One of the most glorious new spaces in New Haven just became more so, powered by the words of a Gandhi-inspired Italian poet.
The soaring, light-filled library and media center at the new Columbus Family Academy now has four diaphanous banners that catch the sunrise and move in the wind. They speak poetry unobtrusively to all the generations of kids who, passing through, just happen to look up.
It’s the latest example of how New Haven is using art to help make the new schools being built around town into true showpieces.
Mariella Segal (center), the French artist who created and donated the banners to the wind-and-discovery themed school, visited Tuesday to see her work in place for the first time. She beamed as she entered.
(Click here to read about the school’s opening and its other design and architectural features.)
The four banners are pictured above the head of Columbus’s principal Dr. Abby Benitez on the left (alongside librarian Rose Nunez Evans).
The banners are made of a scrim-like material, with biomorphic designs, like organically monogrammed sails. How appropriate for a school with a theme based on the voyages of discovery of Columbus.
Each of Segal’s four banners bears one of the four two-line stanzas of a poem well known in Europe by one Lanza del Vosto, the pen name of Giuseppe Giovanni di Trabia. He was one of Gandhi’s first European followers. He wrote:
My house is the wind without memory.
My knowledge comes from the books of the wind
Like the sea in the wind is my glory
And like the wind my life’s end is in the wind
Vosto was a major influence on Segal’slife when she was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris after World War Two. He founded the nonviolent Community of the Ark there. This particular poem, Segal said, etched itself deeply in her memory.
She came to the Columbus banner project several years ago when architect Barry Svigals told her about the school then under construction. (Svigals knows Segal through his father, who was a colleague of Mariella’s late husband, William Segal, an artist and designer.)
“When Barry told me the school is dedicated to discovery,” she said with Gallic certitude, “I knew the poem absolutely had to be there.” She made her designs in Paris based on mock-ups Svigals and company provided. She said she chose the yellow for the banners to complement the several blues that already color the Grand Avenue aspect of the cathedral-like space; the banners fly on the north.
It seemed natural that Vosta’s poem should fly from banners, as banners and ship’s pennants surely flew from the masts of the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria. As did the choice of Lanza del Vosto, since nonviolence is one of the school’s themes, Principal Benitez explained to Segal. “As a dual-language school, we always promote the understanding of differences and finding the common ground.”
As she walked about the library and media center, Segal appeared not only pleased by the look of the banners high above, but also by the presence of staff and kids sailing, in a more pedestrian fashion, around the library’s computers, tables, and shelves of books.
“How delightful,” she said, “for the banners to be in such a living space.”
Columbus students Yumira Gonzales and Christian Rosario agreed. Both sixth-graders happened to be in the library to choose a book when Segal, Svigals, and company arrived. Yumira said that of the four banners she likes best the ones that mention the sea and books, because she likes both.
Yumira checked out from the library Juliette Dove, Queen of Love by Bruce Coville. She then nodded hello to artist Segal, and passed under the banners out toward the hallway and her classroom.