#Grecolaborativo

[robertogreco]

I don’t think that Sestra has appeared on this Tumblr yet. You can follow him @sestracat on Instagram, though, and this is how I introduced him on Twitter on the fifth morning after he arrived, and when we were still believing that we had adoped a spayed female based on what we were told and the the paperwork we were given.

Self-proclaimed lifelong dog person…

who, due to a variety of circumstances, has been without pets throughout his adulthood save for a one-year two-dog sitting gig when his children were younger…

has been preparing for an emptying nest with @lizgre…

goes out to adopt…

and returns with…

[image of a super thin-looking Sestra with his plush lime and lemon behond him]

I am as surprised as you are, dear reader. She’s very dog-like, though, and yet very much a cat. Has my heart too

She’s a rescue, found in a feral colony (ear was clipped there by animal control), but likely left there. One year old. Name still a WIP…

This feed probably won’t become a cat-pic feed, but you never know

[lizettegreco]

More color. #color #colorourowncalifornia #colorourown #grecolaborativo

[lizettegreco]

Color our own California. http://robertogreco.tumblr.com/post/92188517023/a-few-years-ago-when-the-media-was-reporting #grecolaborativo #grecolaborativo.com #californias #wip

[robertogreco]

Here I am. I am here.

A lot has happened since fourteen months ago, so it’s time for another life update. The short story is that my family and I now live in San Francisco and I have completed two months as founding middle school faculty member of San Francisco Schoolhouse. If you are here in the city, please holler. I would love to see you.

The longer story starts in February when I sent a letter that began:

The last time I was in San Francisco for an extended period was also the first time that I was in the San Francisco Schoolhouse neighborhood. I was taken there by The Unspeakables, one of three groups of seventh and eighth graders with whom I was spending a week exploring the city. On the map the group would go on to make as documentation of their trip, one of those students wrote:

In author Robin Sloan’s […] story “Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store” in the ending the characters go to a Burmese restaurant which was based off Burma Superstar. So, with Robin’s and a group member’s family’s recommendations we headed off to this restaurant located in Inner Richmond.

It was there at Burma Superstar that I had one of the best meals of my life. I shared delicious food with a group of beloved students with whom I was off on one of the urban adventures that would become a hallmark of the middle school program I co-created. Even the reason why those students knew Robin Sloan was a beautiful tale of its own, another example of the power of small, progressive school programs that trust and empower students through an emergent curriculum.

The letter continued and neared its conclusion with this penultimate paragraph:

In the recently published Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, Helen Molesworth writes, “Therein lies the key: Black Mountain College was less an institution than a situation.” Black Mountain College has been central to my educational philosophy. It’s why the Nelson Middle Years program often felt like an art school. But, more importantly, Black Mountain College stands as a reminder that a school itself can be the ultimate collaborative project, one that can and should be co-created with students. That was the situation at The Children’s School.

After a prolonged conversation, some tough decision-making, the ordeal of finding housing in the City, and the migration of a family, I find myself in the situation of San Francisco Schoolhouse. We are a group of ten adults, fifty-seven young people (currently grades kindergarten through fifth grade), and their families. This is the way I have described the Schoolhouse to some friends in emails.

It’s a scrappy little school and I love that. I am teaching a combined fourth and fifth grade class of nine students and envisioning the middle school experience. And I am doing so in a very progressive and unschooly-like fashion in a “studio classroom” that rings the best of art school and echoes the best of my own experience as a student, with a lot of collective and democratic experience, out exploring the city and surrounding areas. Something very much like what I was part of in La Jolla several years ago, slow and small.

As always, expect more notes about this ultimate collaborative project, this pocket of resistance, this minimum viable utopia. And please visit!

Update [1 July 2018]: I am no longer at the Schoolhouse, but I still live in San Francisco where I am working on independent projects relating to art, design, archives, libraries, and alternative (self-directed, unschooling, informal,etc.) education. As always, I love receiving visitors, often with long walks through the city. Don't hesitate to reach out if you are in town.

[lizettegreco]

Headin' Home by Roberto Greco

Can’t wait to have you back...

[robertogreco]

One Way to Unschool: A Twelve-step Program

From the archives: This text accompanies my Enzo’s Meat Research photo set of 2007. Flickr has made the text hard to see, so I am positing it here.

Get an idea. 1. See, hear, smell, taste, touch something interesting. (What's the deal with meat?) 2. Obsess about it. (Think and dream about your new interest.)

Do your research. 3. Find several books at home, in the library, in the bookstore. (See exhibit A.) 4. Look online. 5. Watch videos*. 6. Take a field trip. (To the supermarket in this case, see exhibit B.)

