Monday, March 29, SUCASA

At Annunciata, I gave them linen postcards, white paper, markers, colored pencils, and taught them a graffiti class. It was fun. Was troubled to learn that my popular table was filled with Trump voters. Made me see them in a new light. Will be very careful not to say anything that might offend them.

3/23/17 SUCASA annunciata

The seniors were so sweet today. I wanted to start them out with designing clay figures, but their skill level and attention spans are so disparate, that I went with soem doing the acetate layover drawings and cards, and other I started on designing and shaping models out of clay. One woman wanted to paint the figures right away, and used markers.

What I found very sweet was how deeply they got into the Dean Martin Variety show episodes I projected onto the wall. They all lit up with memories and nostalgia. I think I'll try to bring more of those dvds in.

I spoke to the boss about having to do different days in the next couple of weeks (due to pre-scheduled work).  We'll discuss it more on Monday.

3/16/17 Sucasa Annunciata center

It was a low attendance day due to Tuesday's blizzard and no access to the van. Still, we did some more drawings using the acetate sheets, china markers, regular watercolor markers and some model sheets. I served about about 9 seniors today.

Next week I will try light sculpture with them. I'm going to play classic hollywood horror film clips and ask them to make chibi-style sculpture using sculpey and their own designs.

Today's SUCASA class.

Everything went really well. The center seems a little 'busy'. The center leader had a drp-in meeting with the city food org, and it seems like there's so much being scheduled to meet new requirements, etc...

I was asked if I could do mornings, and if I could change my Fridays to Thursday mornings. That will work fine. Lots of seniors leave after lunch, or really want Bingo.  I just hope we can build a return audience.

I showed them some of the cartoons from the 30s and 40s, and hoped they could remember those days of their youth. They seemed to have fun, laughing and reminiscing. After wards, I did the cartoon character creation workshop class for 5 of them. They seemed to really enjoy it, and pledged to return on Monday. It was very fun for me, and hopefully, for them as well.

Monday I will be there at 10:30 with bells on.

First day at Sister Annunciatta's Elder Center in the Bronx!

Tomorrow is my first day at Sister Annunciata Bethell Senior Center. I'm a little nervous because it's my first time teaching a series of classes for the senior population. I've read up a bit, designed a curriculum, and hope that it will be enough to enable me to to do these elders right. 

I have to remember that there will different abilities in the same room... and while its not as diverse as I expected a Bronx neighborhood center to be, there is still a lot of shared history with my own beloved elders. 

Tomorrow I plan to go in lightly, have a conversation, maybe ask them a few questions about their lives. I plan to learn a lot from them.

Since I'm a cartoonist and major nerd, I'm going to try to re-introduce to them some of the animation that we all were raised with. Fleischer's Popeye, Superman and Betty Boop, with little Mighty Mouse thrown in, and the big daddy of old cartoons; Bugs Bunny. I'm only going to ask them to sketch then... just simple character designs in cartoon styles (after a demo, of course). Maybe with a little background history on these cartoons will bring stories and memories of that time period forward. Free-form cartoon animals or heroes will be fun, I hope. Wish me luck. ;)

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