Sharon's First Blog

Sharon Lee July 15, 2011

Hester Street Collaborative Blog for July 11th Week

On Monday, July 11th, Simon, Vincent, Julian, and I learned about our staff working with us in this organization. We introduced ourselves by names, our schools, and the staff told the four of us what their roles in the organization were. We also learned more about each other with a game called “Two Truths and a Lie.” We continued working on our logos and after lunch, we went with Jess to the garden near P.S. 134. Jess taught us a little bit about the plants growing there; we watered the plants, painted some kind of waterproof oil on the wood of the tables, shoveled compost from the bin to the pit in the middle, and talked about what we could do next time. I learned more about the staff and the organization I was working for. Also, I learned the significance of our roles in beautifying the garden next to the elementary school and what we could do the next time to help this garden that was usually uncared for.
The following day, we decided on what design should represent our logo and started to finalize it. We finalized it by putting the design into the computer, fixed it with the Illustrator program, transferred it to a transparency sheet, and prepared ourselves for the printing process the next day. On that day, I learned how to use Illustrator and how I might be able to use it the next time I might need it for something.
On Wednesday, we put our transparent sheets onto the silk screens that we cleaned and put Emulsion on from the past Friday. We put the screens onto the Exposure Unit while stacking three heavy cement blocks on the screen. After that, we washed it, blow dried it, and put tape on the edges of the frame and silk screen. I started to mix colors to get light purple at first then changed my mind to making light blue instead. The four of us tested out our designs, printed it on our shirts and our notebook covers. TA-DA! That day was the day I learned something interesting and fun that could be pretty useful—printing T-shirt designs.
Yesterday, we went to the garden to continue what we started on Monday like watering the plants again, pulling weeds, moved the compost in the bin into the pit, and watering that pit as well. Later on, we went to the benches on Allen Street where we observed the peeling paint, the deflated tires and recorded what we need to fix. Our actions helped me learn how our community isn’t cared for that much based on our work on the garden and we had to do to fix the benches on Allen Street.
Today, we went to the corner of Hester and Chrystie Street to take down the solar panels used for the lanterns in the past. Today wasn’t really much of a learning experience because all we did was take down solar panels.