Loyola plays Garbage Wall
September 17th, 2009
Loyola Academy students pose in front of their simulated wall of garbage.
Yesterday, Jenny, practicum student Emily Augsburger, and I rode in Jenny’s gold truck to Loyola Academy, a nearby all-boys school, to spread the word about Garbage Wall. We hauled bins of junk and a six-foot-tall Plexiglas box with us.
In the art room, Jenny announced to a table of middle school boys the upcoming exhibition, asked if they knew what “alchemy” was, and then connected the term to Matta-Clark’s transformative art. She prompted the class to hypothesise how a 2’x2’ mock-up of Garbage Wall, left in the classroom the day before, had been built. Then the class thought of more ways to renew trash.
Some students casually rested their heads on the table in front of them, but they all readily chimed in and paid attention when others spoke. Still, after we paraded outside for the kids to simulate their own garbage wall, the adults truly witnessed unbridled energy, as the students, wearing blue latex gloves, eagerly explored the junk bins.
“So what do you think of this project?” I asked one boy, who had been pretending his gloves made him a superhero.
“It’s fun,” he replied, “I wish we could glue it together.”
Melba, the art teacher, who the Pulitzer collaborated with for the Community Light Project, assured her pupil that the class would get their chance to use elements of Garbage Wall in one of their upcoming assignments.
