Fashion and Digital Art

3rd Friday February 2013 
Hat Making Activity - Part 2

Dear Friends, 

I am so glad to let you know that the long-awaited Fashion and Digital Art 3rd friday finally came and we had so many awesome visitors at MAH. We were excited that many of them were so eager to participate in the hat making activity, and it was such a joy seeing all those people strolling around the museum, rocking their high-fashion hats.

I share with you some of the photos I took of the original hats made by our inspired participants. Enjoy!

MAH Intern, lovely Kristin Eggen in her hand-made hat. 

Thank you so much for helping us with the event.

Ooh, by the way, I love the contrast of the blue rose in the front, with the natural color of your hair. 

 Mah Volunteer, Alesandra Roger sitting in the back in her silver and purple hat.

Unfortunately I don't have a better photo of her, but she was a great help to us for this event. 

Programs Associate, Emily Hope Dobkin in the red sparkly hat.

This hat was a perfect mach for her black and red outfit on 3rd friday evening. 

 MAH Intern, Haley Fricke and Director of Community Programs, Stacey Marie Garcia.

They were behind all the great ideas and wonderful preparation for hat making activity.

Thank you guys so much for making this happen.

 Kristin, Haley and I, 3 hours through the event.

Don't you like the paper roses on my hat?

Life is a work in progress

Started some time around two months ago

I am not sure but as I remember, it was one of the friday events and I had just started volunteering in MAH. I was so excited and eager about every thing happening in the museum (as I still am today,... dahhh)  and I wanted to experience every thing. So, when I was asked to stay on the third floor and encourage people to share something about what they are working on in their lives, I was pretty disappointed. I felt kind of isolated from all the fun happening in other parts of the museum, but still tried to show lots of enthusiasm and encourage people to post something on the wall. 

Anyway, I started the evening with a handful of the notes on the wall and I was thinking what's the point of having people post their projects on the wall of a museum. In a few hours, not only I had more that 200 notes on the wall, but my point of view was dramaticly changed. 

Here is what I learned working on this activity: first I found out how great it feels to read about  other people’s difficulties, hopes and plans. Sometimes we just forget that we are not alone in this world and it is not just us who is facing obstacles in life. You might say it is obvious, but sometimes we are so focused on ourselves that we just forget this reality and reading these notes gave me so much hope and I felt so much better.

The other thing that surprised me was that the participants would get so excited about the fact that they could measure themselves against the wall to post their notes. I think for them this worked as like putting your signature on your artwork, although I am not sure about it. But anyway, what ever the reason was, it was very encouraging to many of the participants. How would you like to measure yourself against the wall?Here is a photo of the “Life is a work in progress” wall today. I think people are loving it. ;)

Fashion and Digital Art

3rd Friday February 2013 Hat Making Activity -Prep

For the coming third friday, we are having a participatory hat making activity and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Haley and I are working together on this project and in our first meeting, Stacy took us on a tour around the basement storage of MAH. Here on the table, there is all the stuff we found in the basement and we are trying to figure out creative ways to use them for this activity. 

Eventually making a few sample hats, we figured out the materials we need for the hat making station for the event. We had lots of fabrics and laces in the museum that we decided to use for decoration. Along with those, we also decided to buy tissue paper, feathers, pompom balls and decorative paper. As for the base for the hats, we are going to provide pie tins, different sizes of paper bowls and some paper top hats that we already had in the museum.

To make it a little easy for the participants, we decided to spray paint the paper bowls. They look a lot nicer when they are painted in bright colors, aren't they?

Here is our little to do list before the event. We decided to put up three tables for bases, fabric decorations and paper decorations. We'll make two big banners, three small ones for the tables and prepare all the materials in the buckets and baskets the day before the event. 

It is only a few days to the event and still a lot to do. Stay tuned for more updates. ;)