Charred cedar posts Sekou Hayes used in his colorful, airy sculpture were inspired by a Study Abroad trip to Japan. “That was an idea that was kind of daintily thrown out into the pool of ideas,” he says. “But then we thought it actually might have a really nice touch to it, so we went with it.”
COURTESY MICHAEL MERSCHEL
fabricate them, and, as with all work at the site, laid the tiles themselves. The project was funded with $4,560— “We used every cent of it,” Sanguinetti says—raised via KU Endowment’s LaunchKU online crowdfunding initiative, and forced students to deal with realworld challenges of their future profession. Months of design and planning were dashed, for instance, when, with two weeks left in the semester, engineers vetoed a parabolic canopy for safety concerns in the event of snow and ice accumulation. The canopy was replaced by the nylon-and-cedar art piece, designed by Sekou Hayes, which creates the feeling of an enclave while retaining the magnificent view across the Wakarusa Valley. “For me, personally, that was the biggest takeaway, learning how to let things go,” Hayes says. “It’s tough, but that’s our obligation as designers. We’re problemsolvers, so it was just another problem that we had to solve.” The site’s proximity to Marvin Studios and Chalmers Hall, where students spend endless hours laboring over their projects, has already made it a favored lunch and relaxation spot, which is particularly rewarding for Sanguinetti. “Students are always inside, working on stuff, and sometimes they just need a break,” she says. “So we wanted to create a place where they could come during the
day, and also later in the evening, because they usually stay late into the night.” Hayes concedes that he’s still coming to grips with the loss of the canopy, but he’s ultimately pleased with the outcome. “I’m very, very content with the result, and it feels good having a completed product,” he says. “And it feels even better knowing that people outside of our studio are really responding to this site. That’s what means the most to me. That means more than omitting a canopy. “As long as people respond to it and enjoy it, that’s all I care about.” —Chris Lazzarino
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New kid in town Debut novel offers fresh take on common junior-high traumas
Merschel
creative resourcefulness: He narrates his life as episodes of his favorite sci-fi show, ichael Merschel knows life as the “Star Survivors,” and steels himself, as did new kid in school. He was in the the author, to figure it out on his own middle of seventh grade when his family without crying on his mother’s shoulder. moved from Louisiana to Colorado, and it He innocently explains away the bruises, wasn’t long before woodshop bullies were and his mother, frazzled by caring for an smashing his projects. infant while also setting up their new “I thought I had the worst life that house, is too distracted to probe further. anybody could possibly have,” says From the kitchen, the commander kept Merschel, j’89, a veteran Dallas newspaper trying to question me. But it was becoming editor and first-time novelist. “I look back clear to me—she was busy. She didn’t have on it now and think, ‘OK, that was a time to worry about things like cupcakes, or relatively short window,’ and not long after how klutzy I was, or my mission in general. that I made friends who have been friends I needed to find a way to take care of of mine for life. At the time, I didn’t know myself. that. At the time, when you’re that age, it’s I had a duty to take care of myself. so intense and you’re so determined to Clark’s heroic missions come to include figure it out. a band of freshly drawn accomplices who “I’m hoping that for kids in that use their wits, and a shared refusal to bow situation, this can be a little bit of a guide.” to peer pressures, to prevail over, and The guide is his novel, Revenge of the eventually empathize with, their enemies. Star Survivors, which tells the story of The novel, officially marketed as intrepid junior-high explorer Clark middle-grade fiction but entirely readable Sherman, who finds himself dropped into for adults, was in part sparked by an a new school in the middle of eighth grade interview Merschel conducted in his day and is promptly set upon by toughies who job as books editor of the Dallas Morning delight in taunting his nerdiness. News, where he has worked for 23 years. The bullying is forecast in the first pages, When a new author who had hit the when Clark arrives at his new school on a jackpot of an Oprah Winfrey recommencold winter morning wearing moon boots dation explained that he’d written his book and a Shackleton parka purchased from a in part to figure out how a novel works, PBS catalog. What’s not foreseen is Clark’s the words resonated.
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