We've Moved!

Killscrow is putting her big girl dot com pants on. All the documentation from this site will still be intact, but for all new updates please refer to the official Killscrow site. Things are still a work in progress, so bear with us. For a look into our new live/work space in Santa Barbara CA, peak at the new blog attached to the site.  

Journeys while in flux

Covelo, CA

Since moving on from the Mendocino Coast, we continue our nomadic adventures in other parts of California. Collectively, we have stayed in seven different beds in the past month. We are thrilled to be slowly transitioning to the Santa Barbara coast by the end of the summer- very much an exciting collaborative shift with dear friend Neil Harrison. For now, we are living everywhere it seems, trying to stay focused setting up makeshift workspaces where we can.

A couple weeks past, we spent several days on a gorgeous property in Covelo, CA with a friend Garrett and his two kitty ladies. Building, chatting, cooking, reading and swimming in the Eel River consumed our days.

The last two photos shared here are a couple picks from a very personal trip to Oklahoma, a place new to me but native to my Muscogee Creek, Lenape and Seminole family. We celebrated for the Muscogee Creek Festival and Green Corn Dance with beautiful native songs and traditions.    

Great spending time with Garrett.

Kittens and poison.

A favorite native face.

Keepsakes. Yarrow from sacred family burial grounds. Elm from great great grandfather's grave, Kogee Fields the Medicine Man. 

Last Days in Fort Bragg

Budlong's annual end of the year soiree.

Driving a laughably enormous U-Haul South last week, California whizzed by us in a completely new way. Our two year jaunt in the remote Mendocino Coast of CA is over. While we have all kinds of faith in our future plans, things like misty Redwood mornings, guaranteed parking spaces, moss, impeccably clean air and community breakfasts will be missed dearly and will forever mark a time of heightened creativity and adventure. On a more personal note, the woodworking family surrounding the College of the Redwoods Fine Furniture program has left us with a momentous amount of gratitude. Here a few favorite images from the last bits...  

Old caps.

Budlong's shop on the homestead

Sad CR shop

Mock-up graveyard ready for fire

Alumni love at the Highlight Gallery reception. This is Paul. He traveled up from Pasadena in what he calls his "Krenovian Gypsy Wagon".

Tees we made for the San Francisco exhibition, Handmade Mindmade.

Out in front of the San Francisco exhibition space, Dogpatch Gallery.

finished drawing and recent design sketches

Ink on Paper, 22"x30". 2013

decorative block print proof

V+C, block print proof

logo play

carving

Twins block print

The Global Creative

Unintentional head tilt. Adorable nonetheless.

To be frank, it took me a little while to fully understand what The Global Creative was doing. I knew I dug it, but I was really eager to understand more about their vision. I knew art, education and producing a more globally aware youth was at hand- all things we care about.

These two women, Amelia Pacheco and Rachael Edson, are full time public high school educators (Amy, Special ED. Rachael, Art) in Southern CA. In response to the common struggles of keeping students engaged, today's stifling state standards and a lack of camaraderie in sharing successful lesson plans amongst educators, these ladies decided to be proactive in addressing these issues.

The Global Creative is a young organization, run by Amy and Rachael on nights and weekends. I certainly believe that visionary is a word I would use to describe what they're doing, because they are responding to something much larger than them. They are intelligent, creative and brave enough to try to ameliorate problems that could very easily be (and are) passed off as simply out-of-their-hands. The whole teacher/nonprofit organization thing is not exactly lucrative easy street. This is a labor of love. This is truly great work.

Some key points to understand what they are doing today:

  +Their website stands as an online source for any teacher to access free lesson plans that engage students in something creative while drawing in ethical and globally minded topics as well as suit the state standards.

  +Hosting monthly craft workshops in donated space around Long Beach, bringing community together to learn something and raise awareness about the organization.    

  +Collaborating with other local organizations/companies (namely Yellow 108 and Aosa Project) to support other people and causes they believe in.

Read their full mission statement.

We are excited to share some photos of their workshops and great highlights from our conversation about what they do now and what they will do in the future. 

On why they started The Global Creative:

Rachael: We both were trying to write interesting lesson plans and saw what was working with our students. We both have different challenges with our types of students. Teaching English to people with special needs is a challenge to get them to care in the same way trying to teach art history to a kid who just wants to get their hands dirty is a challenge. So how do you get them engaged in the mundane aspects of education? They love the getting-your-hands-dirty type of stuff, but getting them to care about why it’s important is the challenge.

Amy: We felt like there is a huge need for teachers to have readymade lesson plans that are actually interesting for students, and really connects students to their education. Because if there’s no interest in what’s going on, they’ll just never see why it’s important. Then we started developing more interest in instilling ethics into our lesson plans, and more of a global-mindedness.

