Friday, July 30, 2010

Jonathan's Second Post!

Hey! It’s Jonathan again, posting my 2nd blog post. This is my 4th week here at Hester Street Collaborative; things are getting better and better. These 4 weeks has gone by quickly, and I’m almost finished as a summer intern. We started to work on the neighborhood map on the Allen StreetMalls. We gridded everything at first and it took a lot of time, but after we got everything gridded everything else was fun. We finished painting the map on July 26th. All the hard work paid off after we saw the results of the finished map. The next day, July 27th, we got new shelves! The shelves were used for our library books, and things started to look more organized. We sorted and organized the books into specific categories. After sorting the books, we headed to the garden; we watered the plants, raked the dead leaves, and re-colored the shed. After raking the leaves into a pile, we put the leaves into the compost pile. The compost pile is a place where we put all the dead leaves into. After the dead leaves decomposes it turns into rich soil that we can use for the garden, Today we stenciled the neighborhood names onto Allen Street Malls. The neighborhood names were Nolita, Alphabet City, East Village, Little Italy, Lower East Side, Chinatown, and Two Bridges. After spending the morning, and a little of the afternoon painting the neighborhood cities, we didn’t finish a couple; but I’m looking forward to finishing it tomorrow. We finished the day after going to the garden and watering the plants.
7/29/10

Hey it’s Justin Lui again here with my second blog. For the past weeks my coworkers and I have been painting the map of the lower east side on Allen Street. The project took us about three to four weeks to finish and we finished it on 7/26/10. Now we are using stencils to write down the names of the different places on the Lower East Side. First we measured stencils to see how big each letter was so that we can figure out where to draw it on the white bars so that it was straight. After all the math stuff we traced the letter onto the floor then we started to paint. Also we use the color of the map to correspond to the words so like if Chinatown is painted light green the word Chinatown would be painted with the same color. We manage to finish Little Italy, East Village, Nolita, and Alphabet City Aside from working on the project we have be going to the garden at P.S. 134 to water the plants, repainting the shed and cleaning up the leaves that were all over the garden. Also we set up new shelves in the worksite and the shelves were heavy. When we were done setting up the shelves, we arranged the books in the mini library according too the different category then we placed it on the new shelves. After the past two weeks I was very tired but it was still fun working with new friends. Today we were supposed to go outside to finish the stenciling but it was raining and it keeps raining on and off, so we ended up not going outside and stayed in side cleaning. Right now we are hoping the rain will stop so that the ground can dry and the sooner it dries the sooner we can go outside to paint.

Michelle's Blog #2

Hey, it’s Michelle again. Since my last blog post, the interns and I at Hester Street have gotten a lot done in terms of the Allen Street Mall-terations. We decided that we would use shades of green instead of our original colors (red, yellow, a whacky-looking purple..) and spent one afternoon just mixing different paints to get the shades we wanted. As soon as we got the paints done, we went outside and started gridding the circle using a chalk line and taping off the areas we would paint. The weather’s been on and off lately; unfortunately, it rained the day after we finished gridding so most of the chalk got washed away. Good thing we know how to improvise! We managed to finish the map in about three days and if you ask me, it looks pretty neat –



What we’ve been working on this week is the lettering for the different neighborhoods we’ve incorporated into the map – we’re using stencils to trace and paint the letters on the white tracks near the map (Chinatown, Little Italy, Lower East Side, etc.) There’s a lot of calculating involved (we had to measure a lot to figure out where we would start placing the letters). Our improvisation skills came in handy here a few times, too. The colors we used for the letters correspond with the color that area is on the map. After we finish this, we’re going to work on another map except this time, we’re focusing on streets instead of neighborhoods and using shades of red instead of green.



Aside from the Mall-terations, we’ve done a few smaller things to help around in the office. We’ve recently received a couple of new shelves so we spent a good part of one of our days dedicated to moving them and putting them together. We also sorted through the office library and categorized them to be put onto the shelves, and about an hour ago, we organized the papers and tools underneath the main table in the office and shelved them, too. I think we’re heading out again soon to finish the lettering, and maybe we’ll get started on our second map – that is, if it doesn’t rain again!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Neta's second blog



This week has been really productive. I could not come on Monday, but Michelle, Justin, and Jonathan finished painting the neighborhood map on the sidewalk!!! The map looks amazing! On Tuesday we started to put a finish on the shed in the garden, it will protect the wood from rain and possibly vandalism, but it also shows the real color of the wood, red oak, it’s pretty. In the morning we put together shelves that arrived on Monday and organized all the books. Some of the books were neat; I even found one book that I had read just a few months ago about community-based architecture for a paper I wrote. This morning we organized some of the art supplies, the office is organized now. On Wednesday we spent the morning and part of the afternoon writing the neighborhood names on the white stripes that run between the maps. We painted the neighborhood name the same color we painted the neighborhood on the map; the neighborhoods are Nolita, Alphabet City, East Village, Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, and Two Bridges. We still have to finish painting some of the names today. The ones we finished yesterday look great. While we were painting a lot of people asked us questions about the pedestrian street malls. It’s exciting to see that people are become interested in them and will hopefully come back and use the street malls.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Justin- Blog #1

