a few weeks back we posted on socially concious
artist swoon and her latest, ambitious project
in bigones, haiti.
here's an update on it's progress. you can still help
support it by buying a print. check the link below
and do your part for a really good cause.
** images supplied by upper playground
***artwork by swoon
AN UPDATE ON SWOON AND THE KONBIT SHELTER
PROJECT IN HAITI
BIGONES VILLAGE, HAITI [12.28.10] -- On December 21st,
Swoon and The Konbit Shelter Project team left for Haiti
to begin construction on single family adobe style homes.
After the team finished construction on a community center
in Bigones Villages this past summer, they left Haiti
promising to return to the village to help rebuild further
but unsure about how it could potentially happen.
Through the generous donations of friends, strangers,
the purchasers of Swoon's Walki print and a Rockefeller
grant, the team was able to put the plans in motion to
return and make their promise a reality.
Over the last eight days in Haiti, the team in Bigones
has assembled a team of workers from the village and
have begun to lay the foundation of the first Konbit
home. The initial home is being made for a woman
from the Bigones village who gave birth to a baby girl
while the team was in Haiti last and has been living in
a tent for nearly a year. Through the process of building
this home the team is aiming to also educate the workers
they've employed to learn this low-cost and highly durable
style of construction so that the idea can propagate itself
organically through the Haitian communities.
For those that would still like to contribute to the project,
there are a few remaining Walki prints which will be on
sale until January 1st, 2011 or until they sell out - 100%
of the proceeds from the sale of the print go towards the
Konbit Shelter Project. The Walki print is a touching
portrait by Swoon of a boy named Walki who lives in the
village of Bigones and spent time with the Konbit Shelter
team at the community center building site this last summer.
The print is made of a three-layer screenprint on handmade
Indian jute paper measuring 13" x 21" and is limited at an
edition of 300 signed and numbered prints. The print is
available online at the Upper Playground Web Store.
RELEVANT LINKS:
The Konbit Shelter Project: http://www.konbitshelter.org
Walki Print: http://shop.upperplayground.com/p/SWOON
ABOUT SWOON:
Swoon is a Brooklyn-based artist whose life-sized
woodblock and cut-paper portraits hang on walls in
various states of decay in cities around the world.
She has designed and built several large-scale
installations, most notably the Swimming Cities of
Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects in 2008. Her pieces
have been collected by of The Museum of Modern Art,
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern.
Major pieces have appeared at PS1, Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, and Black Rat Press. Swoon
has been traveling for the past several years creating
exhibitions and workshops in the United States and
abroad. Her artistic process is predicated on the
belief that art is an immersive, provocative,
and transformative experience for its participants.
Although Swoon’s aesthetics can be seen as an
outgrowth of street art, her engagement with ethical
living and making art share a close kinship with the
idealism of off-grid, barter-based cultures and
economies based on sharing. She uses scavenged
and local materials and embraces print media as a
potent means of action for social change.
ABOUT THE KONBIT SHELTER PROJECT:
The Konbit Shelter Project was created with the
idea that a group of artists, engineers, architects
and builders could pool their individual knowledge,
resources and time to make a lasting difference in
post-earthquake Haiti. Konbit Shelter is a rebuilding
initiative, which uses dome-style structures and the
super-adobe technique of earth bag architecture to
create sustainable, inexpensive and dependable
housing for the people of Haiti. While the structures
are extremely resistant to natural disasters, they also
have the major benefit of being comprised of 90%
earth and requiring no specialized scaffolding and
understructure to build - making it a viable option
for the people of Haiti to continue building on their
own once they learn the method.
ABOUT UPPER PLAYGROUND:
Based in San Francisco, CA, Upper Playground
is the leader in today’s progressive art movement
with its innovative apparel and accessories line
and art galleries. Since 1999, Upper Playground
has been recognized as a catalyst for the fusion
of fashion with fine art. UP apparel and accessories
are designed by local and international artists
including Sam Flores, Jeremy Fish, Estevan Oriol,
David Choe, and Alex Pardee. The Upper
Playground collection is sold in over 300 boutiques
worldwide and online. In addition, Upper Playground
has stores and galleries in San Francisco, Berkeley,
Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Mexico City and London.
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