Kitty Wales' Shark Installation Highlights Winsor Global Forum on Waste

Since January 2017, the Winsor community has enjoyed the presence of two installations by internationally recognized sculptor and Boston University lecturer Kitty Wales. The sharks, titled Hotpoint and Wicker Fish, hang suspended in the open space above the Evans Family Lobby in the Lubin-O’Donnell Center.
 
Kitty Wales is best known for using the detritus of everyday life as the material for her installations. Her work is on display all over the world, including the DeCordova in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Winsor’s fine art faculty arranged for the loan as a surprise for the school community, who returned from winter break in early 2017 to the sight of Hotpoint, a beautiful and forbidding green shark made from pieces of discarded washing machines salvaged from junk yards, hanging by wire in the Evans Family Lobby. A few steps down the lobby, Wicker Fish can be seen “swimming” beneath the stairwell that leads up to the new theater. The latter is constructed from pieces of old beach furniture donated to Professor Wales from her Vineyard Haven neighbors. 

These works of art installations were an appropriate sight at the opening of Winsor’s first Global Forum in 2017, a week-long, schoolwide program held biennially whose theme was the worldwide problem of how to deal with trash and all forms of waste created by human activity.  Professor Wales was present for the installation and served as a guest lecturer in the art history course in which students create a virtual exhibit called “From Waste to Art.” These pieces were the first works of contemporary art to grace our new facilities made possible by the Winsor Promise campaign, a fund-raising effort that doubled the square footage of usable space on the school’s historic Boston campus. Special thanks to the generosity of alumna Anne Lyman Powers '40, P'76 for making this dream a reality and expanding the presence of fine art on campus. 
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