Our Last Day :(

Hey guys it's Yanely,

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post, but we were having some technical difficulties with our blog! But now that's all over, and sadly so is our internship here at Hester Street! I sure will miss taking the downtown B train to Grand Street everyday after school! I must say that I have had an amazing time interning for Hester Street. I have learned a great quantity of skills that I am sure will come in handy when I enter college. All of the projects that I have been a part of have been enjoyable and informative, and the entire internship has been an exciting learning experience. I am glad to have had the opportunity to work with people who truly care for improving and serving communities through art and design. Simple projects, such as lantern-making, can make students and teachers smile, and bring joy to the community. Working in the garden has been amazing because I’ve been able to see the transformation of the space over the past two years. The most current project has been creating pavers and stepping stones with the children from P.S.134, that will serve as pavers and decoration in the garden!(I made the bird paver on the upper right corner) The pavers will add color and artwork to the garden and will allow the children to feel proud of their contribution. It is amazing how much change we can produce with just a little bit of community support. I am happy to have been able to participate, even in the smallest events and projects, because I know that it is contributing to a bigger and better cause! Since I have had such fun here at Hester and I have learned so much I feel honored to remain a part of the organization. I will soon become an honorary board member for Hester Street Collaborative. I feel like the organization has such an amazing program for all generations of people, and I really want to inform my generation and share with them, not only my experiences, but also allow them to be able to create experiences of their own here at Hester Street. I hope that you all reading this post will feel inspired to do something good and productive in your neighborhoods because it's something great that everyone can achieve!

Here's a picture of two of my younger brothers and I working in the garden on a volunteer day.

the weather is getting warmer!

Xing here! Summer’s here!

With the weather getting warmer, we started to do some major garden work at P.S.134. A couple of weeks ago, Anne and Dylan took us to the Storefront, to view some architecture works presented and it has become one of my favorite days here. It was especially fun and very inspirational for me because I am going to major in Architecture! We brainstormed afterwards and did some paver designs that would best suit the garden and its new look. We decided on “garden creatures” and used the small geometric shapes that the kids at P.S. 134 are learning in class. I started with a tomato but it soon developed into a mosaic green ant. Yanely designed a bird and Wawa made a water pot design. I had a lot of fun with experimenting/mixing concrete and the designing part of the process but cutting the mosaic to pieces to fit the design nicely was quite challenging for me. The small mosaic pieces never come out right for me when I try to cut it but nevertheless, the outcomes came out looking GREAT! We then use these pavers as examples for the children of P.S.134 to make their own design using the geometric shapes Dylan cut out. And for the past two weeks, we have been making form works and cutting shapes for these new pavers so that they will look great! It was really fun seeing the cool designs little kids were able to come up with. While the pavers are being casted, the garden is also starting to look organized on its own.

before and after mosaic. and there's MY ANT!

we're all working hard at the garden. Thumbs up =D

It’s my last week here interning at Hester Street Collaborative. Very sad to leave but it has definitely been a pleasure to work here. I gained many new skills and great experiences at Hester Street Collaborative. Very thankful to Dylan and Anne and the opportunities given at HSC =D

Pavers

Hey it's Yanely and Xing here! We are at Hester Street early today since we had a half-day at school, and the project that we'll be working on today consists of creating pavers for the P.S.134 Garden. Xing has an idea where she will try to design a paver with a clear resin part in the middle where she will place some kind of object, most likely a seed or leaf, so that it can be seen in the concrete. I am going to create a design for the form work of a "board game" paver that will consist of several pavers that come together to form a tic tac toe board. This project has been a lot of fun so far and it will be really cool to see our designs for the frameworks be made into real pavers that the kids can take part in at their garden.

Ok that's it for us today and we'll be back to write again soon!
As Xing says CIAO!

Waeeny's Chinese New Year experience :)

