WEEK 7: BAKE A CAKE

This week, I introduced the class to Sara Savannah Roach, a visiting artist from Portland Oregon who has been spending October at Elsewhere.  Sara’s project at Elsewhere has been an ongoing bake sale and cake decorating company.  Sara has been decorating cakes to look like Elsewhere objects, both 3-D and relief, and then selling them out of our front window for a paltry $3.  While business hasn’t exactly been booming, Sara’s project has built an incredible collaborative community.  Something about slapping on insane amounts of fluffy sugar to smooshed cakes and mixing up tons of icing colors really creates a sense of play and visual/tactile exploration for a group of creators.

We found objects from Elsewhere and then proceeded to make cakes of them in the front window.  It was a bit of a performance, as we all tried to replicate our objects.  We also took the opportunity of sitting around together to chat more fully about food for the Treefest event, which might include cakes of trees.  All in all, it was a messy but super fun time learning about cake beautification with Sara Savannah.

WEEK 6: SCREEN PRINTING TIME

Well, with only a couple weeks to go I shared a final project with the class, a collaboration with Trees NC to plant trees (4 crape myrtles) on the Weaver campus to help beautify Weaver and make it more aesthetically integrated with downtown Greensboro.

We read the proposal to the school together, and then discussed a bit about the event.

I’ve tasked the class with raising 1/2 the cost of planting the crape myrtles.  I think it’s important that artists and creators learn how to raise the money to realize their visions.

We set to work learning to screen print with Elsewhere Creative Assistant Anthony Lowe, who has been Elsewhere’s screen printing operations head this year.  He walked everyone through the printing process, and then the class set to making some designs for the shirts.  We settled on two different designs, a stretching tree design and a bird design, to appeal to different Weaver groups (the band kids and the design kids).  In the process, we also imagined the event as “Treefest,” including musical performances to keep entertainment flowing.

We’ll brainstorm more next week.