Juliana and Laura, from Something Collective, have been invited to create a text and art installation at the South HIll Library, engaging Sunset neighbors in the process. This project, entitled Alphabet Stories, was launched last week. Here is the invitation we distributed to the community:
1. Discover the history of the alphabets which represent the languages of your neighborhood, and learn to draw these ancient symbols.
2. Write the stories that you imagine might have inspired the shapes of these alphabet letters.
3. Play with words using alliteration (words or phrases that start with the same letter), palindromes (words that read the same backwards and forwards) and ambigrams words that read the same upside down and right side up).
4. Create concrete poems inspired by certain letters. (See attached example below)
5. See the results of this story and image-making as we dress up your library wall with digital versions of your text and drawings, made into vinyl stickers.
Another component of our workshop asked participants to create poems that described their letter using words that began with the letter itself. Some examples of their incredibly clever alliteration are below:
A sometimes looks amazing,
Always awesome ABCD.
It ate an avocado in the afternoon
and an apple pie again after that.
S slithers slowly,
snakelike on the street,
skin shimmering in the sun.
P represents people.
People are us.
We have different personalities.
R ran away more
rapidly than a rabbit,
before the sun set
away beyond the sea.
Ted is a funny boy,
Turning left and turning right,
telling silly stories all the time.
Y usually looks like a branch,
growing widely underground,
and strong, like arms,
it reaches to the sky.