Post Nicotine Book Moving Right Along
I work at a youth center in Pa’ia, HI (Maui) we are at the end of an anti-tobacco project which was a year long. One of the activities which we named “Post Nicotine”is what this is about today.
Anyone familiar with “Post Secret” will better understand our idea. We delivered 5X7 blank postcards to every school or local business who was willing to participate and simply asked them to draw or write their thoughts about smoking. They were addressed and stamped and we received around 235 cards back. We then decided to do an art project with them. They were big, bulky and glossy so it took awhile to decide the best way to display them.
Unfortunately the first concrete idea we came up with was to burn the edges and bind them in a chunky-funky book. Great idea however when I glued them together into pages (burnt edges together) one side on every signature was upside down. It would have been ok as we could have made a book in which the viewer could flip it over but it really bugged me. Plus, the glossy paper buckled and bubbled on some and they were not as nice looking.
Luckily the director of the project had them all scanned so I printed them all as wallet sized images and we collaged them 5, 6 or 7 to a page.
We used Traci Bautista’s Fusion-dyed collage technique which is in her book, “Collage Unleashed.” We used an HP photosmart printer on regular bright white all purpose paper and Modgepodge instead of photocopies and glue.
About 15 youth members, another staff and I are working on this. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to watch 9-16 year olds doodling away with sharpies, paint-pens, Sakura Gel Pens and Pearlex Paint.
Most of those supplies are not even available on island or at best scarce. Not to mention the fact that the method is foreign to them as they know only what was taught to them in school. One 15 year old who was helping with gluing the cards in place said, “I love this, I can’t draw or paint but I can do this.”
Thank you:
- Tracy for sharing your method
- Up Country Fine Arts in Makawoa and Ben Franklin in Kahului for carrying some of these delicious supplies
- Kahului Borders for carrying so many technique based art books
- Amazon.com, DickBlick.com, Jerrysartorama.com and Createforless.com for using USPS Priority mail service so that we can afford to order these things to play with
Here are three pages (I have yet to count them all). Keep in mind that the original is 12X11 or so and it would not all fit on my scanner. Some are highly decorated and some not so much. Also, please remember that the rectangular images are the actual prints of the cards we received back they are from the community and as such were created by young and old alike. The doodles and outside words are added by us.
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