Attempt at Immortality
May. 14th, 2004 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philthecowYou may remember this entry, in which I promised to share more details about Sam's eggs.
First is a picture of the installation, complete with me being a schlep. It gives a sense of scale.
Second is a picture of Sarah stepping on eggs, complete with eggs. It is a cool picture.
Third is the article I wrote for the school newspaper about it. You'll notice that Weathersby takes most of the profound quotes. Originally "an anonymous junior" was credited for all of the deep quotes, but then I realized that I could just rely on Mr. Weathersby to say what I wanted to say (if in slightly different words) and not have to quote myself.
“So I was walking up the stairs from the train and I was a little winded at this point and then I got to the landing and I was just like ‘Whoa! What the hell is that?’” recalled sophomore Christina Ring of her experience with sophomore Sam Zwiebel’s eggs.
How does one react to the sight of two hundred and sixty three hollow eggs arranged in rows on the second-floor landing?
Most began with confusion. Freshman Marian O’Neill remembered seeing “Sarah on the landing sitting there, smiling at the camera with eggs below her feet. At first I thought it was just a couple eggs and then I saw like a hundred lined up in perfect rows. And I was like ‘Why the heck is Mr. Weathersby taking pictures? Are all these people crazy?’”
Junior Jen Shuch asked, “‘What is this, Senior Prank Day?’” In a reaction shared by many students, junior Margarita Ortega “thought my class might have been canceled and got extremely happy for a couple of minutes.”
The beauty of the installation was that it was unavoidable. Students had no choice but to confront the eggs, no choice but to choose a course of action. To crush or not to crush?
The eggs were placed far enough apart for people to step between them, especially for the order loving like history teacher Vanessa Giles, who admits that she tried not to step on the eggs because she “didn’t want to make a mess.” After a path of eggshells was first cleared, other students could simply follow in the steps of those who went before them, stepping on the already-crushed eggshell fragments rather than the still-pristine hollow eggs. Christina Ring did not step on any eggs because “I didn’t want to ruin it anymore; without the eggs I thought it was going to look bad. Later, when I saw that all the eggs were broken, I was really upset.”
The rows of pristine eggs were beautiful, but along with that beauty came sadness, a sense that its destruction was inevitable and a sense that all beauty is ephemeral. As Sam’s art teacher Ken Weathersby said, “Sam created something that had an idea of perfection in it, but the necessary completion of that idea was to go beyond the perfection, to destroy it, to open the possibility for something more interesting. In chaos there is opportunity.”
Indeed, many students enjoyed wreaking havoc on the eggshells. “I was so excited when I found some that weren’t broken yet so that I could jump on them,” raved senior Courtney Bird, for whom the installation brought back memories of childhood. “It was like being a little kid jumping on those bubble wrapper things.” Jen Shuch reflected that when all of the eggs had been stomped on, “it looked like it had snowed on the stairs. I think that was cooler than the eggs themselves.” Some students simply appreciated it for the opportunity it gave them to release their stress; there are few things more satisfying than the crunch of an eggshell early in the morning. early in the morning.
Whether they loved it or hated it, almost every student wanted to know more about the installation. Was it really an art project? What was the deeper meaning? And how did Sam get all of those empty eggshells?
The project grew out of a conceptual art assignment for Sam’s Studio Art class. Sam “thought it would be more interesting if I could make it into an installation and involve the student population.” She spent six weeks blowing out the eggs during Studio Art, poking holes in both ends and then using her bare lips to blow out the insides.
But what was the point? Although Sam insists that there was no symbolism, that she just “wanted to stir things up a bit and see what everyone would do when confronted with chaos, considering how Kent Place is such a controlled environment,” her installation inspired many diverging interpretations.
Freshman Nadja Yacker asked, “Is there really something behind it besides to really piss everyone off?” English teacher Ellen Ferguson immediately saw a connection between the installation and the idea of walking on eggshells, and was thrilled about “the way that Sam resurrected a dead metaphor—I am so sad when metaphors die through overuse, and Sam brought one back to life.” Sophomore Betsy Franz was impressed by “how Sam’s project revealed destructive and apathetic aspects of human nature.”
Ken Weathersby noted that “even though the piece has a playful aspect, it reminds me of the problem of landmines left in former war zones that cause terrible accidents for years after wars are over. I know that Sam says she had none of this in mind, but war references in general are hard to avoid these days, when we see the US military and large US corporations out there breaking a lot of eggs in other countries.”
Whatever the purpose was, the installation was a smash hit. It turned an otherwise normal day at school into an adventure, provoked thought, inspired discussion, and perhaps most importantly, was a lot of fun. “It was my attempt at immortality,” says Sam Zwiebel, “for although the eggs were destroyed in less than three hours, concepts are never destroyed.”
