Final Poster Designs

Here are our final designs. These posters are the products of hours of research, drawing and revisions by the young women of Voices Her’d. As the “lead” artist, I am proud that these young women themselves took the lead in these designs, making authentic, beautiful and powerful images. It was an honor to work with all the Voices Her’s participants and my partner Tanya. I look forward to seeing how these posters will travel, and the positive change I know they will effect.- Nicole Schulman

These posters will shortly be available from Day One’s website.

Final Reflections

Sarah:  It’s been a long road here at Groundswell’s Voices Her’d. I remember when everyone was getting to know each other. Everyone was shy, not many spoke up and at first we weren’t open to talk about abuse.  We got to speak one on one with our client. After a series of brain storming we finally came up with ideas that we presented to Day One, our client.  This was the first time any of us had ever pitched an idea to a large organization. Of course I wasn’t nervous and it didn’t seem like anyone else was either. A lot of the times it was hard to adjust to changing our ideas several times to meet the needs of our client and a lot of the times I found it a little annoying but I suppose it was for the best.

Being a part of a large collaboration wasn’t too bad either. At first I figured it would be a train wreck because I have never been a part of collaboration this large. It was a little nerve racking jumping from group to group however I did benefit from it overall.

As a group we all got to visit many areas such as a screen printing shop that seemed somewhat of a nightmare because there were a bunch of girls shoved into a closet like area with absolutely no seats. I’m almost sure that I will not be screen printing again after that work shop but at least I left with a better understanding of how to screen print and can proudly say that I do know how to print screen prints.

I think over all the best part about working at Groundswell is the many friends that I made. Everything is worth it when you have supportive amazing friends and I think I everyone in the group bounded like family. We all shared the same ideas as one another and we all knew when each other was annoyed. No one hated one another; there was always a sense of unity amongst us. No matter the struggles and hard ships it wasn’t so bad because there were friends to support one another through it. I never thought I’d see such a sense of harmony among girls. I always figured if you put a group of girls together in a room too long they would all end up despising one another but that wasn’t the case.  In fact it didn’t even come close to that.

Michelle:  Working with “Voices Heard Visionaries” was AMAZING. I would really love to work with this group again in the future.  Hopefully I’ll get the chance to. When I chose to work with this group I was so excited because I felt that because of my past experiences I had a lot to share and give, and so everything i felt, thought, and seen was shared and put into the work that was created. There were a few difficulties I expierenced but I managed to get by them with the help of my group. I look forward to working with Groundswell Community Mural Project for a 3rd year.

 

Rebecca:  These past few weeks I have gained a lot of skills and learned a lot.  I learned about healthy and unhealthy relationships.  I already knew how to use Photoshop.  I had to learn to use Adobe Illustrator.  At first I hated it, but now I actually really like it.  I was extremely excited to work with screenprinting because I hope to start my own t-shirt company.  All in all, this experience helped me gain necessary skills I really wanted.

Suzan:  This summer’s Voices Her’d was an experience for me.  I learned how to portray a message into a campaign.  My favorite part was when we went to Day One to pitch our ideas.  The challenges were to draw good ideas.  I had a great time here.

 

 

 

Sandra:  This summer was a new experience for me.  Putting away the experience of putting together a mosaic mural to start a campaign was a very big task because I never participated in a campaign before.  I’m actually glad I participated in this project because I would have never met the cool people I was able to work with this summer.  Also it was a very nice thing to do for the victims of abuse to help demonstrate what a healthy relationship looks like.  I’m looking forward to see the project’s impact on the community.

 Shianti: So this summer I worked on this digital campaign for Day One. The project is against intimate partner violence in teen relationships. During the course of the summer I’ve had to commute from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Some days it sucked and on other days it was peaceful and a lot of fun. The project was really challenging because I do not like to use Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. It was also really informative about a lot of things I did not know and made me come face to face with things I did not want to remember. I learned that I could gain legal help if I needed it without the need to inform a police officer and still have control over the situation. I was reeducated about coercion, harassment, and on what consent is. Women and men should be educated about these things, because it is not a one way street. I noticed that many young adults do not know what consent exactly is or what coercion is, even though many have been coerced. Other than that the summer was really fun. I learned about zines, learned about cameras, had a photo shoot, and screen printed shirts. All in all it felt good to make art for this important purpose.

Casey: During this project I learned a lot of new skills. Working with Photoshop and illustrator was a big learning curve since I was use to painting murals. After a week or two I got the hang of it and it started becoming second nature. I really liked working as a team and getting to know the other girls. It felt good to know I was making art for a purpose.

 

Gloryann: Working on this project made me more open-minded and now I want to speak up more than ever. There was a lot of pressure and tension on the projects. Everything was all over the place like paper, pencils, pens, and sketches. There were times my eyes started to hurt and I had to take a break for 5 to 10 minutes. There were some days when everyone was happy and energetic and some days when we were just tired and half awake.

 

 

Cherry:  For the most part, the project has been tough. At times, there would be a lot of pressure, especially when it came to having to meet deadlines and speak out in public. I found it difficult to project myself in front of a room full of people, but I feel a little better about it. It was tough coming up with ideas for the campaign, and figuring out what would be the most effective. It was somewhat new for me to be working in illustrator. Overall, the experience with this campaign has been good. I have gained some more experience working in this field. If I ever have to go through this process again it’ll be easier to work.

 

Emeli: My experience with Groundswell this summer has been amazing. I have learned so much during this summer that can help me in the future. Some of the things that I have learned throughout this summer from the organization Day One are the differences between healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationships, the warning signs of an abusive relationship, and what to do if I am in an unhealthy situation or if I see someone else in an unhealthy situation. Some of the things that I learned from Groundswell are how to communicate and work together as a team, how to use art as a tool for social change, how to use technology to create artwork, how to be inspired by previous artwork and so many more things. I enjoyed this summer while working on this project so much and it is an experience that I will never forget.

