t-shirts and shed plans

Hey, this is Connie and I'm a volunteer at Hester Street Collaborative. Other volunteers are Mandy, Daniel and Alex. Here at HSC, we are learning a lot of new things. For one, I have never made a t-shirt design before and here I experienced the process of silk screening. Everyday HSC is filled with something new to do.
At the P.S. 134 garden, there is a tool shed. Over the time, supplies and miscellaneous objects were piled and thrown in. Right now everything in it is a mess. So, one of our projects is thinking of a way to organize the tool shed. We had to draw out plans and side-views of the interior shed. Using our plans, we decided to put three to four shelves on the three sides of the interior shed. To organize everything, we will buy tubs or crates and label them.
This is Vivian. As with the silk screening, a design was picked out of the interns' and volunteers'. We worked on the design and finalized it. Everyone's been working hard and the table is now covered in layers of tracing paper.
For me and Melissa, this is going to be our last week at HSC. I'm going to miss all the fun projects we did and going to the garden. But, before I leave, I have to finish a research project. My project will be planning a proposal to build a stage at Sara D. Roosevelt Park. On every other Friday, there are performances at the park. The first one was a puppet show and I went to a Chinese Culture Dance Performance. I noticed these events are done on a soccer field. Therefore, I want to design a stage for these events because they seem to have this every summer. If there is a stage, it can be more presentable and not blocking children from using the soccer field. The stage will have to be versatile and able to be used for any kind of performance. I will show a plan of my design using Illustrator.

First day of work

Hey, we are the 2008 summer interns. Our names are Angela Huang, Helen Liu, Melissa Gollance, and Vivian Kong. Today is our first day of work in Hester Street Collaborative. It was such a great experience. We first went to the P.S. 134 garden. There was a lot of work to do because people from the neighborhood have thrown lots of trash through the fence. We had to sweep up all of the dead leaves, pick up trash, organize the tool shed, water the plants, and weave the vines through the fence. We were there for hours, but there is still so much work to do that we will be returning each day to make it presentable for the children who will be learning in this outdoor classroom. 

After lunch, we passed out flyers around chinatown. The flyers were about a design meeting on Wednesday night. Posting the flyers around chinatown made me(Vivian) understand how tiring it was. I sympathize with people who pass them out in the streets under the sun. 

we cleaned out the planter outside the building. We had to weed the whole thing. We only left behind the marigold plants. Later on we will plant flowers and other plants. Hopefully this will discourage people from throwing trash into our planter in the future. We are looking forward to the next weeks of our internship and sharing it with you!

"The Product Design Research Mission"

Hey, Ming here and lately we interns have been all working on to our product design research. Hester Street Collaborative is looking to create a product, or a line of products that would create extra income. And the product that HSC would produce, would have to serve the purpose of what HSC is doing. We as interns were to first do research on different products, their cost, how they packaged, and so on. And our mission on this trip was to profile products that we think would help inspire us in creating our product.

Early morning Tuesday we set out on our research mission, but before we left we split up in to two groups. One group is to visit various shops in the downtown area, while the other group visited various shops midtown. I was in the group that visited the downtown shops, and our group consisted of Dylan, Dennis, Annie, Amanda, and me. The first shop we visited was the Moma design shop; there we saw many cool products. Most of the product there are over price, but I still bought this little voodoo doll thing, which cost 10 dollar. Also at the Moma store, I found this product call the staple free stapler, a stapler that can stitch up to 5 pieces of papers together without the need of staples.
Then we continue on to the scholastic store near by where I found this cool book on how to build a solar car. The price is high but it is really interesting for little kid to see how solar car works.

As we press on, we stopped by the center for architecture on our way to a store call mxyplyzk. When we finally got to mxyplzk, we found ourselves wondering in this small crowed store. Despite the sized of the shop, the amount of items there are overwhelming. We found this set of cups with pictures of a variety of noses on them. The purpose of the pictures is for when the cups are used, the nose picture would overlap the drinker’s nose making it look like the nose is the drinker's.

