Lindsay Sparagana

This artist residency, through The Print Center's Artists-In-Schools Program, asked high school students to use photography, printmaking, collage and mixed media techniques to explore their individual identities as well as their collective identity as members of the student body at Sankofa Freedom Academy. All students began by experimenting with printmaking and patterning through linoleum block printing. After discussions about photobooks, lessons in digital photography and demonstrations of altered books, students worked on a collaborative projects that incorporated their block prints well as photographs that they made. The group aspired to photograph the entire ninth grade, and did so using their block prints as backdrops for the photographs. They exposed the portraits on small squares of cyanotype fabric and sewed them together to create a large wall hanging. This became a portrait of the ninth grade as a whole and now hangs in a public space in the school.