Ceramics teacher Suzanne Zimmerman plans to have her Fine Arts students create a Zen garden for the school. A Zen garden is a specific Japanese arrangement of rocks and sand that is made for a spot to meditate and where people go to cleanse their minds and reflect. Zen gardens have different cultural and historical symbolism behind them.

Zimmerman and her fine arts survey, ceramics and sculpture 3 students are working on sculptures to go in a the garden which will be put in one of the courtyards. Each student in her three classes will make an orb-like sculpture that makes them feel relaxed and they will eventually put them in the courtyard by the end of the first semester. The sculptures will be placed as an outline for a path through the Zen garden. Zimmerman wants to make this Zen garden so that students can walk by and look into the courtyard and reflect on their day.

Because it’s being put into the courtyard, students won’t be able to walk through the garden.  It will end up being more of a visual element than an interactive one.

Describing the garden, Zimmerman said, “We aren’t going to be able to do a traditional Zen garden; we’re going to be doing our own Bulldog twist on it.”

Zimmerman plans to use some of the ideas from a traditional Zen garden, but she plans to make it so that the students at RB can relate to each of the different sculptures that the students in her class are creating.