brave girls project

Earthaware soul sister Karen Weiss runs a bi-monthly project in Vancouver, Washington for girls going through a number of challenging life situations. she uses shared creation art projects as the vehicle for personal transformation with groups of girls ranging in age from 8-16.

starting with a kit of re-use and found objects the group worked this past Wednesday to weave Native American Dreamcatchers, objects that they can place thier bright future visions into for manifestation in thier lives.

Karen lists the ingredients used to cook up this amazing project:

• reclaimed "bailing wire" I cut myself @ a friends barn when feeding and working her horses - RE-USE
• Freshly cut birch branches from my weeping birch in front yard - RE-USE
• Polished sea glass I collected from all around the world - RE-USE
• Misc shells, wood and beads also collected from around the world - RE-USE
• Green string I saved from Tibet.... that was braided into my hair by an elder - RE-USE
• Heavier string to create the web **** this was the ONLY item purchased***

Karen taught the girls to suspend the shells and glass, weave the sticks and sew together the elements into personal Dreamcatchers that they could take with them. we are so happy to have Karen and the Brave Girls on the Earthaware team!

looking at recycle and REUSE

we couldn't agree more: recycling can be great however it does require more energy consumption to gather, transport, reprocess, refabricate and redistribute the materials being recycled: REUSE on the other hand does not take the material out of the consumption stream, it keeps it in play and that truly reduces the footprint of the consumption at hand!

this is why we do it

HOLA Los Angeles

last week we met with Anthony Brown, Executive Director of Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), an urban non-profit organization serving 2,400 youths in central LA by offering a multitude of after school programs as an alternative to the all to prevalent gang culture of the area.

Tony and Owen agreed to March 17 as the date for the first Earthaware and A+D Museum ArchKIDtecture+Design program to be held at HOLA. We will work with the HOLA kids, A+D kids and local landscape maintenance materials plus trash we will gather off the area streets to collectivley create 3D art structures. We are capping this event at the first 50 kids that register. It will be a day long program of learning the connections between materials and environment: creativity and conservation!

sand dancer inspiration

We were sent this amazing exampl;e of creativity at large scale from earthaware supporter and contributor Karen Weiss. As Karen points out, "the ability to create with sand on your toes... can't wait to do it some day in big scale and collaboration."

Earthaware could not agree more so we have added two modules to the developing K-12 curriculm based on Sand Dancers creations, one to address SCALE and the other to investigate relative extremes of temporary vs. permanenet visual art, thanks Karen!