take out their headphones and try to talk to other people around them. From that a community will be born, and there will be no need for one, because it will already be there.

References:

"Lincoln Park." Lincoln Park. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.