Into the Light

Into the Light: Campus-wide art project celebrates community and belonging

By Kate LaBrake

Walk into the Crawford Campus Center Gallery during its "Into the Light" exhibit, and you will find yourself immediately enveloped in warmth. The installation centers around a single piece: a giant, cube-shaped lantern seemingly floating on a clear pedestal, trickles of yellow light lacing through its hundreds of intricately-cut paper tiles and extending to the walls of the space.

Wherever you stand within the room, you, too, will be a part of this piece, as the delicate patterns of light cover you, and as your silhouette adds to the shadows on the wall. In this way, "Into the Light" creates a participant out of an observer. It invites you to belong.

Debuting in February 2022, "Into the Light" celebrates inclusivity and community. A true campus-wide effort, this giant installation was created by faculty and students across the PreK-12 spectrum and blended the disciplines of 2D art, photography, sculpture, design and fabrication, music, and computer science.

While "Into the Light" is a spectacular, multi-sensory experience, to fully appreciate the piece means not only witnessing it in its finished form, but also exploring the fascinating story of how—and why— it was made at EA.

Anila Quayyum Agha’s “Intersections” on display.

Photo credit: Nash Baker

"Into the Light" is inspired by the 2014 piece "Intersections" by Anila Quayyum Agha. A six-and-a-half-foot black lacquer cube suspended from the ceiling, "Intersections" features thousands of precise, laser-cut geometric etchings through which a piercing white light shines. The resulting pattern of shadows flood the gallery space and the viewers within it.

Agha based the piece’s patterns on the countless delicate carvings found on the Alhambra, a beautiful Islamic palace built in 889 AD. During her visit to the historical site, Agha was struck by its grandeur and reflected on her childhood, faith, and deep feelings of exclusion.

“Anila Agha was raised in Pakistan, where women weren’t allowed to visit the mosque and instead had to pray at home,” said Visual Arts Chair David Sigel, Hon. “She was always excluded from this seminal cultural experience.” “When [Agha] later moved to the United States as a young woman, she again felt like an outsider,” added Gallery Coordinator Susan Coote. “Her art practice is addressing the issue in a positive way, and bringing the outsider in.”

"Intersections" achieves just that. Through its immersive light and shadow, the piece creates a wonder-inspiring contemplative space that is open to all.

Tricky Timing

Two years ago, David first stumbled upon Intersections in a way in which so much new art is discovered.

“I saw it on Instagram,” he explains with a smile. “The [Peabody] Essex Museum posted about it, and I was so taken by the piece that I reached out to my friend who works there. She pointed me to fascinating interviews, articles, and videos. The more I took in, the more I thought, ‘How can we do something like this at EA?’”

David envisioned the project as a way for not only the art department to collaborate, but for the entire school to come together.

Unfortunately, the timing was not ideal. With students learning remotely and later transitioning to socially-distanced instruction, coordinating a project of this scale would have to wait.

Thankfully, the 2021-22 academic year brought lower rates of COVID -19 cases; relaxed protocols that allowed for more collaborative, in-person learning; and a powerful new Chapel theme that not only captured the sentiments of the school community, but inspired the name of this yet-to-be-planned project: Coming Out of the Darkness and Into the Light.

The timing was perfect. The Visual Arts Department faculty named the project "Into the Light" and began planning in summer 2021.

Shedding Light on the Concept

"Into the Light" was both a simple and ambitious concept. The arts faculty’s overall goal was to invite students and faculty to take part in creating one giant piece of artwork: a wood-framed lantern inspired by Intersections. Like Intersections, the piece would promote inclusivity and belonging.

However, before the team formed ideas of what the piece should be, they first had to address what it should not be.

“The biggest challenge in our preliminary discussions was centered around how to make something that wasn’t appropriation,” shared Middle School arts teacher Hilary Hutchison, Hon. “Anila Agha’s work has a significant meaning and message because of her background. So, instead of building a lantern with traditionally Islamic patterns like Intersections, we wanted Into the Light to include images that represented our own community’s story and perspectives.”

“We wanted Into the Light to be EA’s response to—not a copy of— Intersections,” added David.

An even larger foundational discussion would focus on accessibility. Hilary took the lead with this charge, creating a system that would allow all students and faculty the opportunity to be involved. Participants would cut out individual, four-inch square paper tiles which would then be mounted on the large wooden frame. She enlisted the help of a group of creative Upper Schoolers, the Install-It Club, to help direct the project.

