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!

Sign of Things to Come

-from Marcie Rodriguez, Education Coordinator

I spent my Wednesday working with Dan Evers 
from the Rainforest Art Project, an organization that is a nature and history-based, educational, healing arts program inspiring children and their families by building a sense of pride and ownership through the creation of permanent ceramic and mosaic art. We have begun to work together to build an entry sign for the Imperial Valley Desert Museum with the students from Seeley Unified School District. This is of particular excitement for me, as I am from Seeley, and my daughter attends the school. This makes this project extremely personal, as the kids I am working with are not simply kids I met on this project, but they are my neighbors, my daughter's friends, and a part of my personal community. 

My daughter helping us with the sign! 

The sign is going to be gorgeous. There are brilliantly colored glass peices that are being placed in a mosaic that will reflect the beautiful natural landscape that surrounds the museum. It will feature native plants, like to ocotillo, and animals, including a roadrunner and a scorpion. While teaching students about the process of making a glass mosaic, I hope to teach them a little bit about their home as well. This will be a fantastic project to be able to work with these students to show them how art, science, and history are not isolated subjects, but are deeply entertwined with each other. 

Dan Evers working with students!

The completed sign will greet visitors as they turn onto Frontage Road towards the Museum.  It has been partially financed with a grant from the Imperial Valley Community Foundation and partially funded by a public benefits grant sponsored by Jack Terrazas with the Imperial County Board of Supervisors.