Guerilla Art [Arts Explorer #9]

Community Arts Project Guerilla Art
Made of Breakfast - Egg Cartons, Milk Carton, Granola bar & Cereal Boxes

        What do the items in the picture look like to you? Junk? If that's what you answered, then you're only partially correct. While it is junk (milk carton, egg carton, cereal/granola boxes) all strung together and tied between two trees trunks, this piece of "junk" is the guerilla art my CAP group and I left behind. The intent of it was to provoke thoughts. I mean, it's not everyday that someone witnesses a string of breakfast containers hanging randomly in such a busy part of town.

          Strung in place with our breakfast junk were 3 signs that said: 1) Eat Breakfast!, 2)What did YOU eat for Breakfast?, and lastly 3) If you did eat your breakfast, was it healthy?
As I mentioned, these questions are to stop people in their tracks and provoke them to think about whether or not they had breakfast - the most important meal of the day - that morning. Although this guerilla art was spurred from our Community Arts Project to advocate for Breakfast In Schools for all children, we wanted everyone - not just children to enjoy a hearty breakfast each morning. We placed our piece of artwork right by the busy intersection of Church and Gerrard St. There's always a lot of traffic, a lot of people walking by so we thought it was the perfect place to set it up.

        After hanging it up we walked away and took pictures from afar to people's reaction as they walked by this hanging piece of artwork - to see whether they even noticed it at all. Here were some of the snippets that we caught:

           The whole process of this assignment was quite fun I must admit. Stringing a bunch of random breakfast food containers/reminders was not such a difficult task to complete. Initially I felt very nervous and scared about doing a guerilla art in public as it's not something legal per se. Leaving garbage behind is definitely not something that is encouraged by our society. There's always security and police officers around Ryerson Campus, what if they approached us and questioned us? Fortunately, we didn't run into that problem. When we finished assembling our art together, I felt excited to display it in public. It's interesting and fun to see the kinds of reactions we got from it. Most people walked by and cranked their necks to one side reading the signs as they walkd by, while others actually stopped in their tracks to see what this was all about.

            I think Guerilla art is a great activity to introduce to children. It gives them the opportunity to think of something that they individually, or as a class care about and are interested in. Additionally, it gives children the chance to explore different ideas of how they can bring what they care about to the public's attention using their creativity. In the process they will learn that anything can be art and that it can literally come in any shape or form and still be considered art. Since guerilla art is spontaneous, and a form of street art, absolutely anything random can be used to deliver or express personal views and opinions to the public. It doesn't even have to be extravagant; anything simple will do.

ART WORD OF THE WEEK:
Space [speys]
Space is referred to as "the total area defined by the size of the artist's paper or canvas" (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p.143). Within the space, many things must be taken into consideration regarding the arrangement of elements. Schirrmacher & Fox (2009) suggested the following questions to consider: How many shapes or symbols will be used? Where will they be placed? How much room will be left?

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art & creative development for young children (6th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Thomson/Delmar Learning.