Kids turn e-waste into art at Hacker Junk school vacation classes

"[Dad] would bring home discarded equipment and things he thought were interesting or could be used in some way," Glick said. "He saved everything. Taking them apart is like harvesting an ocean of unusual shapes, colors, materials. When you see them all spread out, sorted into like piles, its like a penny candy store. Eye candy, there are shiny pieces, bendy pieces, plastic gears all crying out to be played with."

In the Hacker Junk classes, Glick shows kids how e-waste can be broken down into those smaller and smaller parts and then used as materials for art projects, such as using lasers and mirrors from old scanners for mosaics. She began developing the multi-session educational program last July through the Artisan's Aslyum and road-tested the class with much success at October's "Mini Maker Faire" in Union Square.

Each class will focuses on a different project: drawing the objects and experimenting with composition and collage (day 1); clay impressions and designing patterns to use in a tile (day 2); carving rubber stamps based on an abstracted design from the clay project (day 3).

"The final mosaic will be a culmination of the focus, observation, and interpretation of the computer parts and will contain a complex interaction or 'conversation' between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects based on their experience," Glick said. "It's a fun, unusual, creative project, and I think it's important for kids to get a rudimentary idea of how things we use every day work — that they are made up of many different parts and that people just like you and me design and make these things."

Classes are small (limited to between six and 10 students per class) and cost $59 per student (materials included). Sessions begin tomorrow, February 18th, at the Arts at the Armory (191 Highland Avenue, Somerville).