POTRERO PUZZLER AND COOTIE CATCHERS

2013, 2015

Potrero Puzzler: Art to check-out from the library, 2013
Aren’t games a great way to relax and let our imaginations loose? Cootie Catchers, or Fortune Tellers are great conversation contraptions! With Cootie Catchers you can build and reveal stories. Asking questions on the outside flaps and offering answers on the inside. What would you like to see in your neighborhood? We made the Potrero Puzzler so that neighbors could play, learn, and imagine together the future of their Potrero Hill neighborhood in San Francisco neighborhood. Speaking to activists on Potrero Hill, we found some in conversation about preserving the historic site of the Pacific Rolling Mill through creative reuse. On the south east side of the hill, REBUILD Potrero is working to recreate public housing and dramatic construction is scheduled for the eastern base of the hill A little about the past and a lot about the future, The Potrero Puzzler was originally made for the exhibition from From Steel to Wheels at the Potrero Hill Library in Spring, 2013. The Potrero Puzzler cootie catcher comes in 3 sizes. Giant, for 2 people; adult/family; and kid size.

 

Play with Us: Unfold Stories, Book and Wheel Works and Alisa Messer
Sustaining Place Program Series, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2015
Parent Exhibition: Conceiving Place, Mabel Negrete

As curators of Sustaining Place, a series on how to sustain an authentic San Francisco, we offered the workshop Play with Us: Unfold Stories. Drawing from the Potrero Puzzler, we collaborated with Alisa Messer to devise cootie catcher steps for telling stories lots of different ways—using questions, fortunes, and visual devices. Participants started with a large silk screened print and worksheet and made beautiful, imaginative cootie catchers—each different and wonderful.

Sustaining Place was one of the workshop series designed by Book and Wheel as part of Conceiving Place, multidisciplinary artist Mabel Negrete’s project in the Room for Big Ideas at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Negrete designed her project to include public workshops on our personal and societal narratives, ultimately turning the weight we carry individually into a communal work. Book and Wheel invited artists and educators Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin, Jerrel Phillips and Amber Straus to collaborate on their workshops.