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The first school-wide Consenses exhibition will take place on Thursday, May 26th from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. at Charles River School. Consenses Founder Sally Taylor will speak briefly about Consenses – which she describes as an artistic game of “Telephone” – and visitors will have the opportunity to view the exhibit. This event is free of charge and open to the public.
Consenses is inspired by the fable of the blind men and the elephant. In this story, six blind men come upon an elephant standing in the middle of a dusty road. Each explores a separate section of the animal’s body and independently concludes what the object must be. The man holding the tail believes it is a rope, the man exploring a leg decides it’s a tree, the one examining an ear insists it is a fan. The debate continues with each man growing increasingly righteous regarding his own perception. A king happens by and suggests the men stop arguing and listen to one another, and the elephant’s identity emerges
Consenses is based on this belief that more can be revealed by working together than by arguing the rightness of our individual perspectives. Founder Sally Taylor has brought together artists from around the world, of every medium and genre, by asking them to interpret one another’s artwork and express it in their own medium. CRS partnered with Sally as the first elementary school to undertake a full-school Consenses project.
This year, students from every grade at CRS participated using the mediums photography, music, movement, algorithmic art (using computer code), writing and visual art. The exhibit will include six collaborative pieces, created from 373 original pieces of work, created by 172 students.
The original Consenses installation, housed on Martha’s Vineyard, reopens June 1 and includes work from 150 artists from around the world including James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jimmy Buffet and Wes Craven. Charles River School is one of three schools in the Boston area (CRS, Walnut Hill and BU) that are piloting the full-school curriculum.
Consenses at CRS will take place Thursday, May 26 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. at Charles River School, located at 6 Old Meadow Road in Dover. Visitors should enter on Old Meadow Road and the exhibit will be in the Community Building.
