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Seventh Britt Nelson visiting artist

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This Week at Gordon: April 29 2004

 

Kitty Wales has been at Gordon this week, the seventh visual artist to participate in the residency program created by the Britt Nelson Fund.
 
Wales is a sculptor whose work includes many life-sized animal forms, often created out of discarded materials like tire treads, silverware, and car parts. She brought this “sketch” of her dog along with her when she came to Gordon.
 
She is best known in New England for Pine Sharks, a set of sharks made from kitchen appliances and hung from trees. To begin the residency, students from Gordon’s sixth, seventh and eighth graders traveled to the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln Massachusetts to see Pine Sharks.
 
After they toured the museum, Wales led students on a rainy tour of the DeCordova’s sculpture garden.
 
The rain seemed appropriate as the group paused beneath the sharks to get a feel for Wales’ installation.
 
Back at Gordon, Wales and Gordon’s art teachers worked with these students as they made their own sculptures, of animals ranging from elephants to flying squirrels.
 
Working from animal books and magazine clippings, students transformed the studio into a zoo.
 
Wales’ work draws on her appreciation of internal anatomy, to the point where she often leaves the interior of the sculpture exposed. Students followed her lead and discovered how quickly a solid sculpture can come together when you start with its inner structure, not its external appearance.
 
Considering that they were working with the same set of materials, on the same assignment, the variety in the finished products was amazing.
 
Some students only needed one or two materials to forge an animal.
 
Others brought together a wide variety of items into one cohesive piece.
 
Even in the most complicated pieces, it was the little choices that made the pieces come alive. This student’s choice of the small dowels paid off when the Kindergartners saw his piece later in the day. How did they know it was a hippopotamus? Their art teacher asked. “The teeth!”
 
The residency is intense. When she was not in class with the middle school students, Wales was off explaining herself to others throughout the school. Over the course of her residency, every student got to hear from Wales, through a slide presentation or classroom visit. There was also an evening presentation for parents and the general public.
 
The Kindergarten group was particularly curious. Her five minute presentation inspired a twenty-five minute volley of questions that were specific and thoughtful – “How did you get the texture of the sharks?” “Are the goats real?” “Have you ever made anything out of rebar?” “How do you go places?”
 
These younger groups gave back as much as they demanded, though. When Wales asked kindergarteners if they thought a particularly playful piece of hers was “a silly thing to do,” they came back quickly and earnestly. Not silly at all, they insisted - it was, they said, a “totally cool” and “creative” thing to do, getting a blush out of their visitor
 
After her presentation, one Kindergarten class toured Wales through an undersea installation they had created themselves. It was Wales’ turn to ask the questions – why, for instance, did they choose tin foil? “Because it shimmers like a fish!”
Her visit went quickly, and as the week ended students were staying inside during recess to finish their pieces.
 
Wales" visit was supported by the Britt Nelson Fund, which was established in 1996 to connect the memory of Britt Nelson, parent of Gordon graduates Katja, Rebecca and Sasha, to Gordon’s historic commitment to arts education and hands-on learning. Every year, the Fund brings an internationally established visual artist to Gordon’s campus, ensuring that Britt Nelson’s spirit continues to touch students even after her children have moved on from Gordon.
 
 

 

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