Hey! Its me, Waeeny Dessources, a fairly new Hester Street Collaborative intern. Recently, Yanely, Xing and I have been working on the Chinese New Year party activities and projects for the children. At first, we all sat down and brainstormed about which activities we would create that would interest a younger audience. Certain youth activities that we came up with included making masks, name tags, finger puppets, stamps, and lucky red envelopes; which were created to resemble the Chinese Zodiacs, especially the Golden Boar. The masks along with the nametags, envelopes, and fortunes were created using an Illustrator Program. For the masks, I drew half of the animal’s head on a sheet of paper using Adobe Illustrator, and created indicator lines so that the person making it would know to fold it in half and cut along the lines. Second were the stamps. After Yanely and I took a walk to Pearl Paint in search of linoleum and cutting tools, we returned to the office and copied the animal templates onto the linoleum. Soon after the pieces were carved out, wood was glued onto the back surface and therefore; creating a stamp. We created several of each animal so that the supply would be sufficient. It was quite an allusive experience due to the fact that so many children participated in the event and it caused me to realize that all the hard work paid off. As the festivities commenced, waiters and waitresses served exquisite Chinese cuisine as everyone took park in the tasting of the delicious dumplings. Planning the party and watching it become reality was undoubtedly a momentous experience for me. Not only did I learn about Chinese New Year while creating the activities, but I also had a load of fun taking part in the event. :)

Xing here!

Hey, Xing’s first posting here =D. We have been very busy at HSC lately because there were so many preparations that needed to be done for the Chinese New Year Celebration. Yanely, Wawa (Waeeny), and I were assigned series of projects to do before the big celebration. We had to come with different ways of fun things to do in relation to Chinese traditions, such as activities dealing with ancient Chinese zodiacs. Yanely worked on making finger puppets templates, Wawa did really cool masks, and I made many animal zodiac sketches that were later turned into labels and stamp designs. The stamps were really fun to make! Anyways, we also had lantern making, envelope making and cool facts about every single zodiac animals. We finally pulled everything off at the last minute and the party began. Very fun party! Most of the kids enjoyed the craft-making that we had prepared for them and the kids liked bunnies and dragons the most, which I thought was odd because all the others were very good too! The kids were hard to communicate with at first because they didn’t know what Chinese New Year was about and so we had to elaborate on that. Yanely was really good with the little kids but I don’t have much luck with them so this was a very good experience for me. It was frightening at first because I have never dealt with so many kids at once but nevertheless, it ended up fine. Phew =]. At the party, I helped the kids with making their own name tags and lucky red envelopes; and at the end, most of the kids knew their birthdays’ relation to what zodiac they are assigned to and the personalities of their zodiac signs. Our party with the kids went really well and one of the kids even made a name tag for Wawa =D. Wells, here are some pictures! Enjoy~

The room setup and our hard work on putting up the pretty lights. and look! there’s the minicake stand that everyone enjoyed eating. oh and there’s the kids making crafts =D
Sam making some lanterns….and a lot other crafts. She didn’t want to go home lol
the craft making station...there's alot of stuff going on there
US at work. (wawa, yanely, xing)

alrighty, ciao for now =]
-Xing

Hello! It's Fiona again! (booooooo! Where's Raymond?)
Waeeny, Xing, and Nelly prepared for the Chinese New Year party by making finger puppets.
Fiona ran an errand to the post office to deliver an important mail, while Stephanie and Kevin were silk screening T-Shirts samples. Zhoudi and Winnie were working on the fliers that will be handed out for the T-Shirts. Jennifer and Jeffery were cleaning up the basement and throwing out garbage.

Now here are some pictures :D

Yay we're back again :D

Hello it's Fiona again :D
So it's almost a new month, and we're finally back to give you an update!
We split up into three groups for our agenda. Stephanie and Kevin went to the garden to inventory tools, while Jennifer and Jeffery ironed the finished T shirts, and Raymond and I continued to work on our designs.
We did a lot of progress for our designs. We decided what size the design is going to be for the T shirt.
After Jennifer and Jeffery ironed the T shirts, they've also inventory them. They also counted how many T shirts were already made, and placed them into the boxes.
Kevin and Stephanie came back from their trip to the garden, and went back downstairs to invetory the tools there. After they were done, they headed over to the computer to database their inventory.
Pictures will be up soon :D Farewell!
-Fiona

It's a new year, time to get back to work!

Hi, I'm Raymond. =D Today, we split up our work and I was assigned to work with Kevin to pick out the designs and colors for the T-shirts we're planning to use for fundraising and then we were suppose to confirm the sizes for the colors we picked.
Stephanie, Dylan and Jennifer practice silk screening with messed up T-shirts, they will later on have enough experience to help make the T-shirts to sell.
Fiona ironed the T-shirts so that the ink that's on the T-shirts won't fade. Winnie prepared the t-shirts with cardboard panels. Yanely and Zhoudi (later joined by Winnie) were working on the images [in photoshop] that will be used for printed on the T-Shirts. While we were working on our tasks, Jeff was taking pictures of us so we could show you guys :D ^_^

Dududu.