Jonell: I learned a lot from the Voice’s Her’d project.  I loved working on the intimate partner violence campaign. I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to make my poster on a specific type of abuse. I was assigned technological abuse. It was exciting working on Adobe Photoshop even though it was tiring but it was worth it because my poster came out fierce. I love my lead artist Nicole and assistant artist Tanya because they helped me to become better at Adobe Photoshop. I want to thank the person who paid me for working so hard.

 

Tichinia: This summer, Groundswell has been really good to me. I enjoyed doing this project because I learned a lot of significant things I didn’t know. Being in this group made me a better person this summer. I’ve met a lot of new people and staff. I thought working with new people would be a scary thing for me, but when I met all the girls in the group, I liked them right away as well for Tanya and Nicole. I hope next summer I get the same chance to work at Groundswell because it’s a good experience and it can help me in the future, and that goes for school as well for jobs. The girls in the group taught me a a lot and I took it into consideration. I just want to say thank you to Groundswell and for all that they have done for me. You are the best!!

Dominique: This summer was cool and swag. I learned a lot of new things like Photo shop, Illustrator and screen-printing. I met new people that helped me to explore what they do for a living. This summer I made some new friends. I would like to do this again next summer. I hope our artwork helps people heal.

Photoshoot!

The last week of the project, we worked with photographer Pete Pin and modeled our awesome new shirts.  We just got the images back and think they are pretty great!

 

Last Days and Banquet

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Jonell on Sexual Harassment, Street Harassment and “Hey Shorty!”

During my time at work I’ve been reading a book called “Hey Shorty” by the Girls For Gender Equity (GGE).This book relates to our topic on intimate partner violence because it talks about sexual harassment and why it’s important to speak up about sexual harassment for junior and high school public schools.  This is important to me because I don’t think anybody should go through sexual harassment because I’ve been through it before in elementary school and it was very uncomfortable.  Boys would try to grab my butt and I’d be uncomfortable about that, and I would say something and the adults wouldn’t do anything about it.  They think that it’s normal, that boys will be boys, and its still like that to this day.  This boys will be boys metntality creates a place where guys will take advantage of girls and nobody does anything about it.

GGE explained the steps to avoiding sexual harassment.   Depending on how someone approaches you, there are different ways to react.  If someone touches you in an inappropriate way, you can defend yourself.  You can speak up, or just walk away.  It depends on how a harasser approaches you.  If someone that works with you that does something you don’t like, you should say something.  If it’s someone on the street, I would probably just walk away.

The group sent surveys to all junior and high school students in all five boroughs in New York. GGE found out that only 74 percent of males reported that sexual harassment was not a problem in their school more than 67 percent of the females.   It’s important to know that not only boys street harass; girls do it too.  It’s more rare but it still happens.  This is a serious problem in public schools because the teachers don’t take it seriously because they think that females should’ve never worn something too revealing to make boys touch them in a sexual way.  You can be totally covered up and still get harassed, and even if you are wearing something revealing you aren’t asking for it.  It’s not ok when adults tell girls who are asking for help that they should expect to be harassed if they are wearing revealing clothes.   This connects to intimate partner violence because sexual harassment is one of the key problems of intimate partner violence.  It’s part of it because when you’re in an abusive relationship and your partner forces you to do something you don’t want to do, that’s also about consent and coercion and control.

I have a lot of experiences with sexual harassment, mostly on the street but also in school.  It makes me really uncomfortable.  I learned from my mom that you should just ignore them and walk away, and if they follow you run.  I don’t think fathers have to have these conversations with their sons; they might have to talk to their daughters though, and they would probably tell their son to fight back instead of run.  It makes us look bad.  Why do we have to run because of that?  Why do we have to be the gender that has to run?

Jonell,17

Week Seven: Playground and a Photo Shoot with Pete Pin

Photographer Pete Pin came back to do a photoshoot with our awesome shirts.  We hung out in the park and ran around, releasing lots of pent up energy from 7 weeks of dedicated, focused, challenging work.  We’ll post the photos Pete took as soon as we get them!

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Week Seven: DIY T-Shirt Surgery!

We had lots of t-shirts with our images screenprinted on them, but they still needed a little more fixing-up.

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Week Seven: Final Countdown!

We spent this week finishing up our final drafts, perfecting the posters and getting them ready to print!  We also did lots of screenprinting, writing, cleaning and general all-around-multitasking.  Also, it was Suzan, Sandra and Madeleine’s birthday!!!

 

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Anti-Wife-Beater ScreenPrinting Workshop!

On Saturday, August 13 we held an Anti-Wife-Beater screenprinting workshop where we invited the public to screenprint their own tanktops, t-shirts, and bags with the images we made. We set up six different screens, and a station for preparing the shirts. DayOne had their own table as well to share information about their organization and speak to the public about intimate partner abuse in teen relationships. People came in and showed support. They picked out t-shirts and went to the station of their choosing to get them screen printed.

The workshop was fun. We mixed several different inks, so we could have a wider selection of colors to work with. The public liked the fact that there were more colors to work with. People were nice and had lots of fun. Zipper, the communications designer who did a workshop with us, came by and participated in the workshop as well. All in all the workshop was very successful. — Shianti

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The first time that I tried screen printing was when I was at Groundswell. I enjoyed screen printing because it is fun to see how the designs are burned into the screen and to be able to create your own t-shirt using the design. Screen printing is also very messy because you need to use emulsion to be able to burn the screen and screen printing ink to be able to design your own t-shirt. Screen printing is something that I see myself doing in the future. -Emeli

Rebecca talks about Victim Blaming in the New York Times

Victim blaming is when a situation happens and people blame the victim when in fact it isn’t their fault. It’s most commonly seen with domestic violence, rape and such abuse cases. Victim blaming can not only damage the victim mentally. It also normalizes the situation and makes things seem as if the person “had it coming”. When people blame the victim in domestic violence relationships it can convince the person to stay with their abuser because they think they’re in the wrong and then the abuse cycle can continue. Victim blaming can happen in rape cases, too.  In a lot of media woman are portrayed as if it’s there fault for not dressing properly or because they didn’t watch their back. So because of that they are too afraid to tell people they were assaulted.

