We Choose to Play!
Updated: Apr 28, 2021
Teaching Artist Jane Huntington was very busy with ART YARD this week! For ART YARD Advanced Studio she invited her friend artist Maraya Lopez, aka Lucas Berd from BerdsCarnival to present her work as inspiration for the session. Maraya has three aspects to her work: studio, collaborative projects, and strategies. This week she showed two of her community arts projects–the “Magic Machine Residency” in Coney Island (2015) and “Coney Island in El Bario” (2018).
Both projects had similar themes: working with the local community and other artists to address issues affecting the community in the age of gentrification through a series of playful interactions. She brought in food vendors serving dress mangos and ices, had guest artists in residence, and games. In the El Bario piece she brought in a Luchador to interact with the community in Spanish. Artist in residence Bryan Pettigrew did a performance as a “Psychic Pirate” and read peoples fortunes.
Integral to this work Maraya made sure everyone who played left with a prize - “Game Paintings” a unique piece made using stencils on reclaimed materials such as cardboard. Jane based this week’s project on the use of stencils in creating “Game Paintings”. By using stencils, the artists were to create three unique pieces with the same stencils.
Ed cut out a spider in a web and went to his roof to spray paint the results.
Kevin cut out cloud shapes and created abstract views of how the colors of Coney Island felt.
Maraya used her fingers to create Coney Island themed puns.
Both August and Jane used the Coney Island Smiling face as the basis for thier works.
Sigrid used both elements from her stencils–both the cut out area and stencil to create her party based works.
Keeping with the party them, Marilyn used the 3 stencils to create three pieces.
Instead of using a stencil to paint inside the stencil, I painted around the outside of my stenciled hula hoops and in the final piece made a collage of the stencils (which I think made for a dynamic image!).
Jacob used color blocking with his umbrellas using reclaimed cardboard and paint, keeping true to the lesson’s theme.
Vera took a different approach–she made outlines using her arms shadow, and then painted in the resulting outlines.
In observance of Ramadan, Sarah made a beautiful minuerette stencil, and an ice cream cone in ode to Coney Island.
Karla, who joins us from Kansas, muses: “Coney Island seems a “must experience” kind of place! Carnival rides, games and side shows all bring a nostalgia...mixing reality and perceptions...chance and the obvious. Ferris wheels are iconic to carnivals. I decided to use them for my inspiration, gathering round lids to use as circular stencils. My “prize” pieces are created on oversized 1920’s playing cards using sharpie markers and cut imagery. Lines echo the complex steel geometry of the Ferris wheel structure.
I incorporated the phrase “Choose to Play” as a statement about the importance of having fun! I hope I captured a bit of the nostalgic feel of this NY landmark in, yes, August...Black, White and Red!!”
Pat was able to join for the presentation and lesson, then made her work later in the week. She writes: “Here are my stencil projects! The only paint I had on hand was watercolors, which led to some unpredictability in stenciling (at least with my skill level). I figured I'd sit back and let the watercolors tell me what they wanted to do. The flower and dinosaur stencils are traced from objects I had lying around (a coaster whose shape sort of suggested popcorn kernels or maybe fireworks, and a plastic dinosaur toy whose shape definitely suggested a roller coaster--maybe powered by fossil fuels). I created the bowling pin stencil from scratch--I liked the shape, and the potential for making multiples; as the project went on, the bowling pins felt more and more like human beings to me. The viewer is welcome to interpret that as they wish--that's more meaning than I expected for what is ostensibly "just" a Coney Island prize!
Thank you to Jane and to Lucas Berd (Maraya) for a fun project and for sharing the Magic Machine with us! I appreciated the opportunity to think about Coney Island from several different perspectives--the threat of gentrification, visitors' comments about (no) color and mass production of prizes, seeing kids get to be barkers and do their thing, mangoes on a stick...mmm...mangoes on a stick...”
On Wednesday at ART YARD Art Matters at PS 282 Teaching Artist Jane Huntington kicked off a new cycle of lessons with a variation on her stencil making session aimed at our 4-8 year old little artists. It was a very successful manifestation and all of our students were completely engaged in their work!
Jane encouraged us to try out a variety of shapes – hearts, stars, circles, squares, butterflies, and even crazy abstract forms. After creating many stencil shapes we all created a final stencil by tracing our own hands.
Lucy shared her compliments at the end of critique: “I liked everybody’s work because of the colors of paper and shapes and I liked how nobody made exactly the same thing as each other.”
