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One of the most immediate ways to experience and grasp hold of the fractured and delicate relationship between people and nature is to experience the seasonal and momentary changes in nature.
My residencies relate to the landscape, encouraging students to acquire a deeper understanding of both their environment and art. Even though we all have the same dependence upon our natural resources each student has their own idea of what it is to be a part of the earth.
By exploring ecology and ecosystems, students learn to pose scientific questions that can be expressed through the making of art. What has a specific place endured in history, events or in cultivation? Are there forgotten laws that govern what grows? Finding ways to translate the tangible and the intangible aspects we have of nature into visual, sculptural forms is a vital means of learning. Each residency is rooted in some fundamental perception of the site, season, or elements.
My students may work with naturally occurring materials found in a local site, gathered lightly in an unobtrusive manner that underscores the ever shifting, temporary nature of our environment. My students may also respond to a site by building a permanent construction with easily assembled parts that allows them to experience the land and the site in a different way.
What Children Learn
There are several basic ideas that are communicated through building environmental sculpture outdoors with children.
- Children learn to use their eyes as a means of discovery. I impress upon the children that looking at site and place is very important. I see building outdoor sculpture as one way of learning to solve visual problems.
- Children learn to make something from readily available collected materials. I like to work with the collected materials so that the children learn what a valuable resource they have in their surrounding landscape. I think of it as making something from nothing.
- Children learn to grasp the delicate and interdependent relationship we have with the earth. We talk about the problems occurring on the planet in terms of pollution, renewable resources, ecosystems and overpopulation. I also like to discuss that there are both destructive and creative ways of working with and thinking about the land and I suggest that building outdoor sculpture is one way of creating a prayer for the earth.
- I find that making outdoor sculpture allows children to find another voice. I like children to think about the outdoor building process as a way of communicating a thought, an idea, a concept or a feeling through the building of sculpture. I suggest that building outdoor sculpture is creating visual poetry.
- I insist that in building outdoor sculpture the children learn simple yet important careful craftsmanship in building and woodworking techniques that enable the children to meet a challenge in construction and find a respectful way to work with the land.
Each site and each season permit so many different opportunities, I generate the outdoor sculpture projects in connection with the larger school or classroom curriculum as well as the actual site of the school.
I like to meet with the faculty to discuss the focus of the residency as well as walk the school grounds. I come up with a plan and write a brief description of the residency outlining a schedule prior to the work at the School. In this way both teachers and community can plan events or curriculum around the proposed project as well as have input into the project. In this way no two residencies are the same.
A few such projects have included building a nature trail and shelters from brush, animal benches configured from storm damaged trees, eco-boxes that are constructed and set at different habitation within the school grounds, a circus set in a wooded clearing with eco-banners, weathervanes, an outdoor class room made of saplings collected from local woods, a garden and walkway bridge over a swamp.
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