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Chris Bodenner/Old Gold and Black

Art students' honors WTC victims
By Taylor Kennamer
Arts & Entertainment Editor

At 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Sept. 11, long after the morning’s speeches had ended and the crowd in front of Wait Chapel had dispersed, a different kind of memorial took its place on the chapel steps. Students walking back to their rooms after a long day of classes, ambling to the post office to check their mail or playing football on the Quad were treated to the sight of six industrious students and one harried professor hovering around what looked like a massive black bowl.

Most passers-by weren’t brave enough to approach, choosing instead to gawk from afar. The brave souls who drew closer for a better look, however, were rewarded with ringside seats for "Refilling the Vessel," the first project of the semester for students in Assistant Professor David Finn’s Art 215. Art 215 is an intermediate sculpture class with a twist: it focuses on art in the public realm. What university setting could be more public than the Quad? That’s what Finn thought when he came up with the idea of a Sept. 11 project.

"I didn’t want the day to go by for myself, personally, without making a remembrance," Finn said. Junior Nathan Stewart, one of six students in public art, suggested that the day would be a good opportunity for the whole class to do a project together. Finn gave them the assignment of making a memorial or visual statement to be displayed Sept. 11. He was attracted by the "togetherness aspect" of the project and the idea of "remembering and honoring the date."

Stewart’s original idea was the construction of a tree with a leaf to represent each one of the victims in last year’s attacks. "I wanted to have some kind of visual representation so people could understand the scope," he said.

Through what Finn described as a week of "intense brain-storming," Stewart’s idea was transformed. The class first conceived of a large bowl to be filled with water dripping from the ceiling, but after examining the ceiling in the chapel, they decided that the technical difficulty of achieving this effect would be prohibitive. Eventually they developed the idea of a bowl already filled with water that would reflect the face of anyone who looked inside. "It was a huge progression," Stewart said.

The students constructed a bowl made of plaster and decided to paint it black. "We’ve had to make this fairly quickly. And you know, you can’t just go out and buy a four-and-a-half foot bowl," Finn said.

"We made it in two days," senior Ashley Kesling said.

An integral part of the piece is a quote by Revolution-era patriot Thomas Paine that reads, "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection." Originally the quote was to be part of the bowl, but the students decided to print the quote in a large circle on the floor in the chapel’s foyer and fill the circle with glass dishes of flower petals. The massive bowl began to leak and was transported to the area in front of the chapel.

"This has been a learning experience from the technical aspect," said Kesling as she, Stewart, Finn and classmate freshman Indrani Ashe relaxed on the steps and contemplated their work. "This is kind of like just figuring it out and figuring out what the stress is."

"This has been very improvisational," Finn said. "I think it has been really good for this class to get together and do a project collaboratively. I’ve been trying to get away from just individual visions."

"This isn’t our really big project," Ashe said. "That comes next." For their "big project," the students in public art will do a sculpture with or for a campus group.

"The groups will be like clients for them," Finn said.

For now, though, Finn, Ashe, Stewart, Kesling and their classmates seniors Anna Clark and Nazila Alimohammadi and junior Michael Presley can be satisfied with the striking addition they contributed to the university’s remembrance of an important day.