{ PROCESS: PREPARING THE TAGS }

I recycled bottle caps to make the tags to make the process more eco-friendly.
To a community, a good environment is significant.

 I intentionally chose bottle caps of various colors, sizes and materials to make to piece more visually interesting.
It is hard to come up with words of identities. There are so many things that I could include but there is a limited amount of caps, so I have to consider which ones are more meaningful.

{ INSPIRATION: TANGLE PROJECT BY POLYGLOT }

"Tangle by Polyglot is a huge, messy, fun, interactive elastic-weaving event created live by children and their families. It's part mass visual arts installation, part performance, part playground, part dance party and all chaos. "

{ INSPIRATION: "WHAT MADE ME" PROJECT BY DOROTA GRABKOWSKA }

"What Made Me" is an interactive public installation designed by Dorota Grabkowska together with Kuba Kolec for the Birmingham Made Me Expo 2012 at The Mailbox. 

{ THOUGHTS ON "COMMUNITY" }

Individuals in a community act like the lines in the image. They are the structure of a community, the base, the outline. 

What they create through interacting with each other makes the community unique and interesting. The points at which individuals converge are where they share similitude. 

If everyone goes through the same path, the individual lines would overlap into a same line and leave no space for colors. But if the individuals are so different that they do not converge, colors cannot be filled in as well. 

The balance between diversity and commonness is therefore essential to create a vibrant community.

{ PROJECT DESCRIPTION }

The project that I am doing this year will be about public/interactive community art. Through using art as a mean to foster interaction, I hope to find my own place in the community, and help everyone in the community to find their relationship with each other, and recognize the power of diversity and sharing. My plan is to create a multi-media mural in the local area (in a shop, cafe, etc.) and an instillation in the school.

My main inspiration came from Candy Chang and Mary Corey March. Both artists explore the relationship between individual and public. Here are a few projects that they have done:

Candy Chang's "Before I Die" Project
"Painted the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence 'Before I die I want to _______.' Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space."

Mary Corey March's "Individual Tapestry" Project

"Each participant chooses a color of yarn they feel represents them from the shelf to the left.

No two colors are the same, and each ball of yarn holds a stone in the center.

They unravel it, wrapping statements on the wall that they feel show something about who they are..."