“Drawing Connections” wall painting, tents, and trees made from scrap branches

Drawing Connections
San Francisco Conservation Corps/Youth In Action
Southern Exposure
1994

This was in some ways my first official gig working with youth. It’s been awhile since we did this project, but it still holds up as an amazing installation.

Poet Russell Gonzaga and I spent the summer working with about a dozen amazing middle-schoolers from the SFCC’s Youth In Action crew, going on field trips to arts and nature sites, and making art and poetry that was about drawing connections between their creativity and the natural environment. The summer’s culminating project was a massive installation of home-made tents: the crew painted/drew/
wrote on them, then installed the tents on the ground or hung them from the rafters.