paper used to cover the chip board book covers
DAY (Detroit Asian Youth) Project, a group for Asian American youth in Detroit focusing on social justice issues while developing leadership skills using popular education methods, spent the day making things with our hands. After a few weeks on the computers editing video footage for our forthcoming video on stereotypes, it was good to get our hands dirty with paint, glue and dye.
We made accordion books, silkscreened and tie-dyed, and a some of us made earrings out of copper wire, denim and cloth, or learned how to knit.
The accordion books were pretty straightforward: 2 pieces of chip board (cardboard would work, too) and nice bookbinding paper, which we folded into a four-part accordion. We then glued the 2 outside pieces to the chip board and voila! a book is born. Jina also taught us how to add extra pages with a “hinge,” essentially a smaller piece of paper folded in half the long way that you glue to the two disconnected accordion pages (check out this link for better instructions and pictures http://www.booklyn.org/education/isaccordion.pdf)
half-finished accordion book
Our afternoon silkscreening session was almost a disaster because Meiko wasn’t paying attention and burned the image backward onto the screen, so that when we printed it, the whole thing could only be read in the mirror. Luckily we didn’t panic, and improvised a way to print through the side of the screen that is normally laid flat on the table.
don’t do what we did and burn the image backwards!
We finished off the day with tie-dyeing (shirts have to soak up the dye, so they won’t be ready for another day or so) and honed our fine motor skills with knitting (tricky, but we catch on fast!) and jewelry-making, which involved bending copper wire and sewing it onto denim with clear fishing line, and adding metallic paint or fabric for embellishments. For more photos of our work and summer activities, you can check out our tumblr page: day-project.tumblr.com
Allysen hanging shirts to dry
Thanks so much to Makerspace for allowing us to use their amazing space and their screen-printing equipment and darkroom!