The next stop was Flight 101, a store that sells packaged items for mainly travel use purposes. But before we visit the store we stopped by for lunch at a hot dog store, where I got 2 hot dogs and a soda for $3.50, not bad… Anyway moving on, Flight 101 like mxyplyzk was a small store. However the products in there make up for the size of the store. It is at this store where I found my favorite product of the day. The Survival Kit in a can, a small can that contain all the tools you would need to survive for when you get lost or something. The can looks like a canned food can, and it’s packaged again with a plastic bag with air sucked out of it to make it easy to pack in to all places.

Then after that we visited the Books of Wonder, a huge library like book store. After looking at all the expensive books and paintings in the store I found myself on line, buying an ice cream from a restaurant inside the book store. Then all of a sudden, camera flashes started to hit my face from the right. As I turn right toward the entrance, I see some cameramen, taking pictures of this lady as she walks in to this book store. As the cameramen continue to flash at her, she lined up behind me, emotionless as she waits for her turn. After I got my ice cream I sat down with the rest of the interns, watching as the lady got her ice creams and left. As we exited the store, Annie couldn’t resist wondering who the lady was. So she went up to one of a cameraman, who told her that the lady was Mischa Barton. WHO?!......I still didn’t know who she was, but she turned out to be this star who was in the show the OC.

Anyway the last store we hit was a toy store call Kidding Around. As we entered the store I immediately walked toward the pile of hand puppets we saw. As the others looked around for products, Dennis and I picked up puppets with play with. But we moved on, and walk toward the back of the store. There we found board games, costumes, musical toys, etc. There as so many things in there, I didn’t know what to choose for our research. After playing around with more toys and finding the staple free stapler at a lower price then the Moma store in this store, I finally found this kit on painting you own tile. I thought of the stepping stone we made in the design camp, that is this pretty similar. After profiling this product, we got ready to leave. As we wait for Dylan to buy the things he wanted to buy, we played with the puppet some more.

Our mission is finally complete, now we can go back. As we walk, tired and out of breath, we came to the near by train station. We got in the train station, and waited for the train to come. And when the train finally came we got on and went back to the office. The next day we had a discussion on the products that we profiled on our product research mission, and what a discussion it was. Each of us took turn talking and describing about the various products we found. Even though everyone seemed to be bored, the ideas that we’ve produced was quite interesting. Like how the product we were going to make should target urban environment, in helping to improve the environment. Also we had an idea like how the packaging of the product can be a product as well, that way there would be less trash.

Aside from our product research project, I’ve been working on this blog as the blog master. My responsibility is to expand the blog, and making contact with the online communities. To improve the blog, I first started to create links with other sites and blogs that serves a similar purpose to our organization.

This is Dennis signing on!

Ah yes, week six was an interesting week as well. I guess we can sum it up as product design week. On the first day, we split up into two groups and took Manhattan by storm. I working with Dylan, Ming, Amanda, and Annie.

The first stop we went to visit, was the MoMA store. At the MoMA store, I found some very nice dolls. Yes, I still play with dolls, but theses dolls were different in the sense that the doll was made from one piece of continuous string. The continuous string makes this doll unique and it gave me an idea for what product that we can do. And the first thing that came to my mind, was that we can use it for our design camp. The campers would be given a metal skeleton and then we would give them string and let them wrap it around the frame. After they are done with wrapping the string around the frame, they can paint their new doll.

The next store that we went to was the Scholastic store. At the Scholastic store, we found a lot of do-it-yourself kits. I found a window art kit in which we use a type of paint that we paint on a plastic sheet and then after the artwork dried, we can peel it and then paste it on the wall. I feel that this is also an excellent product for the design camp as well because it allows the campers to create any design they want.

After a few hundred blocks and then some, we went to Mxyplyzyk. The store is very similar to the MoMA store and it is just as expensive. We didn't really find anything interesting at the store, so we moved on. The last store that visited was the Kidding Around store. As the store implies, we kid around a lot. We all took turns to play with hand puppets and explore the store. Dylan found a garden tool tote bag and it was very cute. All of the tools were miniature and design especially for kids. This would be a valuable product for the design camp. It would make gardening much more friendly for the campers.

