bookmaking in malacatoya... This workshop was designed as part of the Los Angeles community development project. The goal was to have children use art making as a means of becoming aware of and exploring their surroundings. Their only prior art making experience was a workshop with a nicaraguan artist who taught them "how to draw a house, a tree, a flower and a star."

four views book we started by looking out from the school in four directions. each page shows what was observed from each view. they started with stereotypical representations of "tree" and "house", though some worked hard to draw what they saw.

special place  next they told stories, using imagery, about a strange or special place in malacatoya, in these "secret door" books.

parque central models next they thought about what they would like to have in their new central park, and made paper models of their designs. the older kids (right) tended to use flat shapes, while the younger (above) were more adventurous, because we spent more preparation time exploring what you can do to paper.

parque central models here they combine paper sculpture with drawing to create their park models in pop-up book format.

dream houses next they drew their house as it is now, and then used paint, markers and crayons to transform it into their dream house. this project introduced them to transforming their surroundings using imagination. exploring materials made their imagery somewhat less iconic.

malacatoya

inspiration

main page