Full Metal Dresses

Mount Holyoke junior Magdalena Rios Metcalf has sculpted four white formal dresses out of hardware cloth as part of a campuswide display of sculptural installations put together by art professor Joe Smith's Sculpture 2-Installation class. The four dresses, spectral and translucent, are on view near College founder Mary Lyon's grave in the middle of campus and are meant to refer to the annual laurel parade, in which the class of 2001 will march with alumnae through campus. Participants in the laurel parade, a rich part of the College's history, will march on Saturday, May 26, one day before the College's 164th commencement. Smith's eleven students made six sculptures each over the course of the semester. Other installations now on campus include a tree-hugging figure of sticks, leaves, and wire in the 1904 Garden by Terre Parker '02 and, in Lower Lake, a fabricated island made of Styrofoam, dining hall trays, and new plantings of wheat grass by Mia Radysh '02.