Stone Street Residency
From October 2014 through May 2015, I participated in the Flint Public Art Project's Stone Street Co-Op and Residency, which provides local artists, writers and others working in creative disciplines to engage, create and contribute to community public art. In my time at Stone Street, I created various community arts events and workshops with the aim of encouraging local creativity.
Must Art Mondays
Must Art Mondays serves as a free open workspace for visual artists, writers and musicians to connect, collaborate, and pursue their projects. Must Art has hosted collaborative workshops where participants each contribute to the learning experience per topic. The catch? It meets on Monday nights only.
Collaborative Workshops
Around once monthly, Must Art Mondays had collaborative workshops on various topics geared by community interest. Pictured below are moments from sessions on paper-making and comics.
Participant Lynn Penning presents her first sheet of paper at the papermaking workshop.
Taylor Krick participates in a comics workshop
This design was also made into minizines to pass around at arts events.
Zine Making Workshops
Upon noticing a community interest in making zines, I opted to bring about Must Art Mondays for a seasonal workshop for Fall 2016. There were three dates for three collaborative get-togethers to make zines. To make this possible, I created a flyer, promoted on social media, created workstations with various process-oriented informational materials. Participants were encouraged to bring materials to share and so create unique zines that functioned as portable, low scale art.
A participant utilizing one of the workstations, using a resource for page design to draw technical inspiration for her layout.
A participant's finished product, primarily implementing collage as an expressive technique. The participants were encouraged to make copies of their zines to distribute in public.
Two participants at the second workshop sharing materials in the making of their zines.
Participants at the first zine workshop, rotating between stations and using the stage of the Local as a work space. The Flint Local 432, an all-ages music venue, was the location for all three workshops, and has played host to a variety of community events and activities.
A participant shares his work in progress at the end of the second night.
A participant shares her work in progress at the end of the last session.
VOICES Workshops
The three-part Voices Workshop series was created for the 2015 issue of Voices, a Greater Flint Creative Alliance publication inviting artists and writers to submit collaborative work. Flint-local artists and writers, including Art Prize finalist John Dempsey and nationally recognized photographer Rebecca Zeiss were invited to speak on themes inspired by the collaborative process between artists and writers. These workshops were made free and open to the public.
VOICES Flyers
To assist with promoting these workshops, I created these flyers using Adobe Creative Suite software.
The unified color scheme thematically links the workshops with the main VOICES Project, which used the same colors.
Click on the photos to learn more about each one.
Flint Bedouin Tent
Flint Bedouin Tent initially began as a project for the Stone Street Co-Op and Residency under the Flint Public Art Project. It functions as a nomadic events space serving the community by providing artists space to connect and share their work with the community, as well as to promote and engage community through arts and culture. Since October 2014, it has served as an arts exhibition space, storytelling circle and meditation space.
Installation: Memorial Wall
A collaboration with Davison-based artist Casey Carter, this installation served as a memorial wall for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Passersby were invited to light candles for the victims and their families.
Live Collaborative Painting
Alamah worked with three other artists to paint this collaborative painting over a three-hour period during the December 2014 Second Friday Art Walk in Flint, Michigan. They donated the proceeds from the event to the Ennis Center for Children for their arts programs.