Record what you find. 7. Take notes. 8. Take photographs. (See exhibit B.) 9. Sketch. (See exhibit C.)

Put your new-found knowledge to work. 10. Make something**. (Plush is always a good medium. See exhibit D.) 11. Show someone (like your parents, your friends, or the people on Flickr). Let them know all that you've learned.

Something else catches your eye. 12. Go back to step 1.

*Video found serendipitously while passing by your father's computer as he begins to watch a video on a related blog post even though he has no idea you've spent the last several days lost in a world of meat.

**Enzo's research also included plenty of cooking, unfortunately we don't have any photos of that.

One final note to provide perspective: Enzo was six when he did this project.

Update: After spending a few months in Buenos Aires at age seven, Enzo became fascinated with salami and other cured meats. His interest in meat in general also resurfaced. By the time he had turned eight, he had also dressed as a butcher for Halloween. Since then we created an installation in San Diego using his and his sister's drawings. See images at South Park Quality Meats.

[lizettegreco]

Costumes research for an upcoming commission.

[lizettegreco]

“I always say this in my classes: creation comes along with high suffering doses. It is about dealing with a part of our brain that we do not completely control. It is about searching with no results, it is about finding  but not feeling sure enough about that we´ve found. The creative process is nevertheless a beautiful one, it is such a magic way to go, the magic of ideas rising up. But it is also a very hard process in which ideas come but we still do not know how.

Siempre lo digo en clase, crear conlleva sufrimiento, es trabajar con una parte de nuestro cerebro que no controlamos, es rebuscar sin encontrar, es encontrar y no estar seguro…el proceso creativo es precioso por lo que tiene de mágico cuando aparece una idea, pero es tan duro cuando una y otra vez no sabes como ha llegado, sobre todo cuando tu trabajo depende de ello.“

The Creative Process [El Proceso Creativo]

La Casita de Wendy

[lizettegreco]

Our original sausage DIY

[lizettegreco]

Tween obsessed with mermaids. @rogre is helping with her project.

[robertogreco]

Art

art of the everyday art found where the people are

art in physical places art on the street and in homes art that is mobile art on wheels and on foot art in jugaad art in informal architecture art catered by paleteros

art found in digital spaces art in the photography of Instagram art in the film of Vimeo art in the poetry of Twitter art in the performance of the open web art made by the Internet

art that transcends disciplines art that is polyglot art that is slow and small art that is process art that is conversation art that is collaborative art that is participatory art that is distributed art that is democratic

art that is learning art that counteracts poor education policy art that leaves the MFA behind art that does not intimidate, but that welcomes art that does not colonize, but that listens and empathizes art that distributes bullhorns and positions lenses

art that goes beyond provocation art that becomes a prototype art that creates pockets of utopia art that becomes a source of change art of progress art of living

art as life life as art

[lizettegreco]

----------------------Basic Sewing Class

[lizettegreco]

My Amazing Pet: Hot Head Custom Order.

[lizettegreco]

Five-Year-Old Birthday Craft Party.

[robertogreco]

Having spent several years transforming children's drawings into plush sculptures and other art, we were ready to give these creations even deeper meaning. The result is an ongoing project called One and Only. The project is partly inspired by Phillipe Starck's TeddyBearBand and an anecdote from Gretchen Ruben.

We're working with children and/or their parents to help them create their own plush art. While the development of craft skills is important to the process, the project's primary concern is a conversation about sustainability, slow living, relationships, and the beauty of imperfections and seams, both in the objects we cherish and in the people we love.

I'm reminded by a passage Ariel Kaminer wrote in a letter to David Rakoff, shortly before his death:

Here is the simplest lesson you taught me: Don’t trade up.

In terms of three-word volumes, it ranks right up there with “It gets better.” Like that more famous line, it starts out as a bit of simple, practical instruction — don’t back out of a social engagement just because a snazzier offer came along — and broadens out into an entire perspective on how to live. Don’t grade friendships on a hierarchical scale. Don’t value people based on some external indicator of status. Don’t take a competitive view of your social life. There are very few rules I carry around with me every day. Don’t trade up is one of them, and I truly can’t tell you how many seemingly complicated situations it resolved into clarity and fairness. I am grateful to you for that.

Children making their own plush companion, parents making one for their child, or older siblings making one for a younger sibling, One and Only comes with the suggestion that this will be their one-and-only plush toy. It's theirs to keep, but hopefully they will also be willing to share their story and photographs of their creations, like the elephant above that nine-year-old Margot made with us a few months ago.

[lizettegreco]

Purple Kitty tweets for birds.

@purplekittynyc