Sculpting Sustainability

Contest motivates creative representations from discarded materials.

January 23, 2007

(From left) Joshua Salim ’09, Christian Meade ’08 and Navajeet KC ’09 pose with their winning entry in the Sustainability Sculpture Contest.

Anyone venturing into the HUB recently probably has seen the results of Dickinson's first Sustainability Sculpture Contest.

The contest was intended to go beyond the usual means of promoting sustainability and recycling—posters, charts and presentations—by having students create visual and artistic representations using items routinely discarded.

Two sculptures won. The first, created by art majors Navajeet KC '09, Christian Meade '08 and Joshua Salim '09, who call their work "Reincarnation," took black-and-white printout paper and shaped it into an angular form they abstracted from a Japanese maple tree on campus.

Biology majors Gloria DeWalt '07 and Kate Fiedler '07 crafted the second sculpture, taking their inspiration from Dr. Seuss's poem, "The Lorax." To illustrate that too many trees are being consumed, especially from long computer printouts, they fashioned a tall tree from "bark" made out of folders found in bins outside Dana Hall and chicken wire found at facilities management.

The students received $150 and dinner with President Durden to discuss sustainability.