Dragon Brings Landscape to Life
Each semester in Will Hooker’s small-scale landscape design studio, students build a sculpture made primarily of bamboo. The increasingly ambitious projects give students hands-on experience with construction and help them learn how to turn design ideas into reality. The studio is a required course in the Department of Horticultural Science’s Landscape Design Option.
This spring, the JC Raulston Arboretum commissioned Hooker’s class, co-taught this semester with Anne Spafford, to build a sculpture to commemorate the opening of the new walk in its Asian Valley during this year’s Gala in the Garden.
As usual, everyone in the class, including Hooker and Spafford, submitted their ideas for the sculpture in the form of sketches. The class chose the idea submitted by Justin Durango, a Chinese dragon flowing in and out of the ground plane, and consisting of a 9-foot-tall head, three body loops, and an 8-foot-long tail with a rotating double spiral ending.
From Grove to Garden
The class harvested over 100 bamboo culms from a grove in Durham. After cleaning the culms, the class divided up into teams and proceeded to build the various component parts, with the construction taking place in front of Kilgore Hall.
In total, the Asian dragon project took 15 days to build and install, with the class and 26 other volunteers putting in close to 1,200 hours of labor to complete the task.
“All involved were totally exhausted but very pleased with the results,” Hooker says. “The Asian dragon is a must see.”
Meet the Students
- Justin Durango
- Alex Cooley
- Herb Ritter
- Caitlin Davis
- Brandon Ramos
- Patrick McLaurin
- Junyan Zhou
- Kurtis Durrant
Volunteers
- Leena McDonald
- Mercy Rognstad
- Jaclyn Mills
- Kate VanVorst
- Katie McKnight
- Kevin Kearney
- Dorian Perez
- Chris Tharp
- Christian Britt
- Ryan Galloway
- Michael Edwards
- Ben Jones
- Katherine Hoke
- Allen Clineff
- Lauren Sammis
- Tony Mayer
- Carrie Hutchens
- Allison Durham
- Alana Stanley
- Don Edwards
- Vann Fussell
- Phoebe Andrews
- Amanda Wilkins
- Jessica Adams
- Tom Brown
- Will Ericson
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