We’re so pleased to announce that the unveiling of our long-awaited TRASHformation sculpture at Nightingale Middle School went off without a hitch last Friday. Our participants helped dismantle the sculpture and carry it across campus to its new home in the lunch area. This location makes a perfect nesting ground for our bird since it is made mainly of lunch-related materials (like food trays and chip bags), it serves as an eye-catching reminder for the student body to recycle those items after they eat. Also, the area is covered–our bird prefers to stay dry in a rainstorm! TRASHformation participants were awarded RuckusRoots t-shirts, and presented to the rest of the student body and administration about how and why we built the sculpture once it was safely in place. We have more pictures and video coming soon! We are so proud of our Nightingale TRASHformers for all the hard work they put in on creating this piece, and for the lessons they learned along the way. Our heartfelt thanks go out to all who participated and who helped make this project possible.

We’re excited to announce yet another TRASHformation program, this newest collaboration is with our new friends at Highland Park High School and is set to begin for the Fall 2013 semester.

Earlier this week, we stopped by the school to check out the campus and had the pleasure of meeting the principal, Enrique Gonzalez. After he showed our team around the small campus,  we discussed the TRASHformation program and how it might work best for the school. The school consists of almost 100 students grades 9-12, and we’re particularly excited that the program will be integrated into the curriculum and that students will be able to earn class credit for participating. We’re also thrilled to be working at a campus that practices experiential, “Big Picture Learning,” and with a innovative administrator such as Gonzalez.

Find out more about Big Picture Learning and the concept behind schools like Highland Park High School.

James Peterson is an LA based artist whose latest interactive art piece, Sessilanoid, was accepted into Art Basel, one of the world’s premier art shows. James also happens to be a RuckusRoots collaborator; he’s worked with us on many projects, big and small. This opportunity is one of the biggest in his artistic career and we’re so thrilled for him to embrace it.

James needs our help getting Sessilanoid to Art Basel in Switzerland, so please consider donating to his Indigogo campaign! You will be rewarded with cool, custom t-shirts, posters and 3D models of the piece…how rad is that? Read on for a look into a recent conversation I had with James about how and why he makes such awesome art.

“I want people to have a respite of intrigue and joy, to tap into their inner child, that sweet naïve place where it’s okay to be in awe and just enjoy something,” James says. That’s a pretty noble goal in this hyper-stressed world in which we live, you must admit. And I especially admire another aspect of James’ artistic mission: to convey an environmental message by letting the beauty and ingenuity of the piece provide a natural bridge into discussion and education. “I like to create situations where strangers meet and things are naturally intuitive. The core of everything is enjoyment and conversation between the people interacting with it. It gives me the opportunity to share what inspires me without forcing it down their throat. I think if you make something beautiful and compelling, people naturally want to ask questions about why you did it,” he says.

Watch Sessilanoid in action below, and hear James talk about the environmental issue he hopes to bring to light with this piece. And please consider helping James raise funds to transport his piece to Art Basal on his Indigogo page.

Sessilanoid: A Sum of all Parts – Interactive Sculpture from James Peterson on Vimeo.

Thanks to Todd Sali for the images.

 We’re putting the final touches on the TRASHformation piece we’ve created with young adults from LA non profit Legacy LA, an organization that focuses on youth development. Its mission is to make positive interventions in the lives of young people by offering alternatives to gangs and violence.

RuckusRoots partnered with Legacy LA to create a TRASHformation sculpture with fourteen at-risk youth from the project housing community of Ramona Gardens in east LA. This TRASHformation is a collaborative effort that reflects issues surrounding police-installed surveillance cameras in Ramona Gardens, the housing project where most of the participants reside. Our piece explores themes of perspective: what the cameras see and what they don’t, the true Ramona Gardens (both positive and negative aspects) as seen through the eyes of our participants.

The Legacy youth told us that the surveillance cameras give them the feeling of constantly being watched, and that their presence emphasizes only the negative aspects of their community. We decided to flip this idea on its head by arming each participant with his/her own disposable camera. The participants then used the cameras to capture daily occurances in Ramona Gardens, both good and bad, in an attempt to accurately portray their community. We collected almost 400 photos from the Legacy group. Together we built a sculpture in the shape of a tree and displayed the images on the trunk going from positive to negative and then topped the tree with a large paper mache eye. We are almost done with the sculpture, can’t wait to post final pictures next week!

The sculpture is made from a collection of found chicken wire, repurposed wood, and recycled newspaper, then covered in pictures taken by Legacy LA youth. Thanks to Kyle McCullough for his paper mache instruction on this piece!

We love springtime here at RuckusRoots, and this year is no different. Our taxes are filed, we’ve moved into new offices, and we’re about to finish two wonderful programs that have kept us inspired and challenged for several months. The Legacy LA TRASHformation is well underway (see the beginnings of our sculpture, above), and the Nightingale D3 Lab TRASHformation will be completed next week. On Wednesday April 24th, we will transport our finished bird sculpture outside to its permanent home in the lunch area of campus. Several TRASHformers will give a presentation about how and why they built the sculpture…we can’t wait to share the details with you next week. Until then, stay tuned!

