MAPLE GROVE CEMETERY

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Jeanne Hatton Capodilupo

Telephone:  718-544-3600

 

GARGOYLE PROJECT IN KEW GARDENS,

N. Y. IS AN EDUCATIONAL ENDEAVOR  WHICH INVOLVED COMMUNITY EFFORT!

 

(May 20, 2002-Kew Gardens Queens, NY) Eleven Gargoyles have been removed from the main building of P.S. 99 in Kew Gardens, New York during a façade improvement project in 2000 and all with the help of the following: Maple Grove Cemetery has joined efforts in a partnership with P.S. 99 and 6th grade students, Kew Gardens Art and Recreation Council (Kew Gardens Civic Association), Artist Karen Fitzgerald and the Jamaica Center for Arts and learning.

 

       Each of the eleven Grotesques were skillfully copied and reinstalled upon completion of the project.

Local community activists wanted to preserve the originals and worked with the organizations, the above-mentioned people and especially with Maple Grove Cemetery to transfer them to safe storage.

 

       This project has embodied an approach to learning very different from the traditional textbook curriculum.

It has deepened the impact of Arts Education and also fosters an appreciation of history and social studies in the school community.  The students are studying and investigating the exploration of Gargoyles/Grotesques plus medieval architecture.  This project also reaches out to the surrounding community.

 

       Under the direction of Roberta Nelson, P.S. 99 coordinator and teacher of the Gifted and Talented Program, each of the 6th grade students are researching

this subject using several sources.  The students have visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for hands on experience with creating miniature Gargoyles/

Grotesques.  They also learned about the church’s inspiring history and viewed one of the most impressive collections of stained glass windows, religious tapestry

and  statuary in the world.

 

       Karen Fitzgerald, project artist from the Jamaica Center for the Arts and learning, will be working with the 6th grade students in creating their own Gargoyles/Grotesques  which will be hung in the auditorium of P.S. 99 as a permanent legacy to the graduating class of 2002.   The students will also create

permanent pieces incorporating one of the original grotesques to be installed at the school.  The artwork will be presented at P.S. 99 at a special ceremony at the end of May.  This is the “making and the doing” of art, it is the appreciation of art itself and is providing students with an arts experience right in their own backyards.

 

Using the beautiful grounds of Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens to learn about historic symbols tells the history of the past while dealing with the present. 

 

       A second project will be initiated in the fall of 2002 and will involve the class of 2003 (5th graders), their parents, and the community.  Ms. Fitzgerald will create another piece incorporating one or several of the original grotesques.  The finished work will be installed on the grounds of Maple Grove Cemetery – Spring 2003.

 

       The collaboration of P.S. 99, Karen Fitzgerald, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Maple Grove Cemetery and its President, Linda Mayo Perez and the Kew Gardens Civic Association has been a model for others to emulate.