AIA Dallas Community Honor Award

March 24, 2017

In the fall of 2012, Visual Arts Chairman Susan Sanders-Rosenberg proposed to the Hockaday Leadership Team the building of a permanent installation as part of the Hockaday Centennial celebration.

Produced through an interdisciplinary collaboration between Hockaday students, teachers, and the visiting artist Carlyn Ray this large-scale, site-specific (suspended from GFF Architects’ reinforced ceiling) sculpture is comprised of 890 recycled glass elements made by the diverse Hockaday community including students from every grade, as well as faculty and staff.

Based on their study of phyllotaxis and Fibonacci sequences in nature, Hockaday visual arts students worked under the tutelage of Upper School Art Instructor Juliette McCullough and created an initial design for The Centennial Sculpture. The Centennial Senior Class voted on and chose their favorite working design.  Visiting glass artist Carlyn Ray guided math students as they collaborated with visual arts students in finalizing the sculpture’s design.

During the 2013-2014 academic year, students collaborated with faculty in the Science, Fine Arts, and Math departments and with Carlyn Ray to create individual glass tiles.  Over the course of the next two years, Carlyn Ray Designs, consulting engineers Kyle Heironimus and Amy Patrick (Hockaday alumna), Susan Sanders-Rosenberg, and Hockaday CFO JT Coats, worked with the John Christian Designs team to make the sculpture a reality.

The detailed structural design, fabrication, and installation of the sculpture was completed by John Christian Designs and team and carefully installed over a three-week period ensuring it was optimally displayed at a point of connectivity between the facilities joining the Arts and the Sciences.

We are grateful to have been recognized so prestigiously for doing what we love; sharing our passion for art with the community. Many thanks go out to the hands and hearts that helped bring the Hockaday Centennial Sculpture to fruition.

The 30-foot tall Centennial Sculpture is a unifying centerpiece celebrating and permanently commemorating Hockaday’s milestone year, and it was given to the School by the Class of 2014.

Due in large part to the success of the Centennial Sculpture, we are pleased to announce that we are moving forward with establishing our ARO program as a nonprofit 501(c)(3)! More to come on this in the near future, but be sure to check out our ARO website for more information at: https://www.artreachingout.org