Here there be ninjas, well, maybe not ninjas – but there are plenty of carved stone words in Saint Michael’s College clever new Word Garden! It’s magnetic poetry meets stone meets the great outdoors! My College Guide contacted Mallory Wood, Assistant Director of Marketing, at Saint Michael’s College for details.
Courtesy of Saint Michael's College
This is definitely a college first! Where did the idea come from? The idea came from collaboration between Chris Cleary, the sculptor from On The Rocks, and two SMC professors Valerie Bang-Jensen and Mark Lubkowitz. When the Teaching Gardens were installed three years ago, Chris designed a large rock to say “The Teaching Gardens of Saint Michael’s College.”
When designing the large rock, Clary used a rubber-resist sandblast process to create the letters on the stones, and he realized that there was a lot of wasted rubber. Clary says it is the nature of his business to create as little waste as possible, so he continued to play around with the leftover materials, sandblasting words into extra pieces of stone, and before he knew it he had lots of words, which are now all being used in the garden.
How will this word garden be used? Are there any special features we should know about?
The garden will be used by the Saint Michael’s community and those visiting our campus. The possibilities are endless; one can create poetry or wordplay or just sit and meditate. Classes will be able to use the space, as will our orientation and community service programs. A Professor of English just decided to use the Word Garden in her Genres Poetry class this fall. Someone could even write a marriage proposal, send a message to a friend, or just leave some silly or profound phrases for others to contemplate.
What are some of the words students can discover in the garden? Do you have any favorites?
There is a wide variety of words in the garden, ranging from words like peace, love, and God to leprechaun, fur, and ninja, plus verbs like open, exit, believe and think — Ninja is definitely my favorite word in the garden. I made the sentence “Ninjas are here” which can be seen in the video.
Are there plans to add more words over time?
We have one more “word-delivery” coming up in a week or so to give us a grand total of 350 words. We are hoping that classes, departments and others will donate words to the garden. The garden is a huge draw already and everyone from visiting families to faculty and staff to theater-goers to campers are having their say, with some pretty interesting results. A chalkboard and a chessboard made of stone will arrive this week as well.
My College Guide thinks this sounds like a lot of fun — and a great idea! Check out the Word Garden at Saint Michael’s College on YouTube or below for more about the Word Garden.
