I posted this on Defgrip, but I thought I’d re-post it here…

Right before I headed down to LA for the Nike Lightning Bolts show, Sierra from Nike hit me up to see if I’d be into hosting a Nike “Make Something” class at the Montalban Theater a few days after the show. I was super psyched because I had just seen a bunch of videos on their Sportswear site with artists like Kaws and Mike Mills hosting classes and also because they wanted Bob Haro to do the class, but he couldn’t make it, so they asked me!

I wanted to figure out something really cool to do for the class and with having no teaching experience, I was stressing about putting together something fun, but also teaching something that had substance and knowledge that the kids could take with them when they left the class… After going over a few different ideas, I ended up teaching the kids how to stencil.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to give the kids knives and everything, but my supplies list got approved and we were ready to go! When the kids arrived, I did a little introduction, then we went into the theater and I showed a few videos of myself riding and stuff on the big screen. Like I said before, I hadn’t taught anything, other than a few weeks at Woodward years ago. I put together some outlines to base the class off of, but I was a bit worried about keeping the kids busy for four hours.

I started off having the kids mess with pre-made stencils that you can just buy at the art store. I wanted them to get a feel for how stencils were applied, how much paint to use, etc. We messed with those until lunch, then after lunch I passed out prints of a Dunk High that I put together earlier and had the kids glue the print out to poster board, cut the stencil out and paint with it. I say something about it in the video, but I was really just expecting the kids to do a simple one color stencil job on a blank paper and move on… But all the kids went crazy and created some really cool stuff.

The next thing I did was have the kids create their own stencil from start to finish. We kind of ran over our time for this, so you don’t really see it in the video, but I had all the kids spend some time brainstorming and sketching, then they all created their own stencils. Some kids drew characters, some did their name, but throughout the day, the kids must of really got their head around the whole stencil concept because they came up with some really dope stencils! There were a few kids that created stencils more complicated than I could of ever imagined and it seemed like they were really psyched on the whole project.

The experience was amazing and I’m so psyched I was able to be a part of it. I’ve always thought it would be rad to teach one day and doing this class was a great look into what it would be like. I just want to say thanks to Sierra and Robbie at Nike for everything and I really hope the few hours I spent with the kids inspires them to keep making art! You can also check out a post on the Nike 6.0 site, as well as another video from Vimby here.

Here’s a few photos from the class.