artsed4all Art & the Environment, Arts Education, Drama / Theatre, Music, Visual Arts

Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin: The Butterfly Effect

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On Sunday, April 13, The Luggage Store Annex and ArtsEd4All partnered to bring The Butterfly Effect to Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin. In support of Makeway for Monarch’s “Call for Contemplation and Action for Monarchs and Other Imperiled Pollinators” marking the 50th Anniversary of the passing of author Rachel Carson. Visitors to the stretch of Ellis Street between Hyde and Leavenworth were invited to learn more about the plight of the monarch butterfly.

The Butterfly Effect - 66

The day began on the street readings, Butterfly Poems & Stories delivered by Norma Rodriguez, Mark Heinrich, Joanie Juster, and Christine Dodds, while inside the Tenderloin National Forest, Amara Tabor Smith ladled out helping of her delicious stew with “Fresh from the Oven.”

The Butterfly Effect - 67

Butterfly-inspired art activities included bookmaking with Mary Ann Cruz with support from Academy of Art University School of Interior Architecture & Design student volunteers.

“Got Milkweed?” Judy Toupin invited passersby to try their hand at planting. Milkweed plants were on display, and The Pollinator Project provided information about how to create pollinator gardens and raised awareness for the protection of butterflies, and their habitats and migratory paths.

The Butterfly Effect - 52

Young readers were invited to learn more with the Little Free Library #9859, which was filled with books about caterpillars, butterflies and other pollinators, along with a special contribution of specially selected titles donated by Chronicle Books.

“Butterfly Wings,” a special photo booth created by Rooftop School art coordinators Amy Balsbaugh and Cheryl Ball, with help from the students in Ms. Duff’s first grade class, invited passersby to transform themselves into beautiful monarch butterflies.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Crowds gathered in the street to enjoy special musical performances by Rooftop’s rock bands Blade and C&R directed by Mike Rao of The Blue Bear School of Music. The street entertainment culminated with Mark Heinrich’s dramatic reading of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction classic, “The Sound of Thunder,” a cautionary tale involving time travel, dinosaurs and a lone butterfly.

Blue Marbles were given in gratitude to all who pledged to use their voice to help protect the monarch butterfly for future generations. The Butterfly Effect posits that the flap of a butterfly’s wings can set great winds of change in motion, so it was only fitting that as Sunday Streets drew to a close, Lucia of Michoacán should appear on Ellis Street to share childhood memories of forests, dense with the wondrous fluttering of orange and black.

10156035_861613757197744_3605273591613333135_n

ArtsEd4All “The Butterfly Effect” at Sunday Streets Team

Event Coordination: Darryl Smith, Luggage Store Gallery & Andi Wong, ArtsEd4All
Event Activities: Mary Ann Cruz, Judy Toupin
Photo Booth: Rooftop K-8 Art Coordinators Amy Balsbaugh & Cheryl Ball, Ms. Andrea Duff’s first grade class
Live Performance: Amara Tabor Smith “Fresh From the Oven”
Rooftop Rock Bands Blade and C&R; Mike Rao, director, Blue Bear School of Music
Readings: Chrissy Dodds, Joanie Juster, Mark Heinrich, Norma Rodriguez
Volunteer Support: Academy of Art University School of Interior Architecture & Design, Rooftop K-8 alumni parents Victor Yan, Wendy Hanamura, Sheila Hall
Community Partners: The Pollinator Project, Chronicle Books

For more information and ways that you can help the monarch butterfly, please visit:

Monarch Watch:  http://monarchwatch.org/

Pollinator Partnership:  http://pollinator.org/

The Xerces Society: http://www.xerces.org/educational-resources/#online

Selecting Plants for Pollinators: http://pollinator.org/PDFs/Guides/CalifCoastalChaparralrx6FINAL.pdf

National Geographic:  How to Create Your Own Monarch Butterfly Rest Stop:  http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/140819-monarch-butterfly-way-station-vin

US Forest Service:  “Attracting Pollinators to Your Garden Using Native Plants”

http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/

http://www.thebutterflysite.com/create-butterfly-garden.shtml

artsed4all Art & the Environment, Arts Education, Visual Arts

“The Butterfly Effect” – ArtsEd4All @ Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin

Crossings - 541

“THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT” @ SUNDAY STREETS

Sunday, April 13, 2014, 11am-4pm

at the Luggage Store Annex/Tenderloin National Forest

509 Ellis Street (between Hyde & Leavenworth)

ArtsEd4All: Art & Science Activities for Children & Families

Flights of Imagination with Little Free Library #9859
Art & Crafts: Make your own Butterfly Pop-Up Book
Take your pic at the “Butterfly Wings” Photo Booth
Butterfly Kisses – Make Way for Monarchs “Call for Contemplation & Action for Monarchs”
“Got Milkweed?” Planting for Pollinators
Metamorphosis: Be a ‘rabble’ rouser. Transform Ellis Street with butterflies

For more information on Sunday Streets, visit http://www.sundaystreetssf.com/tenderloin-41314/

 Join us for Sunday Streets, as the Luggage Store Annex & ArtsEd4All crew uses “The Butterfly Effect” to transform the Tenderloin National Forest and the surrounds on Ellis Street with the help of pollinators of all shapes and sizes.