After a long and tiring day, we went back to HSC and called it a day. The next day we came back to the office and we had a conference about all of the products that we selected. It was very productive.

Now we are working on our individual projects. Lately I have been working slowly on it because I was sick all week long. It was hard to focus and I was very tired all the time. I'm feeling a bit better now. Time to finish my project! This is Dennis signing off!

The "Where It's AT" Finale

Good morning once again from the always (of course) graceful Annie! This week was much more relaxing than last week, which was the exhausting but fun design camp with the kids. On Monday we had a post-design camp discussion, and I, the “secretary” for the day, took a lot of helpful notes about how to improve the design camp next year.

After that on Tuesday we went to do a product design study, which meant “discreetly” going to different stores and looking at products that we could possibly get ideas from to make a HSC line of products. I seemed to gravitate toward “DIY” stuff, like these cool cardboard speakers that came in a pretty flat plastic bag; you would have to fold the cardboard and follow the instructions in order to make the speakers. I also found a cool little “How to make your own little book” in the Scholastic store, which consisted of a spiral-bound book, foam pieces that you could use to form different shapes, and a gluestick. I think what would be perfect for HSC would be something “DIY”-like that could educate kids and that came in economical packaging.

And today, as in Thursday, I, Carmen, and Eric, went off to different destinations to do our research projects. I explored the Lower East Side and, using a map I found online, found a total of ten different community gardens in the neighborhood and was able to acquire four in-depth interviews about four different gardens. It was a very enlightening experience: from what I could see, the gardens were not built necessarily for the environment, but to improve the community around them. I think I’m going to have an awesome project to show next week.
Next week is my last week here at HSC. I can’t believe how quickly the summer passed, and a little more than two weeks from now I’ll be at college, wow. For now I’ll try to enjoy what little time I have left here, hanging out with my awesome coworkers, perhaps making some t-shirts for myself before I leave, and just learning some more. Until my last entry, this, as always, has been where it’s AT.

"The Design Camp"

Hey this is Ming, I’ve been away these few days, but now I’m back. Last week we’ve been working at the design camp, which took place in the garden we’ve been maintaining for the past few weeks. At this design camp, we’ve met 10 wonderful campers between the age of 7 and 10, Jonah, Eoin, Eamon, Shea, William, Jack, Abby, Maia, Ethan, and Elan.

In this camp we’ve helped them in creating their own designs for their T-shirt prints and stepping stones. They would also be working on their note book sometimes, filling it up with their beautiful experiences and memories of this camp. When they are not working on their design projects, they are helping us around with the garden. They got to plant flowers, pull the weeds, pick the beans, and other garden maintenance.

And when they weren’t doing any work, they get to have free time to play. They would play in the sprinkler, or the mud to keep cool from the heat. We interns would have to look after them as they played in the sun. However besides from doing that, we also joined them in their activities. We hosted baseball games, badminton, and water fights. During lunch time we would join the kids as they swallowed down food that they’ve been longing for all day. We had all kinds of food in this camp, we had pizza, egg rolls and dumplings, sandwiches, and so on.

On the third day of the week we went on a field trip where we visited the Noguchi Museum, where the kids got to explore and find their favorite sculptures. After seeing all the artistic creations by Noguchi, we took a break and had lunch at the Socrates Sculpture park. We played tag, capture the flag, chased Eric around, and all kind of fun games.

On the last day of design camp, I along with all the interns came to the park early in the morning to prepare water ballon for our revenge on the kids. Later in the day we waited patiently for the right time to attack the kids, as the kids were finishing up their stepping stone. When the time came, we took all the kids out to the park and blasted each and everyone of them with water ballons. Surprised, the kids attacked back and we had the water fight of the century. As day approached night, we get ready to leave for the day. After saying goodbye to the kids, we walked out of the park and never looked back.

...Leaving behind an experience that we will all cherish, forever. ^^

Where it's "still" at...

