You can crawl inside Macon’s new ‘Temple of Wonder’ sculpture

Jen Upchurch hated geometry in school.

But she loved space, especially stars.

“I’ve always wanted to be in a star,” said the Georgia-born artist, who spent much of her adult life in New York.

It was there where Upchurch created 3-D star sculptures big enough inside for people to crawl in and sit.

“I wanted people to actually go and have their own imaginative little dream-like world being in a star,” she said.

Up until her latest project, 39-year-old Upchurch made wooden stars, temporary installations that were burned ceremoniously upon their expiration.

“It was a moment,” she said. “You enjoyed that moment and you try to create more moments.”

An eye-catching 15-by-15 foot plastic and steel stellated dodecahedron sculpture that’s being completed at the Museum of Arts and Sciences will be her first permanent sculpture and first public art installation in Georgia. It will be a place where people of all ages can use their imagination to explore geometry and art.

“This will be here for years to come,” said Upchurch, who moved to Macon with her family three years ago. “This is a whole new turning point for me. ...You can affect more people in this manner.”

The interactive geometry lesson, on the museum’s Sweet Gum Trail, is set to open in late July after nearly two years in the making.

“Kids are really important in your life just for you to have that raw, natural thinking,” said Upchurch, an art teacher at Baldwin County Middle School. Students “have taught me even more ways that I can do my art and I’ve come up with more ideas than I ever thought I would.”

Sherry Singleton, director of communications for the museum, said she hopes the sculpture will help people learn how to use their imaginations.

“This whole generation and their parents, too, have kind of forgotten,” Singleton said. “How do you be still in a place and be quiet in a place and just let your imagination run, you know?”

Singleton said the museum had been looking for an idea that would “inject art back into” the Georgia Department of Education’s push for STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math.

“We want it to be a place where (people) will go in and sit and watch a cloud move through a shape and watch