These are the assignments that we had!

Silkscreening fun :D

Ironing Station

Colors for the T-shirts

Preparing the T-shirts

Yay! Everyone go look at the documentary!

Hey guys! This is Fiona again, and finally I've decided to upload the documentary! I also have pictures from two weeks ago, we learned how to silk screened and everything, it was pretty awesome!

December Update

Well, I guess we're making monthly updates now since we keep forgetting to update.

After we finished the documentary and presented it in November, we decided to take a break from working on the park and do some work on the garden. We cleaned up the garden and took all the signs down. We're going to have to make them differently since gluing paper signs onto wood didn't work so well; maybe we'll silkscreen them?
It was already December, so it started to get cold and we couldn't work outside anymore. At the office, we played with some designs on the t-shirts and practiced silkscreening.
Last week, Anne's friend, Jackie, came to interview us about the SDR documentary and youth media in general. It was pretty interesting. She gave us snacks after the interview :)
During the interview, Dylan silkscreened a lot of the shirts while Yanely ironed them. They looked really nice. I'd show you pictures if I had any.

Yesterday, Anne took us to the Museum of Modern Art. We looked at many different pieces, most of which were puzzling. I really liked the wallpaper with different frames in the piece. As a whole, it was an image of a brick wall. Within each brick, something different and unusual took place. Between the bricks, you could see cement dripping in random areas. It looked really cool. In one frame/brick, there was a smiley face (well, not really smiley, it had a blank facial expression) and next to it, there were geometric shapes, kind of like boxes, with faces on them too. Each one had a different expression... You couldn't even tell what emotions the objects were emitting because they were so strange. There was also a model of a building that's being constructed in China. It's GIGANTIC! Go check it out some time.

That's all for this month. Happy holidays!

- Steph

Whoosh finally a update!

Hey this is Fiona speaking :D!
Finally! We've been too busy to update our blog lately, and we apologize! So, a little update on what we've done this month... We were working on the project that involved the reconstruction of Sara D. Roosevelt Park. We decided to make a documentary, so we could show the community some ideas that can be put to work for the reconstruction. [I think that sentence made sense x.x] . With a lot of group work, spending a lot of our time going to different types of parks around the city, we got our documentary done! I'll put it up on YouTube soon, so everyone can check it out :D We also had a visioning day at the park so people around the community could take part in how they want their own park to look like.

In the mean time, here are some pictures!!

This is one of the pictures from Visioning Day. Children put what they wished their park to be like on these lanterns and they were put up on a string for everyone to see.

These are all the models that the children built. These wonderful creations came from their vof their dream park.


We were so excited with all the children contributing to visioning day that we also took part in it and built our own dream park!



This is me [Fiona] in SDR park, discussing about what the park should look like.


This is Sonya [left] and Anne [ right]. Sonya was a guest, who's a film producer. She stopped by and gave us some ideas and advice for our documentary. Thank you Sonya for helping us, and also letting us use your camera! Look at Anne smiling :P


Look at Jennifer with her shy smile :D


Look at Zhoudi [left] and Winnie [right]. I caught them off guard :D


Kevin waving at the camera! :Waves:


Raymond didn't want to take a picture, so I forced him to...look at his face...he looks all evil x.x


Look at Stephanie, she doesn't even want to have her picture taken. Hehe, Stephanie with her sour face.

Okay! Well, next week will be a lot of fun! We will be heading to the PS 134 garden, and we will clean that garden up so it'll be nice and clean!

I'll be back soon with more updates! :D

-Fiona

A Documentary? No way!

Hey, everyone! This is Steph. Yes, I'm back! So, we're just going to continue where we left off during the summer. We've got some new volunteers with us. Their names are Fiona, Winnie, Zhoudi, Kevin, and Jeffrey. Jennifer is still with us. Everyone else is just too busy for us and yeah, they're not cool. So far, we've been looking at other parks around the city. We went to Seward Park and a few playgrounds at Central Park. We also went to this park down the street. It looks like it's a private park for the building behind it, but I guess it's not. At those parks, we observed the population, the equipment, and uses. We plan on creating a documentary on park structures and everything that we observe. Our goal is to visit 10-15 parks upon completing the documentary. We're going to show the NYC Parks Dept. what we've been doing and hopefully, they will hear us out. We're still going to work on the P.S. 134 garden, but right now, we're really focusing on the SDR project more. Keep checking for more updates later.