Hey, this is Annie, and you’re returning to “where it’s AT!” (a sad smile on my face emerges now haha.) For the past week the Hester Street Collaborative held its first (ever!) Design Camp for kids. It was a greatly tiring and fun week for us interns, who basically watched and played with the ten kids. We took care of a lot of business this week: making concrete stepping stones to be put into the ground in the garden, silk-screening with the kids (and making t-shirts and book covers), taking care of the garden, painting, making models of the garden, and, most of all, cleaning! And on Wednesday, we went to the Noguchi museum where we saw a lot of sculptures and designing, and then to Socrates Sculpture Park nearby.

Besides all the work, though, I think I really enjoyed the camp, mostly because I was able to have fun with the kids, and the kids were able to roam around and explore their imaginations. (And the food and cold drinks weren’t too bad, either.) We even had bottle fights with water. On Friday, to get back at the kids for all their “evil” efforts at getting us interns soaking wet, we came in early in the morning to make water balloons, and we proceeded to give them their “present” later on in the day (imagine some evil laughter right now). I think the best part of the week for me was when I got Maia to eat part of a turkey sandwich, even though she originally turned down my generous offer. I guess part of me wants to realize that I DO have the potential to become a teacher one day, and I feel I have those instincts, to “manipulate” kids into eating and having fun while learning at the same time. (It’s also nice to know that after taking a career test the other day for CPC orientation that teaching would probably be the best career for me haha).

Last week was great; I’m going to miss making the kids laugh at my super-duper corny jokes (because they’re the only ones that will), playing in the mud pit, and generally having fun as a kid again (now that I’m 18, those days will soon be over, and I’m quite sad about that). There are definite things that we discussed today that can be changed about the design camp, mostly changes in the organization and structuring of the camp, but overall it went really well for the first camp ever. And this week, although we are finished with design camp and feeling TAN-tastic, we still have a lot of work to do, and onward we move! So until my next blog entry, this has been where it’s AT.

Hey everyone!!!

This is Carmen speaking again. I am exhausting from last week’s design/build boot camp, but it was a great experience and a lot of fun. Each day was filled with creative activities and noisy children covered in mud. Every morning, the campers would start their day by watering the plants and pulling out weeds. Then they would start on their projects such as texture rubbing, silk screening, scavenger hunting, t-shirt making, stepping stone making, and model building. After lunch, the campers had several hours of free time. Guess what took place during this period? WATER FIGHT!!! Yes, all the campers attacked the interns so we decide to get them back. We purposely arrived early on the last day to fill up water balloons. In the end, the interns went against each other.

In this past week, we also spent a day at the Noguchi Museum and the Socrates Sculpture Park. The kids found their favorite sculptures and drew them. At the park, all the kids chased Eric around until his shirt and book bag were torn. Poor Eric! Anyways, I had a great time with these adorable, energetic kids. I look forward to working with others in the future.

This week is my last week at Hester Street Collaborative. I hope to accomplish as much as I can in this short period of time so I must get working. I’ll be back before you know it.

See you later!

Ahhh yes, Design Camp…

If there was one word that can describe that week, it would be crazy. It was organized chaos in a sense because there were so many things going on at once. At one point it was pretty hard to keep track of the campers. Even though they were a handful, every moment was worth it.
We had many activities that we did to carry us through the day. We did silk screening, painting, water fights, and stepping stones. And on top of all of those activities, we also had to maintain the garden. All in all, it was a week well spent.
On the first day that I was there (Tuesday), I was working with the kids to silk screen their t-shirt. They came up with extremely good designs. Some of them were snakes, worms, bears, etc. Considering the fact that they were silk screening for the first time, their prints came out pretty well. Even their t-shirts look professional. They really did a good job. The only thing that would’ve been better was if there was more room so that more people can do the silk screen at the same time. The tables were too small to support a lot of people at once.

Besides the silk screens, we also did some relief drawings by rubbing the piece of paper on some leaves and when we were at the Socrates Sculpture Garden, we did a rubbing on the shark fin. Speaking of the garden, we had a lot of fun there. We played freeze tag, capture the flag, and watched Eric getting beat up. I think they took a liking to Eric because that would explain why they kept on beating him up. While we were at the park, the kids also did a sketch of their favorite sculpture at the park.
While the rest of the interns are describing their week at the design camp, I on the other hand feel that is important to talk about how we are going to improve the design camp. The camp went very well considering the face that this was the first time that we were doing it.

