Metalsmith Teaches Prospect Students to Make Kinetic Sculptures

Photos by Morgan Searles and Susan Tiemstra.

Prospect School students created mobile, kinetic sculptures last week with the help of Lloyd Hughes, a fourth-generation metalsmith from Lexington Kentucky.

Hughes visited the school Oct. 13 and 14, thanks to art teacher Susan Tiemstra and a District 181 Foundation grant.

Now the school has a colorful three-tier sculpture in its Outdoor Learning Center, representing the third, fourth and fifth grade students and the District 181 art department members who contributed to the activity.

Students also took home personal mobiles created in class, with help from Hughes.

During an assembly, Hughes explained how metalsmiths create works for both artistic and utilitarian purposes. He screened a film called “Calder’s Circuis,” in which Alexander Calder, the inventor of the mobile, animates wire and cloth cowboys, horses, clowns and acrobats using kinetics.

Hughes said Tiemstra invited him to visit the school, and this is the furthest he has traveled to teach a class.

“I’m so glad that [Principal Anne] Kryger thought of and was interested in supporting and hosting an artist-in- residence artist, and I’m very happy that I was able to find Mr. Lloyd Hughes, a metalsmith from Lexington, Kentucky!” Tiemstra said in an email. “We could not have done this project without a grant from the District 181 Foundation which has been so supportive of the arts and is always encouraging teacher grants and students grants.”

Photos show fifth grade Prospect School students creating mobiles, and of Lloyd Hughes hanging the grade level collaborative mobiles. Some District 181 art teachers helped with the professional development session, as a requirement of the D181 Foundation’s grant process.