Monday, June 12, 2006



The Blue Ball Pipe Flies by way of the sale of a 1985 Mercedes Benz and lands on a rounded mountain top in Hororata, New Zealand (shades of Harry Potter?!)
Landowner, Helen Langen, of Malvern Hills, New Zealand (South Island) and New Jersey artist Judith Wray, celebrate the installation of the Ball Pipe, the first of many outdoor sculptures to be exhibited on the beautiful foothills landscape.

A 1985 model Mercedes Benz was sold to cover costs of shipping the nine ft. PVC pipe sculpture to Christchuch, NZ. The pipe is one pipe sculpture from many....a merger of projects between Henry Sunderland's "The Great Pipe Dream" and Judith Wray's "Pipe Dreams", in NJ. The two projects involved over forty schools and more than 100 recyclable pipe sculptures.

Visual Arts League, (VAL) is a non-profit, charitable arts organization which along with the regular things that arts groups do also creates a sort of art adventure. Ideas hatched together which take off in a myriad of ways for the sheer flight of it! Like, if Houdini were a bird dog, sniffing out directions and levitating great bodies of work using worldwide extended fingers from armchairs.
In April, Judy made a pilgrimage to Helen's place in NZ to witness the pipe solidly in place atop a rounded mountain overlooking ranges of mountains and valleys. A number of the pipes have taken on lives of their own. This pipe came together as a result of a 12 week apprenticeship program held in 2004 with 5 young teens. The classes were titled “What’s Art!” a label which came to light down the road, a surprise to the artist and a serendipity illumination to unfolding events....we are exploring a question using recyclable materials and who and what is all around taking great leaps of imagination, faith, persistence and resourcefulness mixed with a dose of new technology. Each class began with the ineternet and merging the previous class into the next. On the web site the project is documented and the teens can follow along on their own.

Teens: Joyia Williams, Corneisha Rodgers, Lashaun Moore, Evanna Donaldson and Justin Price worked with New Jersey artist, Judy Wray.


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