Start Your Tortoises!

-Neal Lucas Hitch, Artist-in-Residence

David Breeckner, Dan Evers, Neal Hitch bring statue into museum

This week the museum officially began the final stages in completing our next piece of desert-sized art. On Wednesday, March 28, a group of fourth graders from Meadows Union Elementary School in Holtville visited the museum as part of our regular field trip program.  Little did they know that, in addition to studying rocks, they'd be working with them!  Together, these students applied the very first tessera (a small stone used in constructing a mosaic) onto our Giant tortoise sculpture that will be installed outside on the museum grounds.

The Tortoise sculpture is the culmination of a long collaboration between the Desert Museum and Rainforest Art Project, and funded through a grant by the California Arts Council. The core of the sculpture is a lightweight concrete and foam tortoise that was fabricated by craftspeople at Rainforest Art Project. Starting this past Wednesday, the concrete base will now be covered by thousands of colorful stone pieces -- all hand-applied by elementary and middle school students from across the Imperial Valley. The result of their work will be a three-by-seven foot radiant tortoise watching over the museum grounds.

After one field trip, the shell is well underway!