Hill House Summer Festival

The Hill House Summer Arts project ended on Saturday, August 12, with a display of some of the students' work during the Hill House summer Festival. I wish I had gotten some pictures of the festival; it was a blast! They had music all day, food and drink, games for the kiddies. It was more like a block party then anything else. Lots of neighbors and friends, getting together to have a little fun on a bright and pleasant day.
A few of the artists that participated in the project showed up to say hello and drop off student work. Jessica Sommer kept me company for a couple hours and Biko, Ashley Cole, KL Brewer, Christine Bethea and Christiane Leach all stopped by to say hello.A few of the artists that participated in the project showed up to say hello and drop off student work. Jessica Sommer kept me company for a couple hours and Biko, Ashley Cole, KL Brewer, Christine Bethea and Christiane Leach all stopped by to say hello.

I got a little ahead of myself here. The top picture is of a hat-ku that one of the students at the Fresh Air Camp made. Ash and KL worked with the students on a couple forms of short poetry whaich the students then transferred to hats and t-shirts as part of the project. Just below that is one of the Sankofa reliefs created by a student at Addison Terrace with Biko.


Christine Bethea and Brenda Bethea-Brown are partners in Crossing Cultures. The project that they orchestrated with Hill House students this summer was Suessville on the Hill. This project brought the work of students from Addison Terrace, Bedford Dwellings and the Blakey Building. The students spanned 5-15 years in age. An interesting part of the project was that the artists worked with the students in owning traditional children's songs. I loved watching these two work.

The hit of the student exhibit was Vanessa German's Migration project. The students created shoes based on the ideas presented in the Women of Vision Migration exhibit. Considering the short time she had with the students, only four days, I think they turned out really well. This is just a small selection of the shoes. Unfortunately, most of the photographs I took didn't turn out very well.
The last image is of LaVerne Kemp's project, which is based on the Hill House's Find the Rivers neighborhood project. The pieces are quilt squares with a boat theme and incorporate images of the children. She worked witha group of 9-10 year-old students at Bedford Dwellings.

There are a lot of approaches to artist-in-community projects. The emphasis that evolved over these past four weeks at the Hill House was experiential rather than end-product oriented. Every student worked with more than one artist over the course of the summer. Every student was given the opportunity to work in more than one discipline. I am very proud of the work these artists have done and of the work that the individual students produced.