An annual event at the Carlton Manor housing development in Arverne. 

 
Special thanks to Tanya Kinigstein for co-facilitating this workshop. It was really exciting and helped us refine our process. 
 

An array of hand-painted fabric squares, ready to be drawn on with designs created by Rockaway residents. The found objects will also be included in the sculpture. We'll be facilitating four flag-making workshops with residents in the next week!
 
 
This week myself and some Project Hope staff started creating some art for Sea-Song at a couple of Rockaway high schools. We gave a slide show about the project and invited the students to contribute. They wrote messages to put in bottles and started creating their own resilience flags, inspired by the prayer flags found in places like Nepal and Tibet. We also collected a bunch of clam shells for them to paint on. One of the Project Staff is creating a curriculum around Sea-Song where her students will apply writing skills as they work on their art objects. 

The bottom image shows a resilience flag design I created. It will be the first in a series that I plan to screenprint and offer as rewards in our Kickstarter campaign. Stay tuned for that! We shot video for that this week and the campaign will be starting soon.
 
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On May 4th I tabled at the Earth Day Festival that happens every year in Rockaway. I had a bunch of old glass bottles and I was inviting people to write down their hopes for Rockaway and slip them into the bottles. The bottled messages will be sealed and incorporated into the memorial sculpture using a material called cob. I collected at least 50 messages yesterday and it was great. This one little boy who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 approached me and asked if he could write a message. I said, "Of course". He asked if he could write it in script. I was like, of course you can. He drew a couple of long squiggly lines on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I asked him what it said. He looked at me and replied, "It says I love you".

Pretty freakin' adorable, huh?

Students at Beach Channel High School will also be creating messages in bottles next week. 

 
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On the suggestion of one of our collaborators, we reached out to a local steel company, Rapid Steel, to see if they would be willing to donate the materials needed. They said yes! They'll be delivering the steel to us at the end of this month and we'll begin welding. 

 
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These images are initial experiments in laying out the piece. These elements will be affixed to a welded steel understructure bolted to a concrete base. 

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