The day before spring break, the Statue of Liberty collapsed and shattered.
Springbrook High School sophomore Cesia Soto and four classmates had spent months designing, molding and firing the 5-foot-tall replica of Lady Liberty made of ceramic clay before they discovered on a weekend morning in March that their project had fallen and was laying in pieces.
She wasn’t sure how the team would find the time to reconstruct the statue. But then the students’ teacher, Jennifer Earle, drove them to the Silver Spring School so they could work all day for several days through the break to create a new one. It now stands along with those created by 38 other Montgomery County high school teams on the grounds of the music and arts venue Strathmore in North Bethesda and the adjacent Grosvenor–Strathmore Metro station.
“It was just a good lesson,” Soto said of the project that went from shards on the art room floor to display at the newly christened Montgomery County Public Schools Sculpture Garden.
Strathmore partnered with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to back the student art initiative and awarded certificates to participating students, from high schools including Thomas S. Wootton and Richard Montgomery in Rockville, Winston Churchill in Potomac, and Walter Johnson and Walt Whitman in Bethesda.
“I never thought someone would come in and say, ‘You got an award from the county and Metro because you did this,’ ” Soto said. “It was just a big blessing for us, having this big opportunity.”
For the next five years, commuters and Strathmore visitors can view the ceramic totem sculptures that now line a path along the Metro Garage and across the grounds at The Mansion at Strathmore. The spire-shaped pieces, which students from 14 county schools installed last weekend, are all similar in size and structure, but showcase a range of designs, including geometric patterns and nature scenes. One includes the face of a Chihuahua.
Visitors take a look at some of the totem sculptures behind Strathmore, including "Rainforest," made by students at Walter Johnson High School. Credit: Joe Zimmermann.
Brendan Roddy, a Churchill art teacher, said each of the sculptures represents months of effort and planning by teams of students, which provided them with a rare opportunity to see what artists go through to get their work ready for exhibition.
“It provided sort of a chance to understand what an authentic artistic experience would be, to be an artist that had to plan, to draw, to present, to make a model and then actually do the whole construction,” he said. “It gave them a real-world, authentic artistic experience.”
Roddy said he was “overwhelmed with pride,” and many students appeared to be as well, when the sculptures were dedicated at an event Thursday afternoon at Strathmore that was attended by dozens of students, parents and teachers.
Zoe Jansen, who graduated from Walter Johnson on June 3, led a team that built a seashore-themed sculpture. She said it took weeks to perfect the angles to fit the oblique pieces of the totem together, but now it stands among five others from her school.
“I am so proud,” she said. “I’m really happy that I got to leave my senior year with something big like this, and I’m really proud of my whole team because I think it looks amazing.”
The sculptures, which students constructed during Advanced Placement ceramics or other art classes, are each made up of about eight stackable pieces, and the project organizers at Strathmore and MCPS chose the totem shape because it allowed for many sculptures to fit along the Art Walk path, said Stephanie Gage Ellis, a Walter Johnson art teacher who was the main organizer for the project.
The Strathmore project received funding from Fivesquares, the development company behind the Bethesda Gateway plan along East-West Highway. Clark Engineering set up the footing and poured the concrete that the sculptures stand on.
Bill Carey, director of donor and community relations at Strathmore, said it was important for the arts center to display pieces made by county students who often don’t have a place to exhibit their work.
“The bottom line is community,” he said. “What art does is bring the community together and that’s our role, that’s our mission. …It’s been a very good partnership and marriage together and I’m sure it will continue.”
A total of 32 sculptures line the Arts Walk next to the Metro Garage, with seven more totems leading up to The Mansion at Strathmore. Credit: Joe Zimmermann.
Students interested in sculpture often find it difficult to get their work displayed because it can’t simply be hung on walls like paintings or other visual arts, said Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, a sculptor and Strathmore board member. She noted that the five-year term of the display meant some of the student artists could still visit the site even after graduating from college.
Soto, whose “Liberty” project represents the team’s interest in inclusion and opportunities afforded to different cultures in the U.S., said the project ignited a new passion.
“It would be my dream to work with clay and sculpture and everything because that’s what I love,” she said.