Last Day ='(

Hey this is Judith. Today's the last day for all of us in CPC, but if we get the chance we'll probably volunteer and work here during the school year or come visit.

We spent most of today putting up all of the signs we made on the fences around the garden. It took a really long time but we finally finished at around 5 PM. They look really nice and colorful. It took a lot of work making the signs and everything and now that we've finished with them and we're done putting them up it feels like a great accomplishment. In addition to that, we also cleaned up in the basement and swept everywhere so that there was no more sawdust on the floor.




Overall I think I had a very good experience working here and of course, I'll miss working here. Byeee everyone! =D

bye bye...

wow, its the last time i'll be writing a blog again. well for hester street that is. This is jeanette by the way. It's been fun working at hester street. i learned many things such as using photoshop and using Adobe indesign. Its has been fun. i'm might come back for the fall. Today we continue with our "Garden Sign Factory". Today we had to drill the holes into the signs and glue the mascot signs onto the pieces of wood. Then we spray polyurethane all the signs. Then we used liquid polyurethane to paint the edges and the holes that we made in the signs. This is so that we can have the whole sign polish so that when we hang the signs outside in the garden, the signs won't break apart due to the rain. Right now we are still drillign the holes into the signs and painting them with liquid polyurethane. So toxicating x_X so much.

The Garden Sign Factory:


stephaine, fixing and gluing the signs


me, drawing the holes for where i'm going to drill the signs.

This is the last time you'll see me

Hello. It's JENNIFER AGAIN, but this will be my last post. Work is going to end this Thursday. Ahhh! I really had a lot of fun. I loved the smell of polyurethane, unlike everyone else. I'll also miss observing people at the SDR Park. It's unfortunate that I didn't get to stalk someone. Maybe I can do that later this week! Hahahaha... Yesterday we sanded all the wooden signs. I learned to use the orbital sander correctly. I love it when I get completely covered with sawdust. Just kidding. I really really like how it comes off so easily though.

Today we continued to work on the signs. There are about a hundred signs. Yes, wow. Afterwards Judith and I went to Avenue of the Immigrants (Allen St) to fix one of the people's middle initial. It's supposed to be "Edgar W Hopper," but it's "Edgar J Hopper." I don't understand how they'd mistaken a J for a W. By the way, those are my initials! Hahahahah! Jennifer Wong! HAHAHAHAHA. It was kind of hard to remove the J with only water and some metal brushes. We still managed to remove it with the help of Stephanie, who we call "God."

I'm going to miss these days. It was a very very very fun experience. I might even come back during the school year. It's too bad that Alex went to Texas though.

Well... goodbye then. BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I can't think of anything cool to say...

LAST WEEK?!?! NO WAY!

Hey, it's Steph. This is the last week that we, the CPC interns, are going to be working here this summer. Wow, the last seven weeks have gone by quickly. This has been a great experience. I gained a lot from it and I'd love to come back. I had a lot more fun here than I would at any other job that was offered. Typing, filing, etc? Psh, who actually wants to do that? Well, maybe some people. Anyway, I met some cool people here. SOOOOO, today, we finished sanding what we had left of the Pick Me signs. We started polyurethane-ing them, too. We still have to drill holes into each of the corners, polyurethane the holes, and hang the signs up at the garden. Then, we'll be done! Jeanette's still working on the mascot signs, but she's almost done with them. I attempted to write the summary for the Sara D. Roosevelt Park surveys, but it was hard, and my writing is too sophomoric compared to Alex's. Uh, I guess I'll have to get some help with that later. Anne invited Bonnie to come over and helpus out for the next few days. I guess that's about it for today. This was a great experience and I had a lot of fun. BYE, EVERYONEEE! Have a nice rest-of-the-summer! OMG, THE SUMMER'S ENDING?! AHHH, so soon. (sigh)

WHEEEEE

Hello again! This is Jennifer's weekly post! I'm doing it at home because I forgot about it during work. These days I have been working on the SDR Park postcards using InDesign and Photoshop. It's actually kind of fun! A lot of the HSC interns left, and only the ones from Chinese Planning Council (including me) are still working here. It's a little too quiet sometimes. Yesterday we went to the garden as usual, and we lifted a few heavy garbage bags onto a dumpster thing. We used a wheelbarrow that kept heading towards different directions! It was kind of amusing.

Today we cut out the garden signs that Yanely completed. They all have pictures of random fruits or animals that you tend to see at the garden. We are planning to place them around the area in order to get people excited about the garden. I got better at cutting with blades! It's more accurate than cutting with scissors. I also learned how to use spray mount. At the beginning I sprayed very unevenly over the signs, but now I know the right way of using it.

