Sembrando Semillas Creciendo Nuestras Historias Ancestrales Community Tótem Project

-->Meet Our Interns-

Both interns shared that they have a greater understanding of how enpowering  the act of bringing artmaking-creativity and imagination into community building activities can be.

Adan Rodriguez, 17 

                                                       


















 Mariely Castillo, 18,

 They are both students at Sebastian River High School, in Fellsmere FL.

This Week Adan and Mariely are interns with the Farmworkers Association of Florida. Their work will be with artist and Environmental Justice activist 

Caryl Henry Alexander.

Together they will co-create 4 garden totems for a project titled

Sembrando Semillas, Creciendo Nuestras Historias  Ancestrales

with the Fellsmere Camposino community.

On Thursday and Friday evening they got oriented to the project plan of action, created concepts and themes that reflect their community and developed designs and made  preparations for the painting on Saturday and Sunday.

Adan saw a post on social media and thought it would be fun to see what was going on. He was interested in the art aspect of this project and experiencing something

new. Adan has worked with the Farmworkers Association of Florida on a local, state

and national level. He says his most rewarding as well as his most challenging thing about this project was painting and getting to meet new people.

Adan said Thursday, and Friday were both interesting climax of ideas and

brainstorms of abstract thought for the paintings which were to be painted

Saturday. Saturday was a commotion which played out smoothly as the day came to

a close with beautiful art as a product. Sunday was the day that everything came to a

close, with music, food, and art to accompany the mood.

For Mariely her dad owns a plot in the community garden and Maria, the garden manager asked Mariely if she was interested in working on the community art project.  Mariely has volunteered at The Lords Table Food Kitchen since last summer and thought  that this community art with a purpose would be fun.

Mariely appreciates the fact that the project work  groups are small so that we can keep ourselves together. She said that all the nights were interesting but Saturday and Sunday were the most fun because everyone was painting.