In the New York Times they published  an article about a gang rape of an 11-year old girl in an abandoned trailer in Texas. It was recorded on cell phone video by the assailants, but the New York Times seemed to justify their excuse that the assailants said the girl seemed older and dressed like she was in her 20s.   As if that gave a group of men from middle school to age 27 a reason to have sex with her one after another. What bothered me the most about the article was how the author went on for 3 pages talking about what the environment was like.  The author went on for a long time about things that didn’t really matter, like what the abandoned trailer where the assault took place looked like. By talking about the town and the abandoned trailer, it set the scene that this girl was less than nothing, and it created distance between the victim and the average reader of the New York Times.  People in the community were quoted as blaming the girl’s mom instead of the men who actually did this to her.    The article also said, “she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.  She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground.”  If the girl or her mother read this article, they would likely feel that this was their fault.  But it’s not.  The blame is on the eighteen men who raped her.   There was no resolution, no closure to the article. This is just crazy to me. How someone can lure people in with headlines and exploit the story for the whole world to see and end it up in the air, because that just makes it seem like what ends up happening to the girl doesn’t matter.   Extreme cases like this, where an 11 year old girl is raped by 18 people, makes headlines, but sexual assault happens all the time to women all around the world. but Its only made a big deal out of when a drastic case happens, and then the victim is blamed. Things like this create “rape culture”.  It can hold women down and normalizes these horrible situations.  If something like this were to happen to me, I’d rather no one know about it instead of being in the New York Times, especially because the blame doesn’t go where it belongs – to the rapists.

-Rebecca

Week Six: Shianti meets with Ally Norman, Zine Librarian

So, in today’s society there are magazines filled with ads directed toward women and girls. Media screams how we should look, how we should dress, how we should talk, how we should act, etc.  When we actually find an article we like and it’s on a subject worth talking about, it’s “cookie cutter” and not in depth.   Most information geared toward women does not tackle the questions and concerns we actually have. This problem has been around for quite some time now and females around the globe have taken action. Women have created zines (pronounced z-ee-ns) to address and talk about the issues we collectively as females have. Zines address topics such as politics, societal “norms”, feminist views, sex, STI/STD’s, consent and sexual boundaries, LGBT issues, etc.

As you already guessed, zines is a shortened name from magazine (how clever is that!). Now a short history lesson on how zines came to be. These publications back in the day were cut, pasted, typed, mass printed and then given out to everyone they knew to read.  Women and other groups that have been fighting for their liberation and equal treatment have been self-publishing pamphlets since this country began.  But a newer movement emerged out of the alternative and punk music scene in theUnited Statesduring the 90’s. Lots of young women began to produce personal and political zines with explicitly feminist themes. (this is mentioned in the first paragraph above :]). In the present day, zines are found on the internet and in small stores and are available to the public as e-zines.

Some examples of zines are Bendita (Brazil), Bitch (U.S.), riot grrl (U.S.) Clit Rocket (Italy), good girl (Canada), and Grrrl:Rebel (Malaysia), Pink Punkies (Argentina), and Pretty Ugly (Australia). You can find zines from around the globe and in different languages at GRRRL ZINE NETWORK. [Insert link httpl://www.grrlzines.net]

My personal interaction with zines has been educational and entertaining. The zines, like I mentioned before, hit issues that I personally find insightful and worth reading. In the zine .B.E.T.C.H. RAG, a woman talks about having a safe but functioning sex life, while living with herpes. She then touches upon having safe sex with people who have STDs such as herpes and HIV. In what magazine will you ever find something like that? You won’t!  I went to Catholic school, so in the classroom, sex didn’t exist.  They just taught us about abstinence and pretended that this situation went away.  This didn’t help me at all for things in life.  This information is essential for young people in the 21^st century- because it’s not like STD’s are going away. The zine Learning Good Consent, it has a piece on what consent is and ways to identify it. Useful stuff especially when you have no clue as to what consent is before reading anything like this.  Consent is saying yes to something you agree to while you are sober.  You have to say, “Yes I want to”, not a shrug, not a head nod, not an mm-hmm.  You have to say the words, “Yes, I want to.”  My mom knew that because I was going to Catholic school, she knew she had to teach me this stuff.  She always told me that no one’s allowed to touch you here, that no one has a right to make you feel some kind of way, and that you always have to say yes if you want to and no if you don’t.  I think other young people have probably not  had these lessons.

I met with a zine librarian named Alison Norman. She is really nice and had the most amazing pink hair I’ve ever seen. She works at a cool little place called ABC No Rio. She talked to me about the many zines in the shop and located all over the city.  We looked at other zines together, like one that was about a woman’s lifestyle and how she was struggling with alcoholism.  We talked about how society tells you you should just act like a lady, but most women’s lifestyles just don’t coincide with that.  ABC No Rio’s library has a lot of zines to be accessed , and they are opened to the public for … wait for it … FREE!  ABC No Rio also has a screenprinting shop and photography studio.  I found out that some colleges have a zine library.  Colleges know to have these wonderful things on hand so I think they need to advertise that they have them. Bringing this to a close, zines are a great read for the girl who’s tired of the superficial magazines and the non education and or exciting articles they contain.

