Saratoga News
Cover Story
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Saratoga High School senior Megan Lee looks through an exhibit of clay toys she created for the ÔDo Something NewÕ project at Montalvo Arts Center.
What's New?
Teens have created unique works of art in the 'Do Something New' project at Montalvo
By Cyrus Hedayati
When the teen members of the Montalvo Art Center's "Do Something New" project sat down to make clay sculptures, they didn't make vases or plates--they made food action figures.
"We started thinking about people really wanting to return to organic food products, and wanting to get away from genetically modified foods," said artist and project facilitator Mario Ybarra. "We asked the kids to design a Franken-food, and they came up with foods that had super powers, like an apple with a cape."
The 10-week project that began in February was an effort to get the teen volunteers to portray modern problems using modern art, such as toys, T-shirts and photographs rather than just paintings and drawings.
"It was about making sculptures they could relate to and that they would find cool," said Ybarra. "Their relation to sculpture is more like Toys 'R' Us and playing with action figures."
Facilitated by Ybarra and his wife, Karla Diaz, the project's second part involves displaying the fruit of their labors with the 10 students from high schools throughout the area, including Saratoga, Leigh, and Downtown College Prep. The students' diverse relationship to art reflected the project's goal of relating art to the daily lives of youth.
"A lot of the kids that we worked with did not have formal art experience," said Ybarra. "A lot of them had experience in creative writing, music, dance or photography but had never taken a visual arts class, per se."
Originally called Teen Council, the group came up with the title "Do Something New" to show their creativity and their intent to embrace unconventional art forms.
"We wanted the kids to plant the seed in relation to contemporary art, and in contemporary art you have a lot of genres, whether it's music, dance, graffiti or creative writing," said Ybarra.
The project also emphasized contemporary issues, calling on the teens to portray themes from their daily lives. After a few weeks of brainstorming, they chose family, friends, technology and music as the concerns of our times. Later, the topic of violence also emerged in their discussions.
"You have to approach [what the concerns of our times are] very carefully, because obviously it can be very loaded. There are so many concerns with politics and the war in Iraq, and school shooters, and all of these things that are very prominent in the media," said Ybarra. "The way we were able to come up with the concerns for the kids was that we just had conversations with them."
To capture the themes that were important to them, the teens used disposable cameras to take photos that interested them.
The teens traded their pictures with one another like baseball cards, with each student trying to maintain a thematic focus. The teens used their collections of images to create a photo collage.
"We were trying to create a sense of shared authorship and shared community with the art they were creating," said Ybarra.
After creating the collages, the students traced over them and submitted the designs to Bulbo, a media company based in Tijuana. Bulbo put the designs on T-shirts, which will be sold at Montalvo.
"I thought it was really cool. Something I designed is actually going out onto the market and people are going to wear it," said Megan Lee, a DSN member and student at Saratoga High School.
The teens involved in DSN had several chances to design mass media culture, including personalized magazines dealing with issues of interest to them. Megan's magazine, "Toxins," compiled pictures of her favorite bands with lyrics from their songs.
Meagan liked the idea that "someday something of mine could be published and millions of people could see it," she said. "It's cool that you could have that kind of influence on someone."
Ybarra wanted the teens to learn that technology can be used to produce culture, not just peruse it.
"[Today's youth] all know how to watch YouTube, and they know how to mine the latest Killers song, but if they don't know how to take it further than that they can only be consumers through technology," said Ybarra. "What we would like to develop with them is to be producers of technology, of some critical content with a deeper meaning."
One such use of modern technology was the oral history project the teens put together on the Montalvo Service Group, which has served the institute since 1954. Interviewing the members using digital recorders, the teens created a tribute to the group while learning about the need for community service toward the arts.
"It was a really strong moment for our kids to understand a kind of legacy here at Montalvo, but also a model for artists to come here and do things," said Ybarra.
Service to the arts is also an important theme of the DSN project, as many of the teens will participate as docents in the ongoing display of their work. At the Sept. 16 Youth Arts Council event, they will help moderate discussions on young women in the arts and youth art in the media, and help host a spoken word poetry session.
"I think it's really important [for the teens to volunteer] in relation to young people, because at that age there should be a real sense of responsibility," said Ybarra. "Art always gets a bum rap as being the place where you can get an easy ride, but it's not true. Being an artist is very difficult and it takes a lot of wit and knowledge."
Through their volunteer service to Montalvo, Ybarra said that the teens gain a better appreciation for the role of art in communities.
"What they're trying to develop with the artists that come here is more a sense of engagement with the community and engagement with the San Jose area. Because in the past they had artists who just used Montalvo to create art they could bring to other exhibits," said Ybarra.
Megan, who had not taken formal art classes prior to DSN, is now pursuing art through a class at West Valley Community College. She feels a stronger affinity toward pop art than the classical variety, she said.
"A lot of [the work at DSN] was more hands-on work instead of just drawing. It was more that we actually had to make something up from our head, like T-shirts and CD covers," she said. "It's not just making something we were set to do. We had to design something and make it from the bottom up."
The DSN project is on display at Montalvo through Sept. 30, Friday through Sunday, noon to 3 p.m. The Teen Arts Council event is scheduled for Sept. 16. For more information, visit http://www.villamontalvo.org.
