Youth A.C.T.

1st Place: Family Name by Jonathan Silva

Jonathan shared that he painted an ‘S’ to represent the first letter of his last name, “Silva”. He created arrows to declare that his family and heritage will live on forever.  He liked the colors he used so hence the choices and the planets around the ‘S’ gives it a mystic feeling as if it’s ‘outer space.’

2nd Place:  Name of Art Work: True Friendship by Maya Hayes and Grace Cappucio of Malden

Maya Hayes and Grace Cappucio originally started out to create a volcano. Soon enough, the art work split into two halves and each took a side.  Maya likes blue and white so she used those colors.  Grace likes brighter and louder colors so she used lots of yellow, red, and oranges. The girls shared that they are best friends but of totally opposite personalities.  But together, they balance each other out and make true friendship.

3rd Place: Name of Art Work: Leaving Emerald City by Nguyen Le (right) of Everett

Most Likely to Be Famous: Name of Art Work: Top of the World  by Mai Le Nguyen (left) of Everett, MA

Nguyen shared that a lot of people go to the city to find their dreams and build goals around it.  The painting depicts a girl who decided to leave the city of yellow brick road (Wizard of Oz) as she found that the city did not bring her what she has hoped for.

Mai painted an illuminated Earth with the city landscape in the background highlighting the urbanization of humanity. On top of the world is the Sun Goddess who is looking down on earth giving it light.  Both the lights from the urban community and the Sun Goddess make earth bright, healthy, and happy.

Most Creative:  Name of Art Work: No name by Jonathan Knox of Malden

Basically, Jonathan painted Jason from Friday the 13th with a hat.  Nothing in particular inspired his work except that he thought it would be interesting to depict Jason with a hat, as a different twist to how Jason is usually portrayed.

Most Inspiring: Name of Art Work: The Splattered by Jesse Bouley of Malden

Jesse started out painting and he soon found that his method was not bringing him satisfaction for his creative process.  Spontaneity motivated him to just throw paint onto his work so he started to splatter the paint and kept at it until he felt his self expression process completed.  It was a liberating and enjoyable process for Jesse.

People’s Choice:  Name of Art Work: Sunset by Jessica Ma of Malden

Jessica likes nature and places that brings her a sense of peace.  She felt inspired to paint the bright orange sunset to express a sense of serenity and inner peace.

There are photos and a field report at the Art Collaboratives artSpace@16 blog detailing the entire competition that took place on July 11th.

More photos will be coming on the site soon. In the meantime, some people have put their photos online on Facebook and others on Flickr.

There will be a list of the winners and their artworks here soon.

Congratulations to all the participants of the 2009 Urban Art Competition and many thanks for sharing your talents and creativity with the community! We had about 100 people from all around including Malden, Everett, Saugus, Somerville, Boston, Lincoln-Sudbury, Medford, Winthrop, and Chelsea!

Many thanks go to all the organizations and individuals who helped sponsor the event! Friends of Oak Grove, Inc. (FOOGI) provided all the boards and the sound system. The American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay also came out to support us. Malden Access Television and Asian Spectrum also came out to record our event and interview people. Other sponsors include Healthy Malden, Inc., Cambridge Health Alliance, and Kevin Duffy of the Malden School Committee. Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy and members of ImprovBoston came out to entertain the crowd during the competition.

More thanks to Stacy Gilchrist of Malden Arts who came out to support the event. She has invited some of the artwork to be displayed in the upcoming Window Arts event. Thanks to our judges Kathy Strissel and Sand T who served as our adult judges and Stephanie Tran as a youth judge.

We look forward to our art gallery later this year, and an even better competition next year!

Hyperlocavore is a free yard sharing community website for people who love locally grown food and want to make arrangements with other to share resources — time, space, tools, or skills. The website is a resource for anyone who wants to reach out to their community and connect locally to create local sustainable foods for each other.

Neighborhood Fruit is a service for people to find and share fruit online. Developed out of a final project at Presidio School of Management, the site was created to make local, urban crops available and shared with the community and neighbors. If you are interested, go and sign up for an account on their site.

If you live in Massachusetts, the Department of Agricultural Resources has a list of all farmers’ markets in Massachusetts. They are listed by county, and contains hours of operation and locations. Check your own state website to see if this information is available.

Hungry For Change is a film by Robert Kenner who exposes how the food industry is controlled by a handful of corporations to bring us genetically modified produce, processed foods dervied from corn, and bigger cuts of meat. How much do you really know about the food you buy at the supermarket? Check the website for more for showtimes at your local theater, and get involved with the initiative.

Kevin Surace talks about EcoRock, a type of drywall that is clean, recyclable, and energy-efficient to reduce the carbon footprint generated by construction and manufacturing of buildings.

Below is an excerpt from Steve Pavlina’s blog on personal development about coming of age youths and their relationship with their parents. It is an article worth reading.

A common complaint I hear from teens is that they’re being raised by parents who aren’t as smart as they are. Suffice it to say there are a lot of people in the world who just aren’t very bright, and there’s no IQ test required to raise kids.

did not suffer from that particular problem myself since my parents are both pretty bright intellectually. But I can still relate to the challenge of being raised by people with values that differ from your own.

I’ve also had some friends who were raised by — how can I say this tactfully? — intellectually challenged parents.

Some parents simply make some very dumb decisions and not just with respect to parenting. Some make dumb career choices and bad financial decisions. Some make poor health choices. Some are socially inept. And some are spiritually bankrupt. When parents make bad choices, their children are stuck going along for the ride.

In many cases, by the time the child is a teenager, they’re starting to realize that Mom and/or Dad are a few bits short of a byte. Then the kid is left wondering, “How the heck am I supposed to deal with these people?”

This situation can create a lot of conflict and stress during the teenage years. The teen is still dependent on the parents, but the parents aren’t doing a very good job as parents… or as human beings for that matter.

What do you do if you find yourself in such a position? How do you prevent dumb parents from making a mess of your life while you’re still dependent on them?

Read the rest of the article at Steve Pavlina’s site.

Title: Earthy Cooking Competition

Location: Pending

Link out: Facebook event

Description: Get your team together and compete in a cooking competition. The Catch?? Well, your food has to be healthy, taste good, and be created as earthy as possible. Think you got what it takes? Come join us at the grill!

Start Time: 12:00

Date: 2009-08-15

End Time: 17:00