Week Six: Gloryann on Working with Adobe Illustrator

 

Working on Adobe Illustrator was complicated and easy at the same time because the tools were very difficult to handle and the drawings would some times go away and randomly disappear. The easy part of Illustrator is that you’re able to play around with different colors and shapes. You’re able to draw anything you want and be creative. Illustrator is really easy and difficult but fun in many different ways but be careful with some tools because they will ruin your drawings.  -Gloryann

Week Six: Self-Defense workshop with Jelani

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On August 8^th 2011 a few members from the Voices Heard group along with members from other Groundswell groups stayed after work for a self-defense workshop. The person teaching the workshop was Jelani Wilson from New York Jiu Jitsu. He demonstrated how to get out of different methods that are commonly used by an attacker or abuser. The methods of self-defense that he taught were the wrist escape, defensive stance, front-snapping kick, vertical fist strike, upward knee strike, how to get out of a hair pull from front and back, and rear high elbow strike. This workshop was useful because if we ever come across a situation like this we’ll be prepared to defend ourselves from an attacker. –Michelle 15

Week Six: Communication Design workshop with Zipper

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Workshop today! Today Erin Zipper, a communication designer, came over and told us a lil about what she does. Zipper’s job is to make posters, book covers, illustrations, etc. to convey a message.  She’ll do what ever it takes to convey any message her client wants. Hard and determined worker isn’t she?

She showed us a series of illustrations and posters in a slide show. Zipper then proceeded to do an experiment with us. She flashed two posters really fast. She wanted to see if we could get what the poster/illustration was trying to “pitch” us. She then came to her point: a poster/illustration’s point should be gotten in fifteen seconds or less. Since most people are on the move communications designers have to grab your attention as quickly as possible. So keeping pictures and text to a minimum is essential. This is where knowing your audience comes in. Knowing your audience gives you an idea of what to incorporate in your illustration or how to grab their attention.

Zipper then mentioned hierarchy. What is this you say? Basically, in normal-people speak, hierarchy is putting what you want to be noticed first at the top and then spreading the rest of your poster design/ text accordingly. This was all on a poster she had made. It’s titled “When Making A Poster”. The first bullet is “Knowing Your Audience” and “Say It Quickly”. (These are mentioned above.) The third is “Guide the Viewer”, which is where the hierarchy comes in.  You create a hierarchy with whitespace, scale, font weight, and color. So whitespace, the space that is white, is the negative space around the elements in your design. You can put illustration, color, or what ever have you in your white space. Scale is how big or how small you make your text. When placing text, you need to make sure it flows and doesn’t conflict with other text, so that it guides the reader through the poster. Font weight is also important. Making a font bold or changing the size in certain areas can really draw attention in the right places, and using different font weights can help make the hierarchy of information more obvious than if you just had one font weight. Adding color can really make a difference as well when making a poster. Making certain words red in a provocative poster can add more effect then if you bold the text and kept it black. Changing font weight and color add more emphasis on certain words in a poster. The final thing to do is test what you’ve created and see if it works toward your target audience.

Congratulations, you successfully know how to make a poster! So that concluded the workshop. To me the workshop was ok. I now know what a communication designer does and know someone named Zipper. I’m very pleased with that. :] The images she showed in her slideshow were really cool; they appealed to the kid in me because they were really colorful and clever. – Shianti, 18

Week Five: Working on Our Final Drafts

This week, we worked on Photoshop and Illustrator to finalize our poster designs. We were able to scan our drawings and actually work on things that were both very easy and very hard. The hardest part about it was using the tools in the programs because we’re still learning the programs. — Gloryann and Dominique

Working on this poster was very difficult because I didn’t know how to work with the tools on photoshop and it was my first time working with digital art but now I’m getting used to it and not struggling anymore. There were days that I would find it easy to handle the tools and there were days that I just wanted to give up but I kept trying. The greatest thing about the poster was trying different colors and seeing which color was the best for the poster design. The main color I picked was blue and orange because I want the audience to know that emotional/verbal abuse is not healthy and can make their partner depressed. –GloryAnn

Each person on the team was assigned different tasks to complete. I drew the rocket with the banner attached, and my teammates drew their aliens and robots, each displaying different elements of good love like trust, good communication, and having fun together. Once our sketches were done, I scanned them into the computer and started working on the composition of the poster. After the layout was done, I added text to finally complete the first sketch of the Good Lovin’ poster.

- Casey

Week Five: Photography workshop with Pete Pin

    On Wednesday the 3^rd of August, Voices Her’d had a photography work shop. Pete Pin, a Cambodian documentary photographer, was our host. He showed us some of his photography and talked about some of the projects he was involved in. One of his projects involved photographing people who lived on the streets and traveled from place to place. His long term project involves taking pictures of Cambodians across the states and incorporating old photographs of Cambodian refugees. The old photographs he is incorporating are of Cambodians fleeing genocide during the late 1970’s.

     Pete then proceeded to show us the basics of photography. He explained that the higher the ISO the more sensitive to light ones camera is. Your ISO would be high if you were taking pictures in a dark room or setting. The downside to a high ISO is that your pictures would show up grainy. For photography in the daylight, the camera’s ISO should be set to 100. After the information on ISO, he explained to us what aperture and shutter is on a camera. Aperture is the diameter of a camera’s lens opening. It is controlled by an iris, and the larger the aperture, the more light enters and vise-versa. A camera usually shoots with aperture priority, which is where the photographer will pick the aperture and the camera will find the shutter speed to match. Shutter is how fast or slow the aperture will open and close; how long light will pass.