July 15, 2010

Hey my name is Justin and I live in Brooklyn New York. I went to Midwood High School and will be going to City Tech for college. I am currently working at HSC. These past few weeks I’ve been cleaning and watering P.S.134 garden. So basically every day if its hot we go water the different vegetables, flowers and trees there. Also my coworkers and I have been thinking up ides to help out the garden, like give it a time schedule so that people in that community can go check out the garden. Also we thought up events so that kids and parents can learn things at the garden, and thought of making brochures so that people can have to learn more about the garden. Also we did a lot of research about the lower east side which is like Chinatown, little Italy, and other places. My topic was on Chinatown and I had to find out how many Chinese people from what area came to the Lower East Side, also I had to find out the different years that they came and how many people came during that year. I also had to find out the population number for the Chinese people that came to the Lower East Side. With the research that we did we will put it together to make a mural on the floor on Allen Street. The mural will be a bunch of circle with different painting on them. The painting will be a map of the Lower East Side with like different colors. Also my coworkers and I had to mix different paint to get a color that will catch people’s eye. Also this will help make the map stand out to people to make them want to look. So that’s about what we did so far and I cant wait to do more things with the new friends that I made.

Jonathan's First Blog!

Hey, it’s Jonathan Li; a summer intern at the Hester Street Collaborative. This is my first blog post. I am 14 years old, and a graduate of Simon Baruch Middle School. It’s been an amazing experience here, for the first two weeks. One thing that has happened during the two weeks was visiting the P.S. 134’s garden. The first time I have gone to the garden many of the plants were dried up, since no one watered the plants, and it hasn’t rain in many days. After a couple of trips to the garden daily, and watering the plants; the plants started to look great again! The plants weren’t drooping anymore, or dried up they were looking very nice. We started to clean up the garden by raking the dried leaves out of the way. Enough about the garden, we started to do other things too. We did a lot of research about the Lower East Side’s history as well. We researched the neighborhoods inside the Lower East Side; one thing that I researched was the amount of immigrants immigrating into the Lower East Side over time. We are using the information to paint the Pike and Allen Street Malls. We will apply the information we researched and paint one of the circles on a mall this Wednesday also, the following Wednesdays! We also started on a mock-up for a painting we would do on one of the malls. The mock-up looked great, our summer interns and I put a lot of effort and time into the mock-up. I just can’t wait to do work on this outside. It is a lot fun here, and I can’t wait for more projects to come. I’m looking forward to spend my summer here at Hester Street Collaborative.

Neta's First Blog Entry



Hey guys, its Neta. I'm from New Jersey, but i had heard of Hester Street Collaborative from my cousin and wanted to volunteer. Before the summer internship started I had no idea what to expect, but after being here for ten days I realized that this is going to be an amazing summer. The first few days we learned about the P.S. 134 Community Garden and the Allen Pike Street Mall-teration project. Since then we have tended to the garden and brainstormed ideas for garden events to draw in community members. I have learned that big projects take a ton of time, planning, and collaborating. We have also progressed far on the preparations for the Allen Street project. We met with the artists twice and made a mock-up map that is over ten feet in diameter to give us a visual aid when we paint the actual maps on the sidewalks of the street malls. This week we started painting the street maps on the sidewalk, I’m so excited:)!!!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Michelle's Blog #1

Hey, my name’s Michelle, and I’m part of the Citizen Design Internship this summer at Hester Street Collaborative. I was born in the city, and currently live in Brooklyn. I go to Stuyvesant High School in Tribeca, and am going to be a senior (!) once the school year starts. It’s only been a week or two, but so far we’ve done (what feels like) a lot. Today we worked on the mock of one of the maps we’re making on the Allen/Pike Street “Mall-terations”. It was pretty messy working with paint and all, but we managed. The colors were a bit off from what we had on paper, though. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s coming along really well but there’s still a lot of work for us to do before we actually start working on concrete. We still have to paint the other half of the map (it’s a circle) and maybe (?) do some more mock-ups for the other circles. Dylan, unfortunately, is sick today but left a very nice, instructive e-mail with Jess so the other interns and I are pretty much supervising ourselves. We went on our lunch break after painting and made our way to the garden when we came back. I feel like those of us who aren’t familiar with Chinatown will eventually know our way around before the summer ends. We’ve been wandering around a lot. We didn’t have to water much at the garden because it’s been pretty rainy the past few days. The plants are growing really quickly; it’ll be exciting once the garden opens up to the public – I’m worried, though, because I don’t want anyone to be careless with or around the plants after all our hard work sprucing it up. Here is a picture of what the garden currently looks like.

At least maybe it’ll give workers/volunteers during the school year something to do. I also still feel like we should eventually fix the plant signs once we have some time off from the Mall-terations because quite frankly, I don’t even know what I’m watering more than half the time. There are so many improvements I think we can make to the garden; it’s just too bad (or good) we’re focusing mainly on the bigger projects right now.

Edit: We've finally finished our mock-up for the Allen Street map! The colors still look sort of awkward to us, but that'll change. Here's a picture of the finished product: