The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  NEWTOWN (ITALIAN) SENIOR CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday May 19, 2023 It was wonderful to be working with Spica again, in person, at a center for older adults. The Newtown Senior Center, in Elmhurst, is buzzing with activity and our class immediately follows a very popular zumba class. Each week Spica greets new participants, and this week was no exception with 2 new students, Beatriz, and Carolina.    All the students made title cards using black cardstock and acetate. Fabiola’s title is Fabiola’s History , Rona’s is First Communion , Nidia posed a question, Why am I in USA? , and Paul’s long title clearly expressed his story, 911 Tai Chi Health. Chui Fong created a title card in the shape of a bitter melon, Growing Vegetables, Hilda beautifully decorated her heart shaped title card with floral designs, Memories in both English and Chinese, and Rita’s title card in Chinese encapsulates her story about the charity of the craftsman of the lumber yard...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 16, 2023 Inspiring our participants to create their own work is our mission. Having learnt some of the basic techniques of pop-up book making, Beth wants to make a book for her grandson, and we were excited to hear her ideas. She’s thinking about how she can bring a paint box to life. As well, Beth shared her completed pop-up bedroom page, featuring “mirrored” closet doors made from shiny reflective paper and a colorful rug and matching bedspread. Her love of art was reflected in the Van Gogh painting she added to the wall behind her bed, downloaded and printed from the internet as well as a Van Gogh chair and vase.   Building on the skills learnt in the last two weeks of class, we made a series of different sized parallelograms, which became stairs. Warm up exercises included lifting our legs as though walking up and down stairs and stretching our arms, hands, and fingers to increase...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 9, 2023 Madlyn is on a well-earned vacation, so we were ably hosted by Ricola and Willie. Thanks to both for all their help. It was great to be in the same time zone as everyone, having arrived back in New York the night before. Sonia came onto Webex early and shared the terrific pop-up pages her older adult students are making. As a visual teaching artist, Sonia has been inspired by our classes to try some simple pop-ups with her classes and the cards they have made are colorful and inventive. She also told us her granddaughter loves making pop-up art, which she takes to school for show and tell.    Today’s lesson features how to make a pop-up bedroom, so my warmup was a word association game using “bedroom”. We went around the class with students offering the first word they thought of when they heard “bedroom”, with some surprising results including lambs, art, music and romanc...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 2, 2023 Building on what we learned last week, our participants were eager to use their known skills and try their hand at something new. We began with a transformation theater game as we are transforming the simple page into a magical and surprising pop-up. Take an everyday object, look at it and without thinking too much transform it into something else. I led the game with a mug which I used as a telescope, spying our host Madlyn, “Ahoy there Madlyn!”. Next the humble wooden spoon became a ukulele as I serenaded the class with “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, and finally I took a book I was reading and made it fly, not across the room, but used the pages as the wings of a bird, a cheeky seagull swooping down to devour a tasty morsel.    Our word for today’s class was “parallelogram”. I shared screen shots of these shapes in everyday objects such as a tissue box, a door and window, ...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 18, 2023   We had another good roll of students this morning, some new faces and quite a few returning participants.  Sonia was so inspired by last week’s class that she researched more methods of making pop-ups and even bought a book on the subject!. She shared over 8 examples of different pop-up pages she made.    As our class is about how to make a “flap”, which opens to show what is underneath, our warm up was centered on “the reveal”. We placed our hands over our face then moved them apart horizontally, vertically, and diagonally each time revealing a different facial expression. Next, we gave ourselves a hug, closing our body, then opened our arms, stretching them in different directions. Finally, we opened our hands from closed fists into hand gestures.   I screen-shared our word of the day, FLAP and an example of a “turn-up” book popularized by medical stu...

                                                                   QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 25, 2023 This was our 3rd class, and it was great to see a lot of familiar faces. Sonia continues to inspire us with the pages she made during the week. She shared her pop-up home page which featured her apartment building and church. In the front she added footsteps to mark her path to and from her home.    The warmup asked participants to close their eyes and imagine what they might see outside their window. Upon opening their eyes, they showed an expression on their face and in their body, which demonstrated to others what they saw, such as fear, disgust, surprise, happiness and welcoming.   I shared my pop-up windo...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 4, 2023 Spica and I are thrilled to be working again with Madlyn and her colleagues at Queens Public Library presenting a series of 8 virtual classes teaching older adults how to make a pop-up book inspired by their family photos. This virtual format fortunately allows me to log on from Sydney, Australia to join Spica in Manhattan, Madlyn in Queens, and students from their homes in the many boroughs of New York.     This was the first time Madlyn tried a “hands-on” project as a screening, inviting East Flushing Library to join so that anyone who was physically in the library during our class could use the materials provided there to work with us. We had 21 participants join our class today.    A physical warm up gets us focused and ready to begin. I led the group in “popping up our body”, stretching up our whole body then our necks, heads and arms and faces. Hands...