    Pete brought in three books containing the photography of Eugene Richards, Richard Avedon, and Bruce Davidson. He explained their use of space and the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is applied by aligning a subject with the guide lines and their intersection points, placing the horizon on the top or bottom line, or allowing linear features in the image to flow from section to section. The rule of thirds is to discourage placement of the subject at the center, or prevent a horizon from appearing to divide the picture in half. Essentially the rule is there so the picture is not boring, and/or awkward looking.

We then proceeded to take some photos with the lessons we learned. Personally I learned that not all cameras have a zoom in/zoom out function. Pete’s camera does not have this function. He explained that not having a zoom in/zoom out function allows you to play with space and teaches you how to move with a camera. So cameras with out this function are an ideal to work with according to Pete. The workshop overall was great and very informative for everyone. —-Shianti, 18

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Week Five: Dakota meets with poet Anoushka Ratnarajah

One day after work, one of my supervisors suggested that I stay for a poetry workshop with one of her friends, so I did. Turns out it was once in a lifetime experience.  This wonderful poet Anoushka Ratharajah was hosting the workshop. We talked about our lives and poetry, as well as different types of poetry.   Together we read “Membrane” by Alexis de Veux and talked about it. We talked about our strengths and weaknesses and from that we did some poetry writing. We each wrote a piece and read them aloud.  I was really surprised to hear her say she was surpassed impressed, not exactly those words but you get what I’m saying.  Anyway, sadly I was the only person in the group to stay for it, but it was some good one-on-one time with this wonderful poet.   At the end of the workshop we exchanged emails and said our goodbyes.  After that I really felt good about my poetry, that I got a professional to take a look at it and really like it.  That moment really changed my life.

RED By Dakota storm Austin

Red and tears is all she can see as she lays on the tile, blue and cracked corners, cold and bitter as the taste of vinegar on a tongue. She sees footsteps and has fear she smells the sweet smell of one losing their mind. She copes with him, then he smiles and lowers himself to the tile, blue cracked and covered in the color red that came from the girl his hand rests on her hair long and silky. The sun reflects in the room as he apologizes to the weak girl. But they can see it all, it happened right in front of them, from the smashed mirrors to the pills on the floor, to the tears and pleads that were consistent the raised hand and the slippery soap. The words came crashing down on her, she cried then moments later she died. The headlines screamed why did she stay?  but its over now paper and ink can’t save the girl.

Week Five: Screenprinting at Hester Street Collaborative

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Yesterday the group visited the Hester Street Collaborative to do a workshop to learn about screen printing. The interns at Hester Street , Nicole and Tanya showed us the first steps to using a vacuum table. The vacuum table exposes the screen with an ultra violet light , which hardens the emulsion except for where the image is positive. This takes up to 3 minutes. Once that was done, Nicole showed us how to apply the emulsion onto the screen. Once you apply the emulsion on the screen, you have to wait an hour so it can dry thoroughly. Some of the interns had already prepared some screens for us so we just got to using the vacuum table to to expose the screens. Once we had a decent amount of screens exposed, we split into teams of 2 and started screen printing on newsprint for practice. We had to remember to flood the screens so the ink wouldn’t dry into the screen. We next moved to t-shirts where it got really exciting. We screen printed white ink on black shirts and black ink on white shirts with designs we made for our Anti-Wife-Beater workshop on August 13th. We washed the screens off and dried them and got prepared to leave. Voices Her’d had a really good time learning how to screen print. We all learned a lot and hope to do it again sometime soon   —Tichina

Week Four: Pitching to Day One

The Voices Her’d visionaries visited Day One so that they can give us feedback on the poster designs we did. Day One really loved the emotional/verbal abuse posters and thought that one of them should be made into a T-Shirt design. The T-Shirt designs they thought were really cool and we did a good job on them. They also loved the Good Lovin’ poster and thought it was really cute, but the vegetables and fruit should be made into monsters and robots because the fruit and vegetable theme was a little too young. The financial abuse poster was too gender specific. Day One thought that we shouldn’t show it in a gender specific way because it might look as if the the girl in the relationship is a “gold-digger” and the man in the relationship is the giver. So instead we drew out a silhouette of a person standing over another person holding a gift where the ribbons are tangled and attached to the smaller person below. This shows one of the definitions of financial abuse which is a form of mistreatment in which an abuser controls a victim’s economic means or may give their partner gifts and expect things like sex and obedience in return.  The technological poster was really good but just needed more realistic photos and details. The Sexual Abuse poster was a really difficult one because we didn’t want to make a poster that would trigger someone in a negative way. We used a first aid kit as a symbol of help, but they thought that it would be a good idea if we would possibly re-work the poster and put the items in a first aid kit as if it were Day One’s services. The Cycle Of Abuse poster was really good and they thought that the gears in the picture weren’t needed.  My thoughts on the feedback were Ok. I never really got criticized on my work before but it wasn’t a bad experience. I had the hardest topic to work on and I had to decide on what I could draw that wouldn’t trigger any one that has been sexually abused. I think the group took it well. It might have been a different experience for some people, but overall our group did a really good job. I really like working and writing on the blog. It helps build my writing skills which I can say are getting really good. -Tichinia,17

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Week Four: Edelman Trip

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This week we took a trip to the company Edelman. They are a communications firm that also works with corp0rations to support social and environmental causes. We got a tour of their office and saw how a desk job could be an artistic environment, too.  The first thing you see when you walk in is a word cloud that was based on the words from “The medium is the Message”, a book by Marshall Mcluhan. They helped us brainstorm ways to get our project to reach our intended groups. We listed our topics, and explained what we knew about them. They helped us figure out a way to connect our projects together.  We learnd that a boiler plate is a paragraph or even a design on the bottom of a poster with the information that could connect all of our differently themed posters together. We also listed places were we all hang out at and places we could hang our posters up to reach our intended audience.