First is a picture of the installation, complete with me being a schlep. It gives a sense of scale.
Second is a picture of Sarah stepping on eggs, complete with eggs. It is a cool picture.
Third is the article I wrote for the school newspaper about it. You'll notice that Weathersby takes most of the profound quotes. Originally "an anonymous junior" was credited for all of the deep quotes, but then I realized that I could just rely on Mr. Weathersby to say what I wanted to say (if in slightly different words) and not have to quote myself.
“So I was walking up the stairs from the train and I was a little winded at this point and then I got to the landing and I was just like ‘Whoa! What the hell is that?’” recalled sophomore Christina Ring of her experience with sophomore Sam Zwiebel’s eggs.
How does one react to the sight of two hundred and sixty three hollow eggs arranged in rows on the second-floor landing?
Most began with confusion. Freshman Marian O’Neill remembered seeing “Sarah on the landing sitting there, smiling at the camera with eggs below her feet. At first I thought it was just a couple eggs and then I saw like a hundred lined up in perfect rows. And I was like ‘Why the heck is Mr. Weathersby taking pictures? Are all these people crazy?’”
Junior Jen Shuch asked, “‘What is this, Senior Prank Day?’” In a reaction shared by many students, junior Margarita Ortega “thought my class might have been canceled and got extremely happy for a couple of minutes.”
The beauty of the installation was that it was unavoidable. Students had no choice but to confront the eggs, no choice but to choose a course of action. To crush or not to crush?
The eggs were placed far enough apart for people to step between them, especially for the order loving like history teacher Vanessa Giles, who admits that she tried not to step on the eggs because she “didn’t want to make a mess.” After a path of eggshells was first cleared, other students could simply follow in the steps of those who went before them, stepping on the already-crushed eggshell fragments rather than the still-pristine hollow eggs. Christina Ring did not step on any eggs because “I didn’t want to ruin it anymore; without the eggs I thought it was going to look bad. Later, when I saw that all the eggs were broken, I was really upset.”
The rows of pristine eggs were beautiful, but along with that beauty came sadness, a sense that its destruction was inevitable and a sense that all beauty is ephemeral. As Sam’s art teacher Ken Weathersby said, “Sam created something that had an idea of perfection in it, but the necessary completion of that idea was to go beyond the perfection, to destroy it, to open the possibility for something more interesting. In chaos there is opportunity.”
Indeed, many students enjoyed wreaking havoc on the eggshells. “I was so excited when I found some that weren’t broken yet so that I could jump on them,” raved senior Courtney Bird, for whom the installation brought back memories of childhood. “It was like being a little kid jumping on those bubble wrapper things.” Jen Shuch reflected that when all of the eggs had been stomped on, “it looked like it had snowed on the stairs. I think that was cooler than the eggs themselves.” Some students simply appreciated it for the opportunity it gave them to release their stress; there are few things more satisfying than the crunch of an eggshell early in the morning. early in the morning.
Whether they loved it or hated it, almost every student wanted to know more about the installation. Was it really an art project? What was the deeper meaning? And how did Sam get all of those empty eggshells?
The project grew out of a conceptual art assignment for Sam’s Studio Art class. Sam “thought it would be more interesting if I could make it into an installation and involve the student population.” She spent six weeks blowing out the eggs during Studio Art, poking holes in both ends and then using her bare lips to blow out the insides.
But what was the point? Although Sam insists that there was no symbolism, that she just “wanted to stir things up a bit and see what everyone would do when confronted with chaos, considering how Kent Place is such a controlled environment,” her installation inspired many diverging interpretations.
Freshman Nadja Yacker asked, “Is there really something behind it besides to really piss everyone off?” English teacher Ellen Ferguson immediately saw a connection between the installation and the idea of walking on eggshells, and was thrilled about “the way that Sam resurrected a dead metaphor—I am so sad when metaphors die through overuse, and Sam brought one back to life.” Sophomore Betsy Franz was impressed by “how Sam’s project revealed destructive and apathetic aspects of human nature.”
Ken Weathersby noted that “even though the piece has a playful aspect, it reminds me of the problem of landmines left in former war zones that cause terrible accidents for years after wars are over. I know that Sam says she had none of this in mind, but war references in general are hard to avoid these days, when we see the US military and large US corporations out there breaking a lot of eggs in other countries.”
Whatever the purpose was, the installation was a smash hit. It turned an otherwise normal day at school into an adventure, provoked thought, inspired discussion, and perhaps most importantly, was a lot of fun. “It was my attempt at immortality,” says Sam Zwiebel, “for although the eggs were destroyed in less than three hours, concepts are never destroyed.”