We are very excited to announce a new partnership with another great Los Angeles non profit, Legacy LA. Based in Boyle Heights, Legacy LA focuses on youth development; its mission is to make positive interventions in the lives of young people by offering alternatives to gangs and violence. “We build youth’s capacity to reach their full potential and equip them with the tools to transform their lives and their community.”

I was very excited to discover Legacy a couple weeks ago, and after spontaneously attending a small fundraiser for the organization (AKA crashing the founder’s birthday party), Legacy staff and I realized there is a lot of alignment between our organizations’ missions. They invited RuckusRoots to their facility to introduce TRASHformation to a group of at risk youth on Wednesday.

After meeting our team and learning about what we do, the Legacy group is very excited to move forward with TRASHformation; the sculpture we create will reflect the group’s feelings about their community–both what they are proud of and what they would like to see change. I was very impressed and motivated by the passion with which this inspiring group of young people talked about the challenges they have faced and their desire to improve the situation for coming generations.

This is going to be one of our most powerful and transformative projects to date– stay tuned for more updates as it unfolds!

The senior class at Academia Avance in Highland Park have taken it upon themselves to produce a festival, appropriately called ‘Taste of Highland Art,’ where art, music and food come together in the hopes of giving folks a “taste” of what the Highland Park community is all about.

The festival is set to include local artists, businesses, food trucks and even local bands, along with some of the students’ own artwork and creations. We found out about this exciting event from the Avance seniors who recently helped us out with our TRASHformation program at Nightingale Middle School (learn more here). These four seniors spent the last semester interning with Highland Park native artist and RuckusRoots collaborator Robin Banks, learning essential art and building skills, including welding and CNC machine operation. Recently, the interns assisted Robin in creating an art fabrication commissioned by Twitter to be used at this year’s Grammy’s!

After completing several projects, these creative students looked around and realized that many of the leftover scraps could be turned into beautiful art work. Attendees of “Taste of Highland Park” will be able to view and purchase these mini “TRASHformations” made by Robin’s Academia Avance interns. Above and below are samples of what the students are showing.

The festival will take place on March 5th and March 12th, from 3 to 9 pm in the heart of Highland Park at Ave. 57 and Marmion Way, near The Gold Line station. For more information about the festival, visit The Taste of Highland Art Facebook page. Come out and support your local community and the young artists that call it home. We’ll see you there!

Things are moving right along at Nightingale MS in the D3 Lab these last few weeks.  And we’re happy to report the Nighthawk structure is coming to life as the kids continue to add more and more of the repurposed ‘trash’ each time we meet.

One student carefully paints bicycle rims for the Nighthawk’s wings

These days, the TRASHformers waste no time getting right to business, each taking on a different role to help construct the Nighthawk. There is plenty to do in the lab, between cutting out cardboard tubes for the wings, folding chip bags for the tail feathers, or painting bicycle rims to add to our wings. The students love all the hands-on activity, and find it rewarding to watch the Nighthawk take form.  It’s been great too, to see all the familiar faces of the kids involved from the beginning and now new students joining in the action to help us build.

These Nightingale students don’t mess around when it comes to arts and crafts

Our origami specialist folds chip bags for the Nighthawk’s tail feathers

It won’t be long before the structure is complete and we are ready to move the Nighthawk to his new home, overlooking the school’s blacktop and proudly displayed for everyone to see.

The Nighthawk is almost ready to take flight!

We used recycled steel bike rims to form the torso and found scrap metal to make the outline of the wings, legs and feet. We welded it all together while adding structural stability, ensuring the sculpture is safe to display on campus.

We then delivered the frame to the D3 Lab in three pieces, setting it up so that we can begin adding to it with Nightingale students over the next few weeks.

Thanks to the Academia Avance High School senior interns who worked with Robin to weld together our Nighthawk and also transport it to the lab. We always appreciate a helping hand.

The kids were quite excited to see part of the structure come together today! We looking forward to next week when more hands will be needed and the kids’ creative ideas will finally come to life. Stay tuned!

It was a perfect rainy day to work in the D3 Lab. On Thursday the students spent the time in the lab learning to take ordinary chip bags and turn them into decoration for the sculpture.

Last week the kids discussed how the trash would be used to make the sculpture. After assessing what we had the most of, one material being chip bags, a student suggested we use the old bike wheels that were collected for the Nighthawk’s wings, weaving the chip bags through for feathers.

The students started a highly efficient assembly line starting with a few kids washing bags, some cutting the precise pieces, and then Chrissy showed the students how to fold and link the bags. Some TRASHformer’s had even done this before, making bracelets and other crafts, so these pros helped show other students just how easy it was.