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Student Sculpture Unveiled
GPS has a new piece of campus art, a cast metal relief completed by art, ceramic, and sculpture students and unveiled in early November.
Girls Preparatory School celebrated an interdisciplinary collaboration among the math, science, and fine arts classes with an unveiling of a new piece of public art on Wednesday, November 2. A cast metal relief sculpture on the brick façade adjacent to the Defoor Patio was uncovered at a reception attended by members of the faculty and the students whose work went into the project. The newest piece of art is the second installation created with the assistance of The Traveling Foundry, directed by Gerald Masse.
Students from Art I, Ceramic I & II, and Sculpture I worked individually on sand blocks, making sure their blocks fit seamlessly to the adjacent one and following a photo of a portrait of a GPS student, digitally enlarged by faculty colleague Lee Wright. “Communication and collaboration were imperative at this stage,” said art teacher Isabel McCall, who spearheaded the project. “The students had to think in reverse because the mold is cast in the reverse direction. Insuring the correct carving depth across the larger carving surface was a challenge, and working together and achieving carving continuity, while difficult, was not impossible.”
The student artist who posed for the sculpture, Phoebe Mills, “represents a girl looking out into the distance toward her future,” said McCall at the unveiling.
“She’s looking out beyond the Tennessee River behind her, into the world beyond GPS. We felt this scene is one that typifies what our students experience every day…different futures for all from different spaces on the GPS campus.”Thanking Dr. Autumn Graves and others for their support of the project, McCall noted the interdisciplinary contributions of physics teacher Bryant Haynes and math teacher Diane Walker, who worked with their students to calculate the measurements and volumes that determined the amount of aluminum needed for the crucible.
McCall said that the help she received from everyone on campus gave proof to “the keynote of a good school is cooperation,” a sentence that she memorized as a GPS student when studying the school’s Blue Book. “Indeed, many steps in the project required many people’s help,” she said.
The Traveling Foundry arrived on campus in 2015 to assist with the project’s completion. With the patio cordoned off, the foundry artists melted the aluminum blocks to well over 1200 degrees Fahrenheit and poured the molten metal into the carved sand blocks, often with a large contingent of interested students, faculty, parents, and even grandparents looking on from a safe distance. Once all the blocks were poured, they were numbered for proper arrangement on the wall.
“This sculpture is here because of your hard work,” McCall told the students, congratulating them for being “undaunted by the process.” Then she and Dr. Graves removed the cloth to unveil the latest piece of public art.
