Nomad Studio
A social art project by Aline Dargie
Backpack with the tools to create your own creative urban adventure
Nomad Studio is inspired by the nonchalance real life adventure game with the jejune institute. It is also inspired by SF tour companies that give the same tour for decades, leading buses of people around in an un-personalized, textbook fashion. I wish to provide another option for people who wish to interact with San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in an artistic, creative way. Nomad Studio has poetic, seasonal suggestions starting points for small handmade projects, inspired by changes of the terrain, like residential hills that are so steep the sidewalk has steps, with chamomile flowers in the cracks in springtime, or a map to the location of certain trees with periwinkle blooms in June, that compost on the ground and turn dark purple.
I have planted the landscape the nomad studio artists traverse with guerrilla public art projects, including a silver leafed human-sized log of driftwood, attached to a light post with a U-lock. A natural object that one could imagine drifting into the city with a great flood or tidal wave, that got culture-itized and blinged out with silver leaf along its journey, attached to a huge artificial night light with a strong lock. An idea for the future, is to make existing public objects on sidewalks, like trees, parking signs etc, into musical string and percussion instruments.
This backpack will function as a portable studio for marking the land, inspired by urban textures and found objects. Nomad Studio will include many clear pockets, so you can see the basic tools (knife, scissors, sparkles, glue, string), and colorful opaque fabric pockets (so it is a surprise what you pull out, like window mesh or webbing straps).
Nomad Studio encourages city goers to explore the outdoors, and make things along the way. Nomad Studio is a call to action pack, inspiring impulsive, unplanned, spur of the moment, hand made crafts, giving people a starting point to creating their own artistic adventures… Experiencing the North Beach neighborhood in a personal, memorable way. One may mark the guerrilla sculptures and the landscape, with faux silver and gold leaf, paint, small brass and copper tacks, and string, among other traditional and non-traditional art supplies.
This backpack will be lightweight, urban camouflage style (fabrics printed to mimic cracked sidewalks, glassy grids of windows and other familiar facades found in the city).
Included is a small guide ‘book’ with poetic suggestions of different ways to walk, noticing the bounce in a step, air moving through hair, looking up, spinning in circles…. and a list of suggested reading, and links of where to learn more, to spread and share information about related projects, and how to make your own project like this in other cities.
photography by joshua cobos