Rebecca 17

Week Four: Learning Illustrator and Starting Final Sketches

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My group and I had trouble figuring out how we were going to combine all of our ideas together. So we brainstormed and figured out an idea. We decided to go with portraying healthy relationships with healthy objects (toothbrushes, fruits, vegetables, etc). Our plan for our poster is to show  different healthy characters next to each other in the shape of a heart representing different characteristics to show a healthy relationship.Then once we finish our poster, we are going to design stickers that show inanimate objects being in a healthy relationship.

-Rebecca 17

Week Three: Brainstorming the Series

We’ve come up with so many ideas by now, we had to take over a wall as an “Idea Bank”!  This way, as we continue to move forward, we can check in with ideas we’ve already worked on for inspiration or to pull things from to re-design.

And now we get busy!  Today we broke into groups, with each group taking on particular elements of each poster series.  We talked about different brainstorming techniques to advance our conceptual approach to image making.  All of the groups made great advancements in the development of their series.  Dakota, Rebecca, Michelle and Casey worked together on the “Good Love” series.  They began by listing different elements that make up a healthy relationship, such as good communication, trust, boundaries and affection.  Then each chose an element to do a series of small, quick thumbnails about.  I worked with Michelle for a few moments, who was brainstorming on affection.  Often in this phase of the process, it can be difficult to transition from doing more complicated drawings back to simple, quick thumbnails.  I explained that going from listing words and defining concepts into drawing quick, rough thumbnails was an exercise in language translation.  You are taking these complex ideas, and then translating them into a universal visual language.  Thumbnails are not meant to be particularly beautiful; mine are often bizarre scrawls that no one can understand but myself.  I assisted Michelle in doing rapid-fire thumbnails; first she drew a couple embracing, then holding hands, then taking a nap together.  I encouraged her to combine them.  “When you put these all together,” I asked the group, “what do you see?”.  Casey replied “Spooning!”  Michelle was going to start drawing a more developed image based on this, but felt intimidated by drawing the figure.  I encouraged her to either use members of her group as models, to work collaboratively with a team member who she felt may have drawing skills she could learn from, or to find an alternative way to represent that image.  We asked the group, “How could we show spooning?”  Laughingly, they answered, “With Spoons!”.  Michelle than began drawing images with the spoons.  I came back a little later, and asked the group, “What could we say about spoons that relates to healthy relationships?”  Dakota said, “This love is stainless!”  and I replied, “And strong as steel!”.  The group then began talking about doing the “Good Love” series using imagery of inanimate objects that belong together.  They started another brainstorming list, including things like chips and salsa, a tv and remote, peanut butter and jelly, a plug and outlet.  Then they started doing more small drawings of these objects.  Next week, we’ll work on developing metaphors and similes and writing catchy, concise statements to go along with these ideas.  —Tanya Linn Albrigtsen-Frable

Today July 21, 2011 we took on the task of creating designs for our anti wife beater campaign. First we created several thumb nail sketches and brain stormed on clever ideas that could woo our viewers. We also created a mind map to help prioritize what we needed to focus our art work on. We then proceeded to make larger revisions on our thumb nails in order to make it presentable to our peers.  We received great feedback on our work. Many people wanted to see if we could combine ideas together. They also gave us minor feedback on what to add on to our rough drafts such as adding some indication of someone climbing up a ladder like a hand or a foot, etc… Every one helped us by narrowing down our choices by coming up one by one and selecting what stood out to them the most.  Right now the direction we are heading right now is thinking about how many designs we are willing to use and how many colors can we choose for our work. We also need to focus on time management. We currently have two projects that need to be completed such as the wife beater shirts as well as our comic on “Love means never having to say…” We aren’t fully sold on the idea of making “love means” as our comic topic so that’s something we need to brain storm about. We are thinking about working on the comic next week and then going back to the wife beaters to meet our deadlines since they are both quickly arriving. One hour could be devoted to the wife beater refinements while another could be devoted to creating comics and story boarding, deciding is still a work in progress.  -Sarah Sanon and Cherry Sompanya

On Thursday July 21, 2011, we picked up from where we left off from Day One. We divided the different topics on abuse we covered into teams to work on. Me and my partner Suzan chose physical and sexual abuse to design posters on, but for now, we designed thumb nails. Our project has a great start so far. Our previous works based on physical and sexual abuse influenced us, but it can use a little more work once we have our Internet working. We also brainstormed ideas based on physical and sexual abuse to get an idea running across our heads. —Sandra Aghedo

Today July 21th 2011, me and my partner worked on thumbnail concepts for abuse posters. We had the topic of sexual and physical abuse.  We also edited ideas from old posters the group did. We took a look at our designs and narrowed down the ones that we thought would be best for the posters. We each came up with four ideas by brainstorming out ideas on a piece of paper. We branched out the words consent and coercion to help with our topic. My part of the project is going well and one question I have is how are we going to afford these poster printings? —Suzan Aghedo

Today I sketched some thumbnails for “Warning Signs”. There are many different types of warning signs such as jealousy, having a temper, false accusations, isolation, blaming, apologizing for your partner, and making excuses for your partner.  The process for making this poster was simple. I had to brainstorm all of the different warning signs and choose the most important ones to sketch. Next I used previous sketches that showed the different warning signs to incorporate in my sketches.  This project is going to finish as a poster for warning signs. —Emeli Herrera 15

