Identity of Interbeing

Recognizing Difference and Seeing Ourselves

The evening of Tuesday, April 25 marked the culmination of a three-week, interactive, multidisciplinary, community art experience, facilitated by artist-in-residence Brett Cook and Packer's Middle School Health Coordinator Martha Haakmat.

Visitors to the Carol Shen Gallery on that evening were encouraged to color with oil pastels on Gallery walls that had been covered with bright red paper and drawings outlined by Mr. Cook.  The completed work was made up almost entirely of personal contributions from the Packer community.

The seeds of the project were sewn in the beginning of April, as students visited Mr. Cook in the Carol Shen Gallery one class at a time. In these interactive art sessions, Mr. Cook facilitated students' personal expression of the idea of "interbeing" by encouraging them to draw with colored markers on sheets of mirrored paper.


"What are you made of?" he asked the students to ponder before drawing. "As students created visual statements of their individual selves," Mr. Cook said, "their work ended up reflecting images of the Packer community as a whole."

From the photos that Mr. Cook took of the assembled mirrored drawings, he projected images onto two billboard-sized blank "canvases" near the entrance to Packer's Garden. Members of the Packer community gathered in the Garden on April 19 to fill the boards with outlined images from the student art sessions.


The following week, students and faculty filled in the outlines with a full spectrum of color and design. On the morning of April 24, students, teachers, and staff slowly and silently circled the garden in two directions, observing the work and noting details, in a "Concentric Circle Reflection."

And to continue this "image within an image" theme, Mr. Cook finally projected images from those outdoor walls onto the indoor walls of the Carol Shen Gallery (covered in red paper) for the final installation.

"Part of the beauty of this project... is the focus on process and mindfully experiencing life through learning," wrote Mrs. Haakmat before the project began. "The real magic will come from our ability to look at ourselves and take some time in our busy school lives to reflect on who we are."

At the opening of the final installation on April 25, Dr. Bruce Dennis, Head of School, thanked Brett Cook and Martha Haakmat for bringing to Packer one of the most creative and powerful interdisciplinary all-school community experiences the school has ever seen.

View a complete analysis of this project along with others facilitated by Brett Cook on his website.