The NYSATA TASK Party - Pure Silliness!!

The concept behind a TASK party is simple.  People write tasks for others to do, and put them in a box.  There are ample oddball materials made available, and you pull a task from the box and use the materials to complete the task.

Some of you might have attended the TASK party at the NAEA conference last spring.  I was there briefly and did not like it.  It had started hours before, and when I walked in, it was a chaotic mess and someone came up to me and immediately was in my face singing a song.  I was out of my comfort zone.  But my roommate had been there earlier and had loved it, so when NYSATA decided to hold a TASK party, I decided to give it a second chance.  It was held after Saturday night's dinner, right in the same venue, and was totally silly and fun!  Since it was a room full of art teachers, the tasks were mostly pretty artsy.  Tasks that involved singing songs loudly in public mostly seemed to have been put back in the box.

Anyhow, three of us who had been sitting together (me, my Regional chairperson, and a lovely gal from another region that we had just met that day) decided to work together.  Our first task we pulled was to wrap someone completely in dry materials.  Our new friend was game to be wrapped, so we grabbed materials and wrapped and laughed.  If you look carefully, you will see that she is laughing and smiling under her mesh head-wrap.

Next we had to make a sash for NYSATA's President Elect.  That was easy.  Meanwhile, some people were building a 'box made of dots' by sticking together CD's with the multitude of sticky-dots that were on the materials table.  Others had built a giant giraffe; still others had dressed a bride, groom, and bridesmaids and held a wedding.  Another group built a drawing machine operated simultaneously by 5 people with their arms hooked together.   While I photographed lots more, I didn't want to post pics of people without their permission so these few images will have to do. 

Later, me and fellow blogger Jen built a paper brick road, and then skipped down it.  Here's Jen.  Sorry you have to turn your head sideways; keeping the camera horizontal simply wasn't something I was thinking about!

 

Finally, tired out, I headed back to my room.  Most of the time I feel pretty young, but dancing after eating chocolate mousse and drinking champagne seemed to be take its toll on me, and I figured it was time for me to call it quits.  Anyhow, it was a really fun night!

I promise to write much more about the whole conference, including telling you all about my workshop presentations, but I wanted to share the silliness first.  The rest will probably get posted tomorrow.