Technological abuse is when people are in an intimate relationship and their partner is constantly calling, texting, emailing and looking through personal website profiles. Today we drew thumbnails for our topic on technological abuse. We drew objects that had to do with technology and abuse. Also, we used examples from other people’s ideas and combined it with ours. We used statements to go with every thumbnail that we drew.  The influence we had were from other people drawings and sketches. They had ideas that were good to combine with our topic.  Our part of the project is going on a poster with 4 ideas on 1 poster with red, black grey and white.  We want to look at what other examples can make our topic stronger.  –Jonell Santiago & Tichinia Alexander
Today we designed more posters for the campaign we are working on. We were separated into groups that were from 2 to 4 people in each group. While we were going through the process of brainstorming ideas we selected which sketches were good or okay. My partner and I came up with a few ideas that we had to come up with our topic which was emotional/verbal and financial abuse. We defined both topics and came up with several different ideas for our thumbnails. The influences came from our collages that made us draw serious, funny and emotional sketches. The feedback we got was positive and motivated us to come up with better sketches and ideas. Our part of the project is going well and going on the right track.   —Dominique and Glory Ann

Week Three: Learning Photoshop

Today we learned how to use Adobe Photoshop.  Photoshop is a program that you can use to edit pictures and images. We manipulated photos by moving it around in different places, changing the colors, changing the background to whatever we want. We also used different tools from the tool bar, and used the paint brush in different ways. — Glory Anne and Dominique 16

Week Three: Developing Designs Further

 

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In order to get where we are today in our topic about violent relationships we have written out many posters based on different areas of the topic. These posters have helped us break down this topic and cover every area so that we can understand it much better. We’ve had posters such as warning signs, vocabulary/concept list, “if you love me….”, “love means not having to say…”, unhealthy relationships, healthy relationships, and boundary statements. After our community meeting we’ve decided to break it down to three different series of posters “ If you love me,” “Love means not having to say,” and “Different types of abuse.” —Michelle Lopez 15 years old ..

Week Three: Community Partner Presentation

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On Tuesday, July 19th, representatives from Day One showed up around 10:30 am. This was our presentation day to Day one to show our progress in the last few weeks. They later on selected the top drafts we all created that they feel would work for our campaign. They all gave lots of helpful feedback and ideas to make this even better.  —Sandra Aghedo

On July 19 2010 one of Day One’s members, Claudia, held a small work shop based on the topic of “Wife Beaters”. As a group we explored the deep meaning of Wife Beater tank tops and asked ourselves this: why the name of this piece of clothing was okay and how has society normalized this name? Claudia proceeded to dig deeper into how Wife Beaters have become normalized by using the example “If I called sandals Child Molesters, then everyone would see it as a great offense and that it would NOT be okay, so why is it okay to name a tank top Wife Beater”?  We began designing our own wife beaters using positive messages.  What came out of this small project were loads of creativity and the strong will to change the definition of Wife Beaters entirely. —Saradyn Sanon

Week Two: Things We’re Looking At

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We got our computers.  Yay!  We spent some time doing research on the internet to find out what kind of imagery was already out there pertaining to our topic.  We also checked out websites that are dealing with similar issues.  We looked at thatsnotcool.com, which is a public education campaign to raise awareness about how to deal with technological abuse and is funded by Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund), the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, and the Advertising Council.  We also looked at loveisrespect.org, which offers information and resources on teen dating violence and is funded by the National Dating Abuse Helpline and Break the Cycle.

The video of “Run the World” by Beyonce response stood out to me because the woman in the video had a point that women don’t run the world.  They don’t because everyday young girls and young women get raped or abused.  So therefore women still aren’t respected by men.  This video is making me think twice about how Beyonce views women.  It seems that she’s not making women look more positive.  Jonell Santiago, 17.

Week Two: Orders of Protection and Survivor’s Panel

Anyone of any age can apply for an Order of Protection. What is an Order of Protection? An Order of Protection is a signed document by a judge that states that a person who harmed and/or threatened you is not allowed to assault/threat, they have to stay away, and no contact with you. Where can you get the Order of Protection?  An Order of Protection is issued in courts. Some victims go to criminal court to file for an Order of Protection. Young people can also get an Order of Protection in family court. Also you can have an Order of Protection from both courts and there are no fees for getting an Order of Protection.  Orders of Protection can last to 2 to 8 years depending on the facts of the case between you and you abuser.

Anyone can file for Criminal Court. The Criminal Court process starts when you file a complaint at the precinct or when the police report to an emergency call. A Domestic Violence Prevention Officer will ask questions about what happened and fill out a statement. You will be asked to sign the written statement stating what happen between you and your partner. Once the abuser has gotten arrested and charged, he/she would be given a date to come into court. You don’t have to testify against the abuser in court. You can be given an Order of Protection several times until the next court date. In Criminal Court the official Order of Protection is when the abuser is found guilty at trail. In Criminal Court an Order of Protection is mostly common last for 2years depending on the crime. Some Orders of Protection last 5 or more years because of the changes or felonies in the case.

Family court is for partners who are married or divorced, have a child, are related by blood or marriage, and have an intimate relationship. For an Order of Protection for Family Court you don’t have to go to the police and file a report, you have to fill out an application with Family Court and you must give you and your abuser’s living information and state and a description of what happened. Before the court date the judge would give you a temporary Order of Protection if they feel like you really need it. In court you need someone who’s 18 and older to give the abuser the court papers.