At the meeting that we had today, we discuss some of the ways in which we can improve the design camps. Some of the ideas that we came up were that we should be more organized, more activities. We said that we have to be more organized because there were a few days in which we were confused in what we were suppose to do. To fix that, we are planning to hold a meeting each day after the design camp ends to plan for the next day. Even the design camp was successful this year, we feel that there should be more activities because that would give the children more options on what they would like to do.



Now that the design camp is over, it will never be forgotten because of all of the great times we do. For now, we are resuming our own individual projects that we later are going to present to each other. Currently, I am doing a photo essay/book on how the individual household owner can live a life that is environmentally friendly.
See you next week!

Mindy's Last Post

Mindy is here again! This will be the last week working for this summer. Work at HSC has been a blast and a great learning experience. Just from a few weeks, I learned how to silkscreen, work on Illustrator, basic gardening, work with kids, create stepping stones, and so much more. Time sure flies by! Hopefully I will be able to work here during this fall!

We helped supervise a Design Camp last week. The cute little campers were all from ages of six to ten-years-old. They were adorable small designers, architects, and artists. The creative campers built a ‘river’ in the mud pit, getting mud all over their bodies. They basically took a mud bath! Besides building a ‘river’, they dug for worms. There were at least seventy worms found. How often do you find a mud pit in NYC? Pretty awesome for the Design Camp to have a mud pit for the kids. I would have loved to play in one if I were younger.

Well time to return to work!

I’m working, learning and “sparkle”-ing haha.

Good morning from the office; this is Annie again! Soo this week we’ve been getting ready for our design camp with the kids from P.S. 134. We’ve been getting supplies from a huge number of places so we’re ready for the kids on Monday. We also got ready to make stepping stones with the kids by learning how to make them on our own. We made our own mold of a dragonfly out of precut pieces of wood, and on Tuesday we put in cement mix so we could start learning how to do it.
For me though, this week was predominantly about finishing up my silk-screening process with my Mr. Sparkle design from “The Simpsons.” I was the last one to go, and it took me two days to finish because of all the different colors. Each stencil looked somewhat misplaced (like shifted puzzle pieces), but it looks like it was meant to be that way, so it worked out perfectly haha. It looks a lot better and greater than I thought it could become. I even put my design on a gray t-shirt; I can’t wait to wear my shirt tomorrow when I go watch “The Simpsons Movie.” Yay! And making t-shirts for the kids at P.S. 134 for their gym uniforms should be a snap now.
We also heard a presentation on Tuesday from a volunteer here, Emily, about urban development in some places she visited for her study abroad program. We learned about the javelas in Rio De Janeiro, the huge amount of racism in the society of Cape Town, and the battles of the indigenous peoples of Auckland, New Zealand. It was a very interesting presentation; I didn’t know that kind of stuff was still happening around the world.
Today we’re going to continue our design camp preparation; we’re going to go to the garden, check out our concrete stepping stone mold and put in some mosaic tiles. And next week will be busy work with the kids, but design camp should be fun. With the kids, we’ll be silk-screening shirts and book covers, making stepping stones, playing some scavenger hunt games, etc. Till my next entry, all, this has been where it’s at. (Get it? A.T.? Annie Tan? =D)

Eric's preview for upcoming week

Hey, this is Eric Yuan. Today I am going to give you a sneak peek on what we are going to be doing next week. We are going to be baby-sitting little kids for this year’s camp at P.S.134. We are learning how to make stepping-stones so when we teach the kids it will be as easy as making cake, if that is how it goes.
Dennis and I went on a little trip to pick up five silk-screens and five squeegees for the camp at P.S.134. We will be making t-shirts for the kids. The camp will be starting next week on Monday so we are preparing. We all came up with our own designs for the stepping-stone, and then we had to pick one out of all the designs. We chose the dragonfly. We brought the design to the garden to mold it, but we didn’t want the cement to stick to the side of the box, so we put Vaseline all over the box. It was a little nasty; it was stuck on my hand even when I washed it down. When we were at the garden we saw that the peach tree was still sick; slime was coming out from the trunk, so we cleaned the slime off the tree and are hoping that it will heal.
Do not go away; I will be back next week, so remember to tune in on my next blog, or you can check out the other blogs the workers have written. Next week it will be a little crazy with the kids; I will be telling you what crazy things we have been doing, so again, remember to tune in on my blog.

Carmen Speaking!!! Shhh

Hello! This is Carmen speaking. It is my 3rd week at Hester Street Collaborative and we interns are busier than ever. Next week, the design/build boot camp will begin so this week we are making preparations.
Yesterday, Dylan showed us how to make a stepping-stone. This is a project that all the kids will be working on. It is actually quite interesting. First, we had to create a design using wooden geometric shapes. This took a while since everyone was so indecisive. When we finally decided to use a dragonfly design, we glued it onto a wooden board and placed it into a small wooden box. At the garden, Eric and Ming put Vaseline on the inner surface of the box. This will help us remove the cement, which we poured into the box, after the concrete mix completely dries. Drying will take about two days so until then we will be working on other preparations.
This week, I helped sand down the wooden geometric shapes that the kids will be using to make their design. I also gathered more information for my research project. I spent many hours researching and thinking of how to present my project. My final decision is to create a magazine concerning Van Cortlandt Park. It will consist a brief history of this park, public’s opinions, descriptions of the park, information about groups that help maintain the park, details about current projects, a map and many photos. Also, as a group, we spent time in the garden cleaning the diseased peach tree that has been oozing out a sticky substance.

Eric found a rather large yellow caterpillar while cleaning. This was the 3rd caterpillar we spotted this week. Caterpillars, they just LOVE us! JToday we will be picking up supplies that will be needed for the design/build boot camp. Yes, that is the aim for today. Okay, it is time for me to go sand down more wooden geometric shapes. See you next week!

Dennis here, yet again...

Hey! This is Dennis here! And yet again, I am reporting from the workshop again. One week has passed and there is much to explain. If you can recall to last week’s post, I said that I was going to start a project on PlaNYC 2030. But unfortunately, that is not the case anymore. Now, I’m planning to start a project in a photo guidebook to how individuals can make lifestyle changes that is more environmental friendly. So far that idea is brewing in my head and it appears to be more interesting that PlaNYC.
Besides changing my project, the week was pretty eventful because there is always something to do at Hester Street Collaborative. Next week we are about to start the design camp for the young kids and to prepare for the design camp we were instructed to create boxes that will be used in the stepping stone project. The boxes will be used to hold the design and the concrete mixture until it is dry. We also cut out geometric shapes and sand it down so the kids are able to us it to create a creature that they found in the garden. There is a lot of sawdust down here from all of the sanding. I have a feeling that we are about to clean the workshop again.
And when we are not preparing for the design camp, we are at the garden as usual, tending to the many plants that inhabit it. We were removing the weeds from the vegetables and then we were cleaning up the peach tree. It turns out that the peach tree is infected with a type of fungus and so we were removing the stuff that was oozing out from the tree. It was pretty fun. That is all that I have time to write about, so until next time have fun without me.

Mindy is back...

Hey this is Mindy again. This will be my third week working at HSC. I just finished my first silkscreen. It came out the way I wanted it to. I like the strong contrast in color and the use of only primary colors.
Last week, I worked on Illustrator for the first time, which I had always wanted to do. I learned how to use the pen, smoothing and anchor tools. It was easy to catch on. I also started researching on Chinatown Youth Initiatives, a non-profit organization that helps the local community through community projects similar to HSC’s.
At the garden, I helped take out the goo from the peach tree. A lot of ants were crawling all over it. Poor tree. Now we need to go buy fungicide to help save it. I also picked out the dead leaves off the sunflowers. Hope those sunflowers will bloom brighter!
We are up to our next project, to create a stepping-stone as a group for the garden. It is hard deciding which design to use. We’re all contemplating whether to use a tree, a bee, a squirrel, a chick, or a spider as our design. This project will be very fun. We get to work with cement! Time to get messy!