Four Hamilton students are recipients of grants from the Steven Daniel Smallen Memorial Fund. The Fund aims to encourage student creativity among Hamilton students by providing funds for projects displaying originality, expressiveness and imagination. David and Ann Smallen established the fund in 1993 in memory of their son, Steven. Smallen studied at Hamilton for a year while receiving treatment for leukemia, before losing his battle with cancer in 1992.
Recipients are: Denroy Thomas Jr. '07. With his grant, Thomas will complete his senior project of constructing a life-size wooden archway. The arch is a sculptural reflection of Thomas' journey through life, and the role faith plays in that journey. Two ceramic angels are inlaid in the curvature of the inside walls, and the ceiling becomes a narrative describing his struggles, failures, and victories. This bold interactive statement towers at 8 feet, and is comprised mainly of bark red wood.
Miranda Raimondi '08 will sculpt Quantum Selves, a life-size sphere woven of blue and white colored rope light to be displayed on the Hamilton campus. This tangible representation of the art of science will include a circular hole, so that onlookers can enter and appreciate what it is like to be engulfed by thousands of flashing lights. Raimondi hopes that onlookers will depart from a mechanistic worldview of matter as divisible, and temporarily lose their sense of individuality and singularity.
Laura Hartz '07 will create Hamilton's Earth Oven in the back yard of the Glen House Outdoor Leadership Center. She will design and create the earth oven with the help of other students then teach community member how to bake traditional sourdough bread, yeasted breads and pizzas using this community oven.
Daniel Wittenberg '07, will explore solar plate printmaking, a non-toxic form of intaglio printmaking. He will produce prints in this new medium which will be hung in the Emerson Gallery. The subject of the prints will be the natural Hamilton environment and Root Glen.