Orders of Protection are confusing because the process can be confusing and the Order of Protection and restrain orders are the same thing. Some people think they are different but they are the same just a different name.  Teens can get free legal services from DayOne. People who are not documented can also get an Order of Protection. Orders of Protection are important because it helps the victim scared of their abuser and that the abuser can’t hurt them no more. –Dominique

Week Two: Exploring Gender Roles

Peer leaders from Day One have been coming to Groundswell and doing workshops with us. Today we did a gender role workshop. We talked about what it means to be a “woman”, and the roles that are expected of us.  Joy put on a cardboard box shirt and had us write down some words that are usually associated  or boxed in with women, like housewife, cooking, cleaning, feminine, and other things that aren’t necessary true. —Casey Jones, 17

Mom forced me to wear dresses and skirts when I was little.  Not looking like other girls in my class was weird.  I thought I was doing something wrong by wanting to play tag and hangout with boys instead of flirting with them.  I had a hard time making friends because the boys were confused why a girl wanted to be their friend.  I think being a “woman” or “man” is a dumb term, expecially for me, because I see how society defines what being a woman is and I don’t feel that way at all.  Yet when they define what a man is I don’t feel that way either.  A world without gender would look like people being real to themselves and not trying to live up to society’s standards. —Casey

Gender roles have affected me when I was younger because when I was in elementary school boys would judge me and say that I couldn’t play basketball because I was a girl.  Also, boys/men see us women staying home, watching the kids, cooking and cleaning.  I love being a young woman because right now I can get equal opportunities to work just like boys and men.  As a young woman I love being independent and strong and don’t take nothing from no man.   I was interested when we were talking about the concept of a younger girl dating an older guy.  I have experience of dating older guys and I learned a lot about my self and mistakes in my two past relationships.  What interested me was the stereotype of older women dating younger men and how they call these older women “cougars”.  But when it comes to older men dating younger women it’s ok and they don’t get stereotyped like that.  –Jonelle

Little kids think that girls and boys don’t do the same things.  I feel like it’s great being a female.  Females in my eyes are stronger than males because we go through the real pain and struggles – Dominique
Gender stereotypes affected me because people think that men are better than women in certain ways.  A stereotype for women is a stay at home-mom that cooks and cleans all day and take care of the children while the man is at work.  I think this is not true because everybody sees this in their own way.  People might think all women are good at just being a stay at home mother.  Being a women to me means pursuing my dreams and making it to the top withoutbeing called someon that is only good for one thing: staying home.   — Tachina

Week One: Looking at Stuff

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Nicole brought in lots of really great imagery from punk posters that use appropriated and collaged text.  The group pulled imagery from magazines and did collages and tracings to play with composition and text.

We also looked at the Philadelphia Mural Art’s “Love Letters” mural series done with Espo as an example of the use of text and imagery, and using common language and wordplay to create emotionally strong and sincere statements.  We brainstormed ideas for text based on cliche, played out pick-up lines (Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?) and pressuring statements, like “If you love me, we don’t need to use a condom.”

Week One: Researching and Developing the Message

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Some of the concepts we discussed were healthy/unhealthy/abusive relationships, warning signs, cycles of abuse, the different types of abuse, gender roles, and teen dating violence as a societal norm. We looked into what good relationships and what bad relationships are and learned about the difference between unhealthy and abusive relationships.  We discussed how teen dating violence is in the media and how it is become increasingly seen as normal nowadays. —Cherry Sompanya, 17

7/11  The important thing that I learned today is that the victim is never to blame.  —Dominique

Abuse happens in both heterosexual and queer relationships.  So what defines abuse? Well, there are different types of abuse.  So to start off I’m going to talk about physical abuse. Physical abuse breaks down into two categories: abuse of items like smashing your partner’s phone, and then there is actually  smashing your partner or just hitting them.
You know when you’re in an unhealthy relationship if you make up lies for your partner when he/she is abusive towards you. There are plenty of other things that make up an unhealthy relationship.  Now, when it comes to a healthy relationship you and your partner should trust each other.  For more info on this you could hit up Day One, but this is just my perspective. No one should be abused no matter what age, gender, religion, size, etc.  So just be safe,  love your life and get educated on healthy and unhealthy relationships. —Dakota

In the workshop today I experienced a lot of new things.  I think kids our age or older should be taught the different things that consist of a healthy or unhealthy relationship.  I think this because as us kids get older, we should know the right and wrong things.  I also learned how to be assertive when communicating with someone.  –Tachina

I now understand the difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship.  I realize some situations that cause an abusive relationship to occur.  A key factor is feeling pressured and controlled. –Emeli

Week One: Team Building and Research

Groundswell Community Mural Project and Day One have come together to BREAK the silence.  There’s too much violence between intimate partners going on.  Many are ignoring it, but people like us are determined to help these individuals.  It’s a project in which reality and art come together to demonstrate what a healthy and unhealthy relationships is, along with resources that can help.  –Michelle Lopez

Day One is a organization that helps out youth under 24 that experience abusive relationships. They offer free counseling, educational workshops, legal services, and help figure out a exit strategy and obtain orders of protection. You don’t need a parent to talk to them. They have a hotline for you to anonymously call and talk to a counselor. They are a good trustworthy resource to help you or someone close to you to get out of a abusive relationship. They can help you through the steps to get a order of protection. —Tichina and Rebecca 17

Sara poses for the group to draw from.

We started group poses to draw from.

We acted out tableus of abusive dynamics, such as isolation.

We had a really productive first week!  We drew ourselves as cartoon characters and super-heroines and practiced figure drawing using one another as models.  We began discussing important concepts that pertain to intimate partner violence, including the 5 main types of abuse (financial, technological, physical, sexual and emotional/verbal).  We talked about consent and coercion, representations of intimate partner abuse in pop culture, concepts such as rape culture, heteronormativity, patriarchy and feminism.  Claudia of Day One came in and did a workshop on good communication, emphasizing active listening and the use of “I Statements”.  —–Tanya Linn Albrigtsen-Frable
I really liked the “Assert Yourself with I Statements” worksheet.  I think everybody should learn how to communicate that way.  Especially if you’re trying to build a healthy relationship.  —Casey

Rebecca's Cartoon Character

Casey's Cartoon Character

Emeli's cartoon character

Jonelle's cartoon character

Sara's cartoon character

Tichina's cartoon character