In St. Petersburg, I am doing a very different sort of project than in Krasnoyarsk, though it is also at a school for children (quite incidentally, the school is no. 33, while the Krasnoyarsk was no. 32!). The group I am working with will be younger, all students at the school, and all deaf or hearing impaired, as this is the school's specialty. They also are not as available for as many hours per day. As opposed to the last project, which was such a quick and intense experience,we have almost 3 weeks to do the project until the presentation day scheduled Dec 10--apparently this is longer than most ArtsLink residencies, though I am starting to realize this is not a lot of time!
On my first day of the project, Tuesday Nov 24, I gave a similar presentation on public art to the one I gave in Krasnoyarsk, but this was geared more towards a school-aged audience: much shorter, and less focused on the theme of Utopia and social issues, more focused on the simple idea that public art can make an environment better and create a sense of home. I focused less on street art, and more on community murals and projects at schools. I was coming into the project with the general theme of home, or the Russian house ("doma"); Nastya, the project manager working with me in St. Petersburg, had told me in advance that Russian folklore centered around magical spirits from the home is something that interests the school.
Immediately after the presentation the teachers and students began to discuss (excitedly, in Russian and sign language) ideas for how the project will be carried out. Surprisingly, everyone seemed to arrive pretty quickly at a main idea at this first meeting: to place different windows down a long school corridor, each showing some kind of view looking either inside or outside the students' homes and schools. I was immediately excited by this ideas as it relates to so much of my other artwork, including a mural proposal I had made for my old high school, as an assignment for a mural fellowship program, that inserted fake windows on the building's exterior.
The students who had attended my lecture, mostly upper grades (ages 12-16 or so) felt strongly that the younger students should have a say in the content being seen through the windows, but that the teachers would assemble a core group of older students to work with me on all aspects of the mural. The following day (Wed) I would not come into the school at all but the teachers in different classrooms would discuss this idea with students and collect sketches of their ideas, which I would then review Thursday. Friday would be my first day working with the core mural group, and hopefully that session would yield some final sketches. We spent the rest of the day touring the school and discussing project logistics.
On that same morning I had also met Masha, who runs an organization ArtTerra, which works with artists to design playful, imaginative interior spaces and playgrounds for children. We will be collaborating with her on this project mainly in utilizing her expertise designing whole spaces and working with 3-D materials. For example, she was very excited by the idea of creating actual window frames out of wood, and knows wood carvers who can create pretty elaborate designs for them.
More on the next workshops to come...
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