R: Yes and another big thing was the reluctance of teachers to share the cool stuff they would come up with. And this is not true across the board, but a lot of teachers feel like their really-cool-show-stopping lesson they do every year is their intellectual property.

A: The main thing we wanted to respond to is that within all these different teaching styles and within all these different schools it felt one of the problems that we consistently see with our kids is that these kids in the US are getting a free education that costs 6-10k a year. They don’t seem to care. They don’t seem to see how their education matters for their future. It also matters just for their thinking. I’m not saying this is all students, but a lot of students expect school to entertain them. But we’re not TV. We’re not the Rhianna Lights video. We can’t compete with Transformers. There’s this growing feeling that kids aren’t connecting with things, especially the way parents are too in the school system. I remember when I was growing up, if my teacher said that I did something bad, I DID. My parents weren’t going to go to bat with teacher.

We wanted to create lessons that worked regardless of whatever educational problem- the parent problem, the state problem, any problem.

R: Address the morality, the ethics and the soft skills that are required after school; teaching them little mini lessons within great lessons about how to be a good person. 

Basket weaving workshop.

An example of a lesson they tried:

A: One of our lessons was on Invisible Children (humanitarian organization focusing on the LRA crisis in East and Central Africa), where we start a lesson off by listing things you can’t live without....It’s shocking how many kids put cell phone, xbox... 

R: They put things. They have such an attachment to what they have

   

A: Things that are not parent-engaging, family things... it’s so easy to think that your cell phone is something you can’t live without if you don’t have someone telling you that your perspective is off point. So then we show them the Invisible Children films and talk about.

R: We talk about the students and the conditions they’re living in and how hopeful they are to even have an education and how they’re crying about it.

A: So then we ask them the same question afterwards- what can you not live without? And they feel stupid for saying- my cellphone. They kind of realize that there is something else going on in the world. So what they you do about it? One of the things is they have to write a letter. And then we have them writing. 

So anyways we are trying to do that with a lot of other issues. With Environmental Issues, Green Issues with really anything that actually affects their world. 

R: Or their decision making. I think a big thing is the choices they have; like using plastic bags or reusable water bottles.

Macrame workshop.

On why they decided to bring workshops to their community:

R: I think we needed it to legitimize our program. We don’t have time to do outreach. We’ll get there. That is one of ours goals for this year is making sure people know our website exists. I thought the workshops would be a good way to bring our program to the community, getting our name out there and having some fun with adults rather than just being stuck in the classroom setting. 

A: In our lesson plans, there is always a creative component, a widening global perspective and then of course the state standards. So there are three components. It has to have something to do with ethics. It has to have something to do with standards and it has to have something to do with creativity. Actually there are four because it has to have to do with widening the global perspective. So, we could just take out the state standards and then it’s relevant for anyone. The biggest things in all the situations are that the adults have really been responsive to creating art and wanting to learn how to do something without even knowing there is a cultural component. So when we do basket weaving, they don’t really realize that it’s a craft native to California. 

R: Or that it’s something that is so human. This is something fun that we’re doing on a Wednesday night, but you could take a snapshot of this exact place 200 years ago and someone might be sitting here doing the same things but just out of necessity. I always talk to my kids about that. It’s fun and it’s great that we get to do it in school, but what if this was something you were doing because you needed something to collect vegetables?

A: It is really crazy to think that when you’re making baskets with people, that that they sell such beautiful baskets in Mexico for $30. When you’re sitting around crafting with others, you think about that more. There are so many different avenues where it’s good for everyone.  

On the future of TGC and inspiration they glean from others...

Low Rocker plus Upcoming Exhibitions

The Killscrow Low Rocker finished! Handsome. Currently being shown at the College of the Redwoods Spring Exhibition at the Highlight Gallery in Mendocino through Sunday May 12. Opening Reception Saturday May 11 5-8pm. 

Afterwards, many selections from this furniture show will travel to San Francisco for the exhibition Handmade/Mindmade, a pop-up show at the Dogpatch Cafe. Opening reception Friday May 17, 6-8pm. Read the press release and more about some of the makers.  

Mock-up match-up

Outside Stuff

The high today is 77F with very little wind. That's pretty much as warm as it gets on the Mendocino Coast. 

We recently ate some of our first salad greens grown from the soil we amended from our very own compost. Bouncy, crisp, delightful. I am a big nerd about this stuff! These doggy-bag looking containers are perfect for the nomadic existence we endure.    

I've started straining off some of the tinctures I started months ago. This one is called The Wild Woman Tincture, something just for the ladies. Thanks to local herbalist Karin C. Uphoff for the recipe. 

My volume of worms has increased at least 20 fold since we moved here. Since we can't have a dog yet, I settle for these slime bag workaholics. 

Our friend Johnny just passed us the first copy of the new magazine Modern Farmer (from the editor of Monocle magazine). There is much more sophisticated styling than any other agriculturally driven publication. Like candy.