“Our very first thought process was, is it going to be a box? How many sides are we going to have?” said Install-It Club Co-president Juliette Loor '22 on a recent episode of the EA Unlocked podcast.

The club also discussed whether all tiles should include EA imagery but eventually decided instead to give students full creative freedom over their designs. Without any design prompts, students could decorate their tile in a way that was meaningful to them.

A Project for Everyone

With a concept in mind and supplies prepared, it was finally time to begin the cutting, weaving, folding, and problem solving of the design phase.

Individual bags of supplies and instructions allowed students to complete their personal tile designs in advisories, during their free time, or at home. The gallery also hosted weekly Maker Monday events throughout December, during which students could design their tiles in the shared space while listening to live music from student musicians.

Students and faculty create their tiles during a Maker Monday event in the gallery.

Making the project truly accessible to Lower Schoolers would require more creativity from organizers. Fourth and 5th graders learned how to weave and cut paper to create shadows. Lower School Art Teacher Julie Choi, Hon. instructed her 1st-3rd grade classes to use their knowledge of the elements of art and paper folding to create their pieces, which became paper snowflakes that would be added to the edges of the finished lantern.

For the youngest learners, Art Teacher Meghan Cangi-Mammele knew that the approach would have to shift more drastically. Instead of asking PreK-K students to make intricately-cut tiles, a dangerous and tricky task for such small hands, Meghan taught the students the difference between geometric and organic shapes. Kindergarten students cut their own shapes, while PreK students were provided pre-cut shapes.

“Their goal was to arrange them on a laminator sheet, and we would run it through the machine together,” explains Meghan. “There were lots of oohs and ahhs when they went through the mini laminator!”

After the individual tiles were completed, Design and Fabrication Teacher John Binstock built the lantern’s wooden frame—a five-footwide cube—to fit each one. However, unlike "Intersections," the frame would not be suspended; because the gallery ceiling’s ductwork would not allow for hanging the cube in the very center of the room, the Visual Arts Department decided to place the cube on an acrylic platform to give the lantern a floating effect.

Next, the arts faculty would have to bring the piece into the light. David and Hilary specially sourced a single diode bulb with high lumens to create perfectly-crisp shadows. But with a powerful light source came the need to conserve energy, and with the need to conserve energy came a creative solution from across campus.

“We enlisted computer science students and faculty to help,” explains David. “We basically acted as their client and offered true application to what they have been learning in class.”

The computer science faculty and students were up for the challenge.

First, they installed a motion sensor at the front of the gallery that would trigger a welcome message amplified over a loudspeaker. The audio from the welcome message, in turn, would activate the lantern’s light.

Then, the group programmed an interactive, informational display that would be mounted to the gallery wall. The finished board featured three buttons that guests could press to hear audio recordings about the exhibit’s background, process, or inspiration by Lower, Middle, and Upper Schoolers.

“The computer science students worked to bring a little magic to the piece,” says Susan. “And an installation like Into the Light should be magical.”

To complement the lantern, striking photos featuring silhouettes by Photography Teacher Ellen Erikson’s Honors Photography III class were mounted on the wall outside of the gallery. “The photos were inspired by the photographer Susan K. Grant, who created ethereal images with silhouettes,” shares Ellen. “When we as an arts department first discussed planning a community-wide project that centered around light, I was excited to be included, as light is so integral to photography.”

A Celebration of Belonging

Upper School musicians showcase their talents at the gallery reception.

With all components in place after months of thoughtful preparation, "Into the Light" opened in the Crawford Campus Center Gallery with a packed reception in March—the first full-scale gallery event since March 2020. Students filled the gallery, eyes wide with wonder at the patterns of warm light that filled the space. Some searched for their own tile, while others stood back, leaning against the wall, taking it all in.

“I think it is a very individualistic exhibit, but it also reflects the community,” said Install-It Co-president Ned Meisel ’22 on a recent EA Unlocked podcast episode. “One could go into the exhibit and find their individual cutout that they made themselves but also look at theirs amongst everyone else’s and realize they're a part of this artistic community.”

“There’s a great Where’s Waldo effect when students try to find their pieces,” echoes Hilary. “But even better than that is how the community has taken to the lantern in general. In the same way that Anila Agha’s Intersections creates a space that is beautiful and spiritual and enveloping, I hope that Into the Light makes people feel a part of something bigger. Art has a way of communicating many things powerfully.”