Makeway for Monarch’s “Call for Contemplation and Action for Monarchs and Other Imperiled Pollinators” begins at on April 13th (Palm Sunday), and continues until dusk on April 14th – the 50th Anniversary of the passing of Rachel Carson.

For more information on the Call for Contemplation, visit www.makewayformonarchs.org

Given that the numbers of honey bees, bumblebees and monarch butterflies may now be lower than at any point in our lifetimes, this spring is an appropriate time for Americans to show the concern for, love of and commitment to the pollinators which help bring us our daily bread and offer nature’s services to keep our food system secure. We invite you to celebrate with butterflies, “brightly fluttering bits of life,” by joining us an afternoon of art and science, with compassion and action for nature.

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts”

— Rachel Carson

artsed4all Art & the Environment, Music, Visual Arts

The Fundred Project

Artist Mel Chin’s The Fundred Dollar Bill Project invites children to create their own Fundred dollar bill to symbolically raise $300,000,000, the estimated cost to treat New Orleans soil to create a lead-safe New Orleans. In New Orleans alone 86,000 properties are estimated to have unsafe levels of lead in the soil. At least 30% of the inner city childhood population is affected from lead-poisoning. Operation Paydirt provides the science to transform lead so that it is no longer harmful and a citywide implementation strategy with the potential of creating a model for all cities facing a similar threat.  http://fundred.org/

You are invited to contribute your own original Fundred to the project.  Start by downloading the Fundred template, and get creative!  http://fundred.org/get-involved/

Image

Preparing for the Second Line

The Second Line parade is a New Orleans tradition that arose out of the two parts of a jazz funeral. The second line is a celebration of the life of the deceased, typically held by Social (Aide) & Pleasure Club of the neighborhood. Once a funeral service was over, a procession would travel from the church to the cemetery.  Led by a “Grand Marshal,” a brass band would play slow sad music representing the struggles, the hardships, the ups and downs of life. On the way back after the burial, the music would become more joyful. A Main Line is the “main section or the members of the actual club, that has the permit to parade. The “second line” refers to the group of people following the “main line.”

In the “Crescent City,” there are dozens of different second line parades put on throughout the year, held in neighborhoods all across the city. Each second parade has its own style and character, but there are the basics: a brass band, jubilant dancing in the street and people all decked out in colorful attire: sashes, hats and bonnets, parasols and banners.

“Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the Saints go marching in…”

 

The Mask, The Umbrella  & The Song

Ms. Sugawara’s 7th graders made masks featuring a symbol designed by each student to represent their family’s cultural heritage.  The teachers decorated second line umbrellas for their classrooms. Louis Armstrong recorded “When the Saints Go Marching In” in 1938, and the song has remained a tried and true staple of American Music since then.  There are close to 1,000 different recordings of the song by artists as varied as Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, James Brown, and even the Beatles, whose version was on the “B” side of the their first commercial release in 1961.  But it’s Satchmo’s version that people turn to capture that familiar New Orleans Spirit.

 

artsed4all Visual Arts

Folding an Origami Butterfly

Teaching Artist Lilli Lanier demonstrates how to fold an origami butterfly. Rooftop’s 6th grade students collaborated to make hundreds of yellow, gray, and black origami butterflies that were used to create a silhouette portrait of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  6th graders learned about the characters of the opera — Cio-Cio-San, Pinkerton, Sharpless, Goro, Suzuki and Trouble — in advance of their invitation to attend the final dress rehearsal of San Francisco Opera’s 2010 production of the operatic classic.

Students learned about the Japanese art of Origami (from ori meaning “folding”, and kami meaning “paper”).

Origami is the traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding, which started in the 17th century AD and was popularized in the mid-1900s. It has since then evolved into a modern art form. .

Link to San Francisco Opera’s Education Program’s classroom materials for Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

Link to Origami Club website, featuring lots of simple origami folds, unit folds and printable origami paper designs.

artsed4all Visual Arts

Storytelling & Collage

“A Moveable Feast” is a visual art lesson created for our 2011 Art Is… Expression study, in response to the art of Flo Oy Wong, visual storyteller.  Rooftop families were invited to work together to eate a mixed-media collage using memories and stories about food as the source of inspiration.

Artistic expression gives us a way to capture and share family stories. Food, like music and art, is often the way young children begin to learn about family and culture. We believe that art making gives us a way learn more about each other and helps to build connections between individuals, families, and inter-generational understanding. Art, like food, is a moveable feast that nourishes the spirit.

Download a pdf for “A Moveable Feast” ART IS… 2012 Family Art Activity

 

artsed4all Visual Arts

Shadow Puppets

2010 Family Art Workshop: Shadow Puppetry

Artists extraordinaire Aiko Cuneo, founder of the Rooftop Art Program, and Lilli Lanier led the Rooftop kindergarteners and their families in a shadow puppet workshop in conjunction with the 2010 art study “Art Is… Illumination.”  Families came together with art to play with light and shadow for a magical evening.

Rooftop’s 2010 Kindergarten Family Art Night was held on September 16th at Rooftop’s Burnett Campus.