Snow, Shrinky-dinks and Playful Painting

This week was another great week for SOHO! We were so happy that the girls were able to make it from their school, even in the tough weather. We did shorten the class so that we made sure everyone made it home safely. 

 

The snow made this week's photo walk with Liana especially exciting! Just like last week, Liana took everyone in her group outside for a photo class. They went to just one of the many cool parks in the fan with fun cement structures. We can't wait to see some of these developed photos! All the girls are starting to truly love photography and understand the full process.

In girl talk, the new group did the same value's lesson as last week: values! We had a lot of great values again like love, trust and one that stood out this week was justice.  Trust was something they especially valued because it runs through so much of the SOHO program and is something everyone in the group valued in a friend and themselves. The shrinky dinks were another hit this week - check out these awesome symbols of values in the picture above!

 Because of the tight time schedule thanks to the snow we will get to have our guest artist, Sarah Hand for more than one night of SOHO. These nights will be all about painted self portraits. Sarah Hand has taught the painting self portrait class for a few years now here with us at SOHO. She is such a positive individual who has a special knack for making you feel comfortable with the art project that has the potential to be a little uncomfortable. A lot of people are afraid of self-portraits because they think it has to look just like them. Thanks to Sarah and the way she teaches, this week of painting was pretty freeing and unconventional. 

 Sarah took everyone through steps in order to create a colorful, layered back ground that we would then paint our portraits on next week. The first step was to choose one color and paint the whole background. Big and little sisters worked together on this to lay down these bright colors.  

 

 Then, Sarah told everyone to choose 5 different colors, and use different objects (not a paint brush!) to create texture. This was especially fun. The group used things like: easter eggs to make circles, sponge brushes to make dots and lines, bubble wrap to create texture, and doily's to make beautiful flowery patterns. Everyone had a great time and were very happy with their end results.

 

 And everyone can't wait to paint their faces this week!

Values, a Photo Walk and the Clay Guild

 This week is always one of the favorites amongst big and little sisters; when everyone goes into the clay studio and works with the VisArts Clay Guild!

 

Just like always we first divided into our groups; some pairs went with Liana and some stayed with Tesni for Girl Talk.  This week the girls went on a walk in the neighborhood surrounding VisArts (aka "the Fan") to go take a roll of photos outside! The girls had a lot of fun taking the skills they had learned outside.  Sillyness and fun poses were everywhere! But the girls also used their practical skills about composition, focus, aperture, etc. A lot of the girls and mentors said they were thankful for photography that day during closing circle.

 

 This week in Girl Galk the second group of girls did the resolutions exercise we did last week with the first group. After this, the group got talking about our values! Tesni started the discussion and got everyone talking about what values are, as opposed to valuables--like cell phones, cars, or the other material things in our life. The group brainstormed some different values that were important to them, why it's important to have values, and why it's hard if someone has different values than yourself.  Everyone gathered in a circle and was given a long list of different values which the girls and women looked through and then circled which ones they felt were most important.

 

Then each person chose one that really resonated and wrote a sentence in their journal about why that was. Afterwards we shared some of these values and the girls and mentors had a good time comparing their different values.  Then it was time for  shrinky dinks! In case you weren't aware, shrinky dinks are a piece of plastic that you draw on with colored pencil, then place in the oven so it shrinks up into a hard, tiny charm in the oven! They are a lot of fun to make and to watch happen! The group started to create a shrinky dink bracelet which we will finish next week!  Our shrinky dinks were symbols representing our most important value.

The group came back together for snack -- which included a special (and funny) toast from the girls and everyone toasted each other with their waters.

 

Finally it was time to go into the clay studio. Everyone went downstairs and met all of the  volunteers teachers for that night. These were all members of the VisArts Clay Guild who worked with the girls and women on how to glaze pots and wheel throw small bowls. 5 people from the clay guild donated their time to help us learn this, and many more donated pots to glaze. A BIG thank you to our Clay Guild!  Many of the same people do it every year, and it's a lot of fun. 

One group headed into the wheel throwing studio and the other went to the glaze studio. Everyone in the glazing studio learned how to dip their pots into glaze, and we glazed one pot in a color of our choice and another in Raku glaze ( Raku is a special firing technique that we will get to do in two weeks).  

Then the group switched places so they could learn how to wheel throw. This is always a hit because working on the wheel means that you get messy! It's also really challenging and something new for almost everyone doing it. A few girls really took to it and wanted to come back to our First Friday's Samplers on a future big sister date so they can do some more work on the wheel.

 

 The night ended with another big thank you to all of the great Clay Guild volunteers!

 ...And another wonderful group picture!

Resolutions, Poetry and Power Tools

Our first week back at SOHO after winter break was an especially exciting one! Everyone was able to get in the workshop to do some woodworking. SOHO girls and mentors used power tools - a SOHO first!

 We started off Girl Talk this week with a "New Year's SOHO Resolution". After chatting in circle for a few minutes about our winter break, everyone in the group talked about what a resolution was and how it applied to what we were doing at SOHO.  Our group resolution consisted of thinking of ways to make small gestures to show your big or little SOHO sister that you cared about them.  Then the group talked about small gestures and brainstormed small gestures of love or appreciation. we came up with: saying hello, saying goodbye, giving a hug, giving a high five, nice body language, getting materials for each other, making conversation, and a lot of others!  

 

Then all the girls and women talked about why doing these things was important and what a big difference small gestures make.  Everyone then secretly wrote down how they would implement one or more of these into their time that night. In the end, it turned into a game where each big and little sister tried one of these new techniques and then asked each other at the end of the day if they could figure out what their small gesture was.

 

Just like the week before, the new Girl Talk group created their "I AM" poems.  This group was just like the last in that they all wanted to talk and read aloud their whole poem and everyone really enjoyed this project. Even some of the more shy girls shared!

 

We'll have an update on photography soon but it sounds like everyone is getting the hang of developing their own film and printing their very first photos!

After Girl Talk and photography, everyone met back up for snack and then headed downstairs into the VisArts Wood Shop. For this particular night we had a wonderful guest teacher, Ann Walsh who taught everyone a little about woodworking and helped all the girls to design and cut out their own lap desks.  She is an amazing woman who is kind, strong, and full of confidence. She's also a professional woodworker. It's wonderful to involve other awesome women from our community with SOHO. 

Ann is very much about safety so she went over all of the safety rules with the whole group: like how to look out for one another, how to use all of the equipment, and to always ask questions when you don't know how to do something. Ann explained how to go about making the wooden tops to our lap desks. It was extra exciting for everyone because this was the first time the girls had gotten to actually do the cutting and drilling of their desks in the history of the SOHO program.

For our desks each pair used a band saw to cut out the overall shape of their desk, the drill press to drill the starting holes for handles, and the jigsaw to finish the cut-out shape for the handles. The group split into two and while some were in the wood shop with Ann, Liana, Jordan and Tesni, the others were in the next room learning how to properly sand their peices and working on sanding the edges of their desks.

Some girls and big sisters were a little nervous at the beginning (some were even a little scared) because none of the girls had ever used power tools. These nervous feelings dissipated pretty quickly once each pair started to use the first tool and felt that crazy satisfaction of doing something a little dangerous. The experience was definitely empowering -- there was a lot of girl power talk that night.  Everyone was so proud of their desks and the fact that they were able to do something they had never done before!

 SOHO ended the night with a big thank you to Ann and an awesome group picture! We can't wait to finish these lap desks in our other studios in the next few weeks...