“What are your thoughts?” is a project combining advice-gathering, letter-writing, audio recording, and process-based experimentation of visual arts processes bound into individualized art books.
Participants learn the elements of art (line, shape, form, texture, value, space) through process-based visual arts experimentation (watercolor paint, drawing materials, stenciling, gold leaf, etc) while journaling & talking about personal stories involving “advice”.
Every time a piece of advice comes up within a story (no matter how small), participants document the advice on blank notecards, creating a collaborative bank of advice.
Within the weeks of the project, participants choose their ‘favorite’ advice and 1) record audio reading the advice and 2) design unique postcards featuring the advice paired with a line drawing to mail to a friend or family member.
The culminating event will feature an interactive “wall of advice” displaying the handwritten bank of advice postcards, a library of bound sketchbooks illustrating the process of journaling and exploration, an interactive audio box wall playing participants’ voices reading advice, and a video made from scanned process-based artworks made over the course of the program with participants’ advice audio overlaid to share with friends and family far and wide.
Below is a selection of work samples depicting past projects with 1) advice & letter-writing 2) process-based visual arts experimentation 3) audio boxes 4) video made from scanned process-based artworks 5) sketchbooks, and 6) community collaboration projects with older adults.
1) Advice & Letter-Writing
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Come Say Hey ~
Brooklyn Bridge Park Public Art Series
Date: 2015
Medium: Wooden “Advice” Stand, Paper, String, Performance
Description: “Come Say Hey” is an ethnographic project that connects community, land, & dialogue. This interactive project explores “advice” as a place-based phenomenon with overarching themes that transcend location. Using the collected advice as content, Conarro produces postcards for advice-givers to write letters on & mail to friends & family.
2) Process-based Visual Arts Experimentation
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Process-based Work Sample ~
The Painted Cloud Arts Ed & Social Engagement Initiative
Date: 2020
Medium: Mixed-Media // Process-based explorations
*The Painted Cloud arts education & social engagement
Description: This video shows young artists K-8 participating in a variety of process-based experiential learning - engaging in hands-on experiences where the process is a prominent component of the work, boosting young artists problem solving skills and strengthening social & emotional learning.
3) Audio Boxes
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Exchange Rate: New Devotions ~
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center
Date: 2023
Medium: Audio, Boxes with speakers
Description: Exchange Rate is a record of intercultural learning and reciprocity featuring a four-channel, interactive audio installation playing an interview with curator & Puerto Rican native Laura Rivera-Ayala’s personal narrative as it relates to New Devotions. Listeners can hear questions and answers overlap, loop, and repeat, imitating the nature of casual conversation and what it feels like to learn something new that you know nothing about.
4) Video made from scanned process-based artworks
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Scanned process-based artworks ~
The Painted Cloud Arts Ed & Social Engagement Initiative
Date: 2023
Medium: Watercolor & colored pencil
Description: This video shows a series process-based experiments by young artists K-5 participating. Young artists explored watercolor with brushes and without (by painting with their hands), noticing the difference in sensory and tactile processes. Using colored pencil, young artists experimented with the element of line with a ruler and through ‘free draw’. Young artists practiced dialogue through critique after the process.
5) Hand-bound Sketchbook Examples
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Sketchbook Examples ~
The Painted Cloud Arts Ed & Social Engagement Initiative
Date: 2020-2023
Medium: Mixed media sketchbooks made through process-based art exercises
Description: Young artists made hand-bound sketchbooks compiling exercises in process-based visual arts experimentation, notes about art-making (ie elements of art & critique), & journaling. Material processes included:: watercolor paint, drawing materials, stenciling, printmaking, collage, natural dye, gold leaf, hand-sewing, and more.
6) Community Projects with Older Adults
Artist: Sarah Conarro
Title: Selection of Alaska Arts Community Collab Projects
Date: 2006-2014
Medium: Teaching educators strategies for arts integration and collaborative community projects
Description: Selections include:
- Creating a collaborative mural with 24 AK educators titled Tsu Heide Shugaxtutaan (translation: We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care) for the Tribal Youth Center in Sitka, Alaska
- Cultural Collaboration Grant in White Mountain Alaska - elders cutting wood & painting shapes for the community space