Alex is leaving for Texas soon! I thought it was only a trip, but apparently he'd be gone for at least three years. I was surprised haha... And I think this is my second last week here at HSC. Maybe I should work here again some time in the future.

Rain? No rain? What's with the weather?

Yo, it's Steph. So the first thing we did today was go out to Columbus Park to give out our survey. We want to compare Columbus Park and Seward Park with Sara D. Roosevelt Park to see what people like about each park. With that information, we will be able to make SDR Park better, hopefully. While Judith, Eric, and I were out at the park, Jeanette and Justin were working on the stencils and signs for the P.S. 134 Garden. They had to work with the mascots that represented each grade at the school and make it look like the signs that say "Grow Me!" and stuff. Since the mascots are animals or insects, they'll say "Find Me!" or something like that. While they were doing that, Jennifer worked on the postcards for SDR Park. She had to scan and print out the five postcards we wanted to send out first. She also had to call Leah to find out who to send them to, but she didn't pick up. Uhh... When we came back from Columbus Park, we organized the survey answers into a chart. We still had to go back to SDR to survey more people; but before we did that, we worked on the signs for the garden. We cut them out after they were all printed. Alex cut boards for us to spray mount the signs on to. Before we went to the garden, we shaped the boards to fit the signs as best as we could. At the garden, we watered the plants and threw out some garbage. Before we knew it, it was 5:30 pm and the day was over! Wow, how eventful... and... exciting... YES! EXCITING! At one point, it rained for like two and a half minutes! NO WAY! Yes way. Well, that was great. I'm exhausted. Good night.

Today was a bit cooler than yesterday but it still felt like 100 degrees -_- We went out a bunch of times in order to interview people and ask them to fill out our surveys. At first we went to SDR at around 10:30 AM to 10:50 AM. There weren't too many people at that time and we were able to do only 11 surveys. We wanted to ask some of the people at the handball courts and the basketball court but we they were playing and we didn't want to bother them. Later. We decided to survey people at other parks in order to use that information to compare it with SDR. We thought of going to both Columbus Park and Seward Park. First we changed the SDR survey to accommodate the Seward Park survey. Then, we went out to Seward Park at around 1:45 PM and interviewed people there. There weren't as many people there as we expected. It was probably because of the weather. We talked to about 15 people, most of which who were there either eating lunch or watching their kids play. After that we went back to Hester Street and compiled the data into another chart in order to analyze the information. On Monday, we will change the surveys again and go to Columbus Park. We will also continue interviewing people at SDR throughout the week.

severe delerium and anxiousness

hey its Emazing Em writing. Yesterday was 106 degrees, and its was awful. Well, not really for me becuase I got to stay inside all day long, and didn't have to go to the garden like the rest of the troop who had to eventually run to CVS pharmacy to seek refuge from the unbearable, poor-kitchen-atmosphere-like, deadly hot air. So, I was sitting at the computer next to Yanely who also stayed inside, and was focused on finishing a sign for the garden fence project. I told myself that this had, HAD to be done by the end of the day. The first design looked extremely ugly; I didn't like it at all. Then the second design, which I was okay with, was not approved by Alex The Boss. He took one look at it, and tried to politely say that it basically looked like a piece of poop. Anyway, so I was intent on designing a successful sign, and my determination made me go a little crazy. Z100 was blasting the same tunes over and over again, and Yanely and I kept humming along with our eyes glued to the computer screens when suddenly Alex ran down the stairs (thankfully he did not dramatically bump his head and fall on his butt at the bottom of the staricase again) to check up on us. I showed him my new design, and he seemed okay with it. Then he plopped into a chair next to us girls and tried to explain to me how to use Adobe InDesign when Yanely interupted him, and Alex exclaimed "be quiet before I kick you in the tooth," and as a result, this made us laugh quite hard and then we couldn't stop. Yanely and I had been sitting in front of the computers for a little too long which made our eyes a little fuzzy, and the excessive Z100 tunes made our ears hear things a little differently; we were obviously not in our usual state of minds. We concluded that we were suffering from a severe case of delirium and anxiousness to finish our assignments. However, our determination helped Yenely finish her signs, and helped me almost finish my sign. It was a very successful day and we got a lot done. Hopefully in the future, actually in my last two days, I will not suffer from severe delerium and anxiousness again.