Student Stories
STORIES BEHIND THE CUBES
Juliana Goff - Grade 12
My memory that I picked to do my box project on was going camping in New Hampshire. I go every year, so my memory consisted of all the years together. It is usually my whole family and then a few friends who go with me. We camp on the side of the Saco River. On my first wall, I included trees. This is because there are a lot of trees around in New Hampshire, especially because we were camping in the woods. I also included a river, which was supposed to represent the Saco River. My river flows through my entire piece, which is how all my walls are united together. I also added a campfire with some logs around it. This is because we sat by the fire every night, and it is something that I really enjoyed doing. On my second slab I had mountains, trees, a river, and some rocks. The mountains were visible from pretty much anywhere, when I was in New Hampshire. The trees were also always around us. The river has rocks around it, because there was a lot of rocks in and round the river, which is something that I noticed from the trip. On my third wall I have more of the river and some trees, along with mountains. On this wall I included a kayak. This is because everyone I was camping with went kayaking on the Saco River. It took up the whole day and it was really fun. On my last slab the river continues, and there are trees and mountains. On this one, I put a tree with a rope swing. There were a lot of rope swings on the way down the Saco River. The one that I tried to recreate was at the very beginning, it was the biggest one on the river that we came across. All of these elements on my block symbolize a different aspect of my memory of my trip to New Hampshire.
Kenneth Hawkins - Grade 11
The memory that I found best to fit this assignment is the time I took a trip to Nevada. I remember looking out of the car window as my family drove through the mountains. I was enchanted by the different terrain and native plants, and how unusual it was from what I was used to back in the Northeast. To symbolize this feeling, I used palm trees and cacti to carry throughout the cube. To symbolize the car ride and the terrain, I used the mountains, which the land in Nevada primarily consisted of. As we drove further, we started to run out of gas. We stopped by the closest gas station, which happened to be in the middle of nowhere. Accompanying the gas station, there was a convenience store I stumbled into. It turned out to be a metaphysical/crystal healing shop inside, where every shelf was stocked with crystals, which explains the meaning behind the crystal quartz clusters on the cube. Later in the day, it started to rain with heavy storm clouds swirling in, defining the purpose of the clouds I let control the movement of the piece.
Samantha Harkness - Grade 10
For my memory box, I used the annual trip my extended family, all 21 of us, takes every year to Cape Cod. When my mom was little, her parents took her and her three sisters to Cape Cod for a week every summer. This has stayed a tradition for over 40 years now, staying at the same hotel and going to the same places to eat year after year. The first wall of my box shows flowers and an ocean. The hotel that we stay at has huge flowers surrounding the pools; as you’re walking to the beach; everywhere you go there are beautiful flowers. These flowers always amaze me, because they are incredible to look at, and every year they change, so I wanted to incorporate that into my box. The next wall on the box is simple, but it represents the beach. The hotel is on a beach, and my cousins and I have so many memories related to it, whether it be running around in the sand late at night, or joining the early morning yoga and attempting to take it seriously. Although it is a simple wall, the memories behind it are elaborate. Moving to the next wall, there is a bridge and a car. That bridge, is a bridge that we go over every single year to get to the hotel that we stay at in the Cape. When I was younger, this bridge used to seem so high up, and I remember being so nervous to drive over it every year. Right when you get off of the bridge, there is a huge Christmas Tree Shop. When we leave the Cape on Sunday afternoon, everyone stops there, and we spend so long just walking around. The fourth and final side of my box shows this little sidewalk that you can take to walk down to the patio. On the side of it, there is a clearing of grass, that always has the game cornhole out for people to play. Everyone in the family makes teams, and we spend hours just playing that game. All four of these walls of my box remind me of Cape Cod with my family, which is my favorite part of summer.