Tapestry Charter Public Art Team enters the Water Rising Contest

The Public Art Team consists of student artists who are enrolled in the Public Art Course at Tapestry. The Public Art Team created an interactive installation for the WATER RISING 2021 Ocean Awareness Contest. The 2021 Ocean Awareness Contest theme WATER RISING challenges students to explore and understand their connection to water, and to creatively communicate the need to protect this vital resource and life-sustaining relationship.

The Public Art Team selected the WATER RISING Prompt 1 as inspiration for their installation:

Prompt 1: Global warming affects the water cycle, fueling extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and droughts. Warming seas are also contributing to sea level rise around the world. Whether too much or too little, water is the primary way we will feel the effects of climate change. How do you feel the effects of climate change where you live? How will this change within your lifetime?

Proposal

Updated Layout

Event Flyer

Algae's Adventures Chalk Fest Statement

Algae's Adventures is a public art chalk experience that tells the story of an Anti-Hero named Algae and his connection to nutrient pollution, safe drinking water, and our community.

ARTISTS:

Delilah Guinnee, DaZiyah Johnson, Yonnie Long, Griffin Lyons, Tori Sako, Joel Worthy and Jane Yeager.

Algae's Story

When farmers use toxic fertilizer, the rain and waste water transports these toxins into streams and small water ways. This is called runoff pollution. The fertilizers are full of nitrogen and phosphorus and can be very damaging. When the toxins reach the streams, they mix with the algae living there. The algae then flows into lakes and oceans and pollutes the water. The water becomes dangerous for humans and animals to drink. But is algae the real villain here? Or is it the pollution humans have caused?

Poetic Visitor

Buffalo, New York Free Style Poet 10,000 paid a visit to the Chalk Fest and performed a poem for the audience about Algae!

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Event Brochure

Public Art Team created an informational brochure.

Event Photos

Buffalo, New York Artist Marek Parker visited the event and took amazing photos of the student artists and the community chalking out Algae and their Story!

Project Reflections

Griffin Lyons

We were inspired by our own community and the problems we have faced in the past. We specifically focused on how our community contributes to the pollution that affects our local water sources. While completing this project, I learned a lot of new things about my community and Lake Erie. Some of the things I learned made me upset and sad, but it also pushed me to educate myself on the problems our community is facing and how we can fix them. We wanted to educate people through our artwork. It is important to inform people of how runoff pollution and algae is negatively affecting Lake Erie and our water supply. I learned that farmers use toxic fertilizers that contain nitrogen and phosphorus and runoff pollution carries these toxins into streams where algae live. The streams flow into Lake Erie and the algae and toxins contaminate our drinking water. Now that I am aware of the negative effects of pollution, I will not buy soap or laundry detergent that contains phosphorus and I won't use toxic fertilizers in my yard. I will also try to conserve the energy I use in my house since it uses fossil fuels. This art project allowed me to learn a lot about how pollution affects my community and I will continue to educate myself in the future.

Jane Yeager

Our work was inspired by the effects of algae and pollution on lake Erie, where we get our drinking water. In creating the art I thought about our future and how certain actions are making the world worse. My message to viewers of this art piece is that you should think about what materials you are using and the effect they might have on areas around you. After doing research on the water around me I have learned that things that you might not know of are affecting your drinking water and you should be aware of what is going into your local lakes. I will make sure that I am creating less waste and pollution in my house so that I can sustain and conserve the vital resource that is lake Erie.

Tori Sako

My work for this project in Public Art was inspired by the issues we have in lakes and many bodies of water, algae. We wanted to make a piece that really put into perspective what algae does to our water and how it can impact everyone. This piece made me feel saddened to see how our water is being polluted and affected by this algae. Although the drawing was more cartoon-ish and fun, I still felt sad to know how this will impact us and the Earth, long term. I hope to get this message across to viewers of this piece and that they can also see how we and being impacted by algae everyday and how we can help our water. After I did more research about our water I learned that we need to take better care of it so that the issue doesn’t worsen. Now that I know this, personally, I will try to help local organizations by either volunteering or donating to help our water.

Delilah Guinnee

When I thought about this art piece I looked back on what I aspired to do. I care for the environment and I was very excited to be able to work on this project. When working on this with my team, I felt flustered but in the end I was glad that we were able to complete it. My message to the viewers of the art would be to read the story and really look into it. There are ways to help change the world and it starts with us. After doing my research on water, I’ve found that there is so much that contributes to the pollution and the issues surrounding water. After doing this project I will be aware of how much water I use and I will use safer products for the environment.

DaZiyah Johnson

The algae adventures project was inspired by the different lakes around us and the challenges they face. It started off by doing research and building up background information on algae. I was very interested in knowing how we could help as a community, we found how algae can be toxic or helpful to the environment around us. During the research I learned how we as humans can also make things dangerous for us by not taking care of our community like we are supposed to. The message to our views was how algae become toxic/dangerous for humans and animals. The actions that I will now take is to learn more about water, volunteer with land trust and landscaping.

Yonnie Long

I am one of the participants in the project “Algae Adventures”. This project included 8 students from Tapestry Charter Highschool that worked really hard. All this hard work will pay off with this Ocean Awareness Contest! During this process I've learned a lot and I didn't think I would… I learned that algae was neither a villain or a hero, algae was just included in something that it couldn't control. We made algae come alive in many ways. We made the letters algae like and we even made the big algae.

Joel Worthy

The thing that inspired me was that if we applied for the contest and the art is good, we can win some money . Like who doesn't want to win money! So, that made me wanna do it. I felt happy while making this art piece because it was enjoyable to create the theme of the contest. My message to the viewers is that I hope you like the work because we tried our best doing what we did and also it was in the hot blazing sun so you can tell we were seriously invested in this contest. Water keeps us alive. I'll start to recycle more.