Youth Studio Mad Hatter Party

HEY! YOU! I LIKE YOUR HAT!!!

MAD HATTER PARTY at the Youth Studio!

The party will be held in the Lower Level Studio of BCA's Firehouse on Friday, April 9th from 5-7pm.

We'll have an AWESOME photo booth with cool backgrounds and props...totally bring funky hats, sunglasses, cat ears, your favorite magical cape, AND your friends!

At the (best) hatter party (ever), you can:

Design yor own killer mesh trucker hat

Create your own lace and feather pillbox hat

Three corner newsprint hat

Crowns

Anything!

Then take a bunch of silly photos with your friends in our righteous photo booth!

We'll have great food, tea, of course, music, a slideshows of our epic stop animations, and much more....

CURIOUS??? YOU MUST BE MAD!? SAVE THIS VERY IMPORTANT DATE!

(it's ok to be late! ha ha!)

Upstairs in the Firehouse Gallery will be the Reception for the upcoming exhibit: Pilgrimmage, by Sally Linder. You can check this out too, open to all!

An Ode to Nice Days

Yes, it is true that this morning I marched through an early morning cold full of fog and finger tingling goodness, but just last week I saw crocus and dandelions in full bloom, and, even more exciting, we spent four out of five days making art outside on the Firehouse Plaza.  We filled up our shopping cart, named Gold Lemay, with glitter and beads and pipe cleaners and shrinky dinks and markers and drawing paper and dragged out art tables and chairs and platters of cheese and bagels and fruit to take in the glorious sun and make art in the company of wind and trees.  Ashley taught me how to make a visor out of bristol board and string and the sun taught be how to relax and unwind.  It was a good week, but it's nice to be back in the Youth Studio, with its warm orange walls and complete lack of sunlight.  It creates a small, cozy, focused environment where you can forget the world, make art, and lose track of time.  - Melissa

Graffiti: Then and Now

Today, we see graffiti everywhere - from scribbles on bathroom stalls to giant painted murals on buildings. The need to immediately express oneself is nothing new, and in fact is something that has connected humans throughout history.

One of the first known artworks is also a work of graffiti. The Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux, France is the inside of a cave, covered with paintings from 15,000 BCE of human figures chasing and hunting bulls and deer. This may not seem like our modern graffiti - but these pre-historic peoples felt a need to depict their hunts - perhaps it was a form of tagging, to boast of their success at hunting, or a way to show future people about their skills and history.

Another example of ancient graffiti are the "Talking Statues of Rome." The first talking statue was Pasquino, an ancient statue dug up and erected near Rome's Piazza Navona in the 1500's. The Cardinal held a celebration for the discovery of the statue, and wrapped it in a toga. Soon, however, people would anonymously post letters or writings of anger or dissatisfaction with the government, religious leaders, or the way life in Rome was going. Pasquino, although a lifeless statue, became a voice for the people of Rome.

Soon, other statues started being used for the same purpose throughout the city, such as Il Babuino. Il Babuino was cleaned of all its graffiti a few years ago, but it used to be a place where anyone could go to voice their feelings, positive or negative. These are pictures from before and after the cleaning:

Burlington, along with cities and towns across the world, contains graffiti. This is a video created by my friend and senior at St. Michael's, Andy Kuzmin, about graffiti in Burlington. See anything you recognize?

Photos by Craig Ledoux

Sometimes, graffiti is a picture, other times it is the tag of a certain artist, and still other times it is a scribbled message or phrase; regardless, it was something that person felt had to be painted or written, to show or speak to others. In this way, we are very similar to even the cave dwellers of thousands of years ago.

Michael Jackson is My Inspiration

Every time Kevin comes in we get to have a Michael Jackson dance party. He dances just like him! but the rest of us are still learning. This is what Kevin has to say about Michael Jackson:

He really cared about the earth and people and that's why I like listening to his songs.  I really care about the earth, too.
He was a good singer and he didn't deserve to die. I have liked him for a very long time. My little sister likes him, too. She's 6.

I asked Kevin how he learned how to dance like Michael Jackson. He said:

I watched way too many of his movies. At camp I started practicing his moves and then I got better at it. And I really want to follow in his footsteps when I get older.

Kevin has been practicing his Michael Jackson moves for about a year and a half now and it shows. Recently, he has begun creating wonderful Michael Jackson inspired artwork. And he's working on a special video.