Suavecito and The Flying Cockroach

Mission Voices
Casa de los Jovenes
Southern Exposure
1998

Southern Exposure’s summer program has evolved into a comprehensive, multi-organization event. Of the three groups participating in Mission Voices 1998, I was paired with middle-school and early-high-school youth from Casa De Los Jovenes.

All three groups were asked to work with the theme “Creating Our Future Out of The Beauty Of Our Past.” That didn’t go over so well with my group: the theme was too corny, history was abstract to them, and talking about their heritage and their family history turned out to be very sticky. They did, on the other hand, get all fired up about time travel, so we did a design charette where they put together proposals for time machines, then collaborated on building them.

The resultant time machines were Suavecito, the time-travelling lowrider, and the Flying Cockroach, which could shrink down to real cockroach-size to avoid detection. Both sculptures were built on wheels, so kids could roll them around the gallery.