Changing Perspectives

At UpCycle, materials that are no longer useful for their original or intended purpose are considered a resource for creating. It's our goal that participants in our programs adopt this perspective on materials and continue to look at discarded materials for the abundant and unique resource that they are.

We opened our second week of middle school camp this week with Demo-vation, taking apart discarded items and creating something new from the parts we discover inside. Our campers delighted in taking apart a hair dryer, router, curling iron, trophies and other appliances that had been donated to UpCycle. We sorted the spare parts by material and brought them into the smaller studio for use.

In our small groups, we have begun project work that will span several days. The kids have been given a small aluminum tin to incorporate into a work of art. First they filled the tins with found objects and ephemera pertaining to a concept or idea. Then, they continued to decorate the tin or integrated the tin into a sculpture or scene.

In another small group, we are working on a painting inspired by an alternative perspective of a favorite place. We first selected color palettes of one light, one dark and three medium colors. We then reclaimed canvases and panels by painting them with one color. 

Our gathering activity on the second day of camp was to draw objects from two perspectives, an activity to warm us up to return to our paintings. It was fun to push ourselves to draw from difficult angles and we laughed a lot at the results. 

Then, in one of our small groups we looked at Google maps to find satellite images of our special places. We began painting the places using our pre-selected color palettes, starting with the dark and light areas and then adding more details.

After lunch each day we have a little time to return to the projects we have started, explore other areas of the studio or get a head start on future projects. Stay tuned!