Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 36) Alex West Encouraging Artists to Change the World F or most college students, Friday and Saturday nights are reserved for frat parties, double dates or trips to the movies. But for Alex West and his friends, many of them were spent on the streets of downtown Atlanta, handing out sandwiches, blankets and winter coats to the city’s homeless. “The idea was to get local artists to crawl the streets after many homeless shelters closed,” says West, who graduated from Tech with a degree in computational media in 2006. Those outings were some of the first service projects of WonderRoot, an organization founded in 2004 by West and a couple of high school friends. Dedicated to “uniting artists and community to inspire positive social change,” WonderRoot now helps struggling local artists by providing low-cost production facilities and performance space while at the same time encouraging them to give back to Atlanta through service projects. WonderRoot artists now spend their weekends teaching art workshops for youngsters and painting outdoor murals throughout the city. “So many children have weak, if any, school arts programs. We go into schools and teach children everything from bookmaking and poetry to photography and painting,” West says. After obtaining nonprofit status in 2006, WonderRoot began a fundraising campaign to raise money for a permanent home. In May, it opened its 4,000-square-foot Community Arts Center on Memorial Drive in Atlanta that is replete with a recording studio, darkroom, digital media lab, ceramics studio, performance space and state-of-the-art equipment. For a $10-a-month membership fee, local artists may use the facilities and equipment on a firstcome, first-served basis. “My ultimate goal for WonderRoot is to build a solid and noticeable independent art scene in Atlanta,” West says. “I hope WonderRoot will be influential in shaping the art culture that will support the rapid growth Atlanta will be seeing over the next 30 years.” For the past year, the 24-year-old hasn’t had much time to devote to his own artistic pursuits. During his time at Tech, he made a few films and explored interactive and responsive art. He also spent a summer in California working as a software developer for Disney’s research and development department, where he “did cool things with video and robots.” West, who would love to start his own video game company by the time he hits 30, now is the lead developer for Rival Industries, a startup interactive media company for which he designs and creates embedded software for Internet protocol television set top boxes. He works from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., skipping lunch, so he can help out at the WonderRoot office from 4 to 8 p.m. West says he has been “slowly getting back into filmmaking,” and if next year affords him more free time, he hopes to make a Super 8 mm film on track bikes. — LO Daniel Barbalho, Bart Sasso Idols of Industry F or former Georgia Tech roommates Daniel Barbalho and Bart Sasso, what began as a mere hobby to get over their postgraduation restlessness has become a business. Barbalho, ID 03, Sasso, Mgt 02, and co-owner Eric Kelly are the masterminds behind Esperanza Atlanta, which churns out T-shirts inspired by the city. “It was honestly just something to escape how unexciting the real world was after college,” Sasso says. “We both had OK jobs and work was fine, but we were both very creative, entrepreneurial people and that itch just wasn’t being scratched.” So the two invested in a cheap screen-printing machine found online and began making their own T-shirts. When strangers began approaching them to ask where they’d gotten them, Barbalho and Sasso set up a makeshift factory in the former’s garage to print a small run of shirts. Esperanza shirts are now available in boutiques throughout the city and were even featured in Atlanta magazine’s Best of 2007 issue. In their new line of shirts, the designers give shout-outs to Atlanta neighborhoods and landmarks, including Little Five Points and Buford Highway. The KoolAid man gracing the front of Esperanza’s Sweet Tee is filled not with fruit punch but with the 36 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008
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