Installing the Cocoon

Yesterday after session hours Ari and I went to the Armory and finally installed the large cocoon. We suspended each piece from the ceiling and then covered everything in plastic (the floor, the ceiling and the cocoon). The cocoon still needs to be reshaped and covered with more woven paper, but by Monday it will be finished aside from very minor adjustments.

armory cleansing: day 2

Suited up and ready for Day 2 of conquering the grime and dust all over the Armory floor. Dust masks and eye protection were a must.

Here's a picture of our space in the Armory. Please note the lighter parts of the floor where the wooden floorboards are peeking out - we are making progress!

By the end of the day we had swept, vacuumed, scraped, scrubbed and mopped our entire area and moved our neatly wrapped cocoon parts into the center of our space. Tomorrow evening we will have finally hung the main cocoon structure. Stay tuned, this only gets better from here on out!

top secret mission: cleaning the armory

Can the Armory floor be cleaned? Is the dust and grime too thick for our paint scrapers and scrub brushes? Will our task prove to be impossible? WILL WE SUCCEED?

To Be Continued...

extra random images from last week

Arielle and her mother led the morning activity last Tuesday and taught everyone how to hula! They are so cute in their matching outfits.

Me with the base of my giant head cocoon.



Some blurry pictures of the group playing with Lenka's group's projection set-up in the black box.

And Arielle being sassy!

GOTW: Michael Casseli

Thursday Michael Casseli's group gave their Group Of The Week presentation and it was phenomenal. As soon as you walked into their space you were surrounded by projections of flying birds and once seated you faced a 5 foot by 5 foot wax paper house which had more projected video footage on it.


The presentation began with an introduction by an invisible narrator (Nate) and live music by Kristen followed by explanations of each facet of the group's project by the rest of the group members. It was extremely impressive and was an inspiring way to end our 6th week of the program.

end of the week festivities

Thursday was De'Narrow's birthday so we sported hats and celebrated potluck style. Chris, Lenka's student artist, came by to steal leftover guacamole (made by Arielle's family - delicious!) and Sydney and Jalisa took frequent dance breaks.


Despite the party and all the food we were extremely productive. Everyone's individual cocoon/suits are coming together and now the extensions/enlargements are becoming visible. Each person is using different materials and methods to create their enlarged/extended body parts including fabrics, paper mache, pompoms and woven/twisted paper.


Arielle's brother Andrew joined us in the afternoon and worked on adding more paper to the larger cocoon structure.




And here were are heading out to help out Lenka's group in the black box. We got to wear our Tyvek jumpsuits and run/jump/crawl around in front of their crazy projection set-up. It was a ton of fun and the projected imagery that resulted from our play was very effective. Unfortunately most (if not all) of our pictures of this excursion didn't turn out so well because of the low-light levels, but if I get my hands on some pictures that Lenka took I will post them immediately.

Group Trip: The Armory

On Wednesday we traveled to see the exhibition space at the Armory for the first time as a group. Everyone was fascinated by the old freight elevator that we rode up to the third floor.

Once we made it up into the space everyone separated to explore and take photographs. Other groups have been working in the exhibition space for a week or so now. John's group is in the process of sanding and re-finishing the floor in their space and Joyce's group is building new walls. Everything is starting to come together and our group will be joining the others in the Armory on Monday morning.

the screen is always greener... on the bluer side?

At the beginning of last week Joyce's group kindly allowed us to use their (blue) green-screen set up to do some filming. Everyone took turns working on twisting paper or wrapping pompoms while Ari and I filmed their hand movements.





After filming each team member individually we did some group shots of everyone's hands and feet mimicking bug movements. Some of the finished pompoms made an appearance as well.

HIGH 5!!!

Hey all!! We are truly on the last leg of our journey here at Blue Sky and that definitely deserves some high-five action.

My deepest apologies for not keeping up with blogging lately. The past week has been a complete whirlwind. Half of our group (along with myself) participated in Shaw Pong Liu and Rodney Veal's live performance installation "Of A River" at the Schuster Center this past Thursday. We have also been preparing to move into the space at the Armory and working on getting video footage for the project portion of our piece. Keep an eye out - lots of entries will be going up on the blog today and in the following two weeks to document how everything gets pulled together!

performance inspiration

As a group we stumbled upon a strange video by a mysterious artist by the name of iamamiwhoami. The subtle movements of the performers in this video is especially inspiring. Check it out!

1st perfomance: GOTW

Group Of The Week Presentation!!!

Thursday July 15th was our team's day to give our Group Of The Week (GOTW) presentation and we totally rocked it. Here we are in uniform getting our game faces on...

getting buggy with it...

and getting pompom prepared!

In the afternoon we had to lug all of our supplies over to the Auditorium and that proved quite a task since we had to move "Jared" who is a massive pile of twisted paper spawned by our very own Sydney. Thank you to everyone who helped move "Jared"- you are all much appreciated! Below you can see Georgia hiding in "Jared" and him helping out in our performance.


So finally, following our several hour set-up, we gave our presentation to all of the Blue Sky groups along with several visitors. The following slides document the whole presentation, beginning with a short performance which involved several group members hatching from a nest. Following the performance everyone took turns explaining our progress up to this point.







For those of you who could not make it to our group presentation remember you can always come in to visit us and we would be glad to talk to you more about our project. Also, questions and comments on the blog itself are always welcome. Thanks for following us!