Natural Inclinations: Making the Invisible Visible

by Hannah Salia

Art Specialist/Interdisciplinary Subject Leader, St. Thomas School

from SchoolArts January 2016

How do natural scientific processes influence our environment?  How can artistic sculptures interact and represent the forces of nature while being the conduit for them?  To explore these concepts, as the Art Specialist and Interdisciplinary Subject Leader for St. Thomas School, a K-8 school in Medina, WA, I collaborated with colleagues Tracy Asplen (Technology) and Todd Tressler (Facilities), and two artists-in residence (Ela Lamblin and Nadine Edelstein) and our 7^th and 8^th grade students.  

Together we created a collaborative Master Class that focused on designing and building two site-based sculptures that interacted on multiple levels with natural forces.  Students investigated scientific processes such as gravity, magnetism, light, wind, and water, and how these forces might be incorporated into these interactive sculptures.   In addition to the aesthetic and conceptual challenges, this STEAM-based interdisciplinary course also compelled students to focus on design considerations inherent in building onsite at a multi-age school.  Safety for students, price, interactive dimensions, price, and time were all real-world constraints in the collaborative design process for our team of students.

I began the term with an overview of how nature has always served as a source of great inspiration for artists.  With examples across time and culture, students explored the gradual shift from depicting nature (i.e. Hokkusai, Tiffany, Hudson River School) to interpretations of nature (i.e. Monet, O’Keefe, Hockney), and finally to interactions with nature (i.e. Andy Goldsworthy).  Then, I introduced our students to many fascinating interactive contemporary artists that bring scientific processes to light in their work.  

Looking at light, motion, and heat for example through the work of Dan Corson, and the marvelous work across the spectrum of natural forces with Ned Kahn’s amazing work with wind, fire, and sound, students began brainstorming all the natural forces they were aware of.  The list was long!  Our most amazing revelation was the idea of time and how it could be incorporated into a sculptural work of art!

With these inspirations, students were asked to consider the design constraints as well in our work.  Ideas abound, but can you create a water sculpture onsite at a school?  Or an intricate spinning sculpture?  What about large openings and small parts?  Price and time also became important considerations.  We had 10 weeks and a fixed budget.  Students were surprised to see that these limitations had a very strong effect on their designs and ideas.

The first part of the term was devoted to the residency with Ms. Edelstein, a master mosaic artist.  Students worked with her to design and create individual mosaic water drums with iconography that represented different aspects of water.  These mosaic pieces both visual represent water and bring its auditory resonance properties to life through amplified percussion.  Learning about many different mosaic techniques from Ms. Edelstein, students created “andamento” (the flow or course of the mosaic) designs, contributing their ideas to Ms. Edelstein’s final sculpture.  

The finished piece, Opus Scintillatum, is a beautiful mirrored light lens sculpture that both reflects and refracts light.  It can be rotated 360 degrees, so that students can explore both the interesting effect of light on the local environment and on each other, and also use reflective elements to send light effects across the site.

For the second part of our term, artist Ela Lamblin was our inspiring residency teacher.  His own professional work centers on creating very large interactive sculptures that are also moving musical instruments!  I introduced students to a short history of mapping and cartography to give them the foundation for our work with global systems.  Then, Mr. Lamblin and the students brainstormed how these systems (magnetic poles, longitude/latitude, weather and atmospheric systems, topographical changes, water currents, etc.) might become a 3D work of art.  

Students were excited and inspired by all the different materials we had available (wire of all types, cardboard, Styrofoam, power tools), and all the different systems they thought of, and this inspiration fueled the creation of innovative and diverse individual student globe prototypes.  Each of these student sculptural prototypes interacts with the viewer to bring their global system construct into play.  

Students contributed their ideas as part of the collaborative design process to Mr. Lamblin’s final permanent sculpture.  Made of stainless steel, Magnificenterra is a very large layered, interactive global sculpture that has multiple apertures and layers representing different aspects of global systems.  With an inner core that turns, a second rotating layer of open steel work, and multiple reflections, openings, and shadows that use light to bring new views as the layers rotate, the sculpture also creates music depending on the way it is turned!  Students can work together, exploring the many visual and auditory elements both within the piece itself and in the interactions with the natural elements around us.

We feel very satisfied with our work across the many layers of this worthwhile curriculum, and the sculptures that now reside on onsite have exceeded our expectations in conceptual integrity, aesthetic beauty and interactive interest for all of our students across the school community.  Investigating them up close yields unexpected views and confluences, and looking at them from across the site, they can be seen as a celestial tableaux - a large beautiful globe and its luminous moon, there to explore and to enjoy for years to come.