closing the open city

all good things must come to an end, and this city has been open for far too long. come to the closing reception, tonight from 7 to 9m to pick up a free copy of our exhibition catalog! (126 pages, full color, essays by the likes of amy franceschini, howell baum, damon rich, doreen bolger, etc.) if you can't make it, but still want one, hit me up.

come one, come all!

for mica's senior commencement exhibition, pretty much every inch of campus is turned into gallery space, and each student gets x amount of space to show their work/thesis. definitely something that would take dedication and an entire day to see...

friday, may 13 through monday, may 16

even more open city

i had been wanting to take the power project prodigies on a little open city field trip before the exhibition closes may 15, so we finally made it out this week. they were quite the group, but it was nice to see how kids interacted with the work and the space. when we managed to pull them away from all the excitement of the sky space telescopes and the "we buy houses" house, we brainstormed a list of the things cities need, and made james rojas inspired models of our ideal open city. i was pleased to see a surplus of parks, lemonade stands, and zip lines.

still love me some bruce mau

from "the secret to making a difference"

the reason why i haven't posted anything in over a month

or at least one of them...
senior thesis = done! it feels really good. just have to figure out how to install it.

community arts 101

giving kids disposable cameras and letting them go to town is like community arts 101. but i just developed the photos that the power project kids took of their neighborhood a lesson or so ago, and i am in love with them all.

and this is why i still believe in design

seriously. it's been a long time since i've gotten this excited about something. emily pilloton visited the other day for a lecture and day-long workshop with kids in the masters of art in teaching program and design coalition class here at mica. everything she shared about the work she's doing with 11th graders in bertie county through studio h (still in progress) was so inspiring. everything is nitty gritty and local, without any higher objectives or forced scalability. (designing and building cornhole boards, chicken coops, or a farmers market is not something that would fly in every city.) any generative efforts can happen on their own, as all of the lesson plans are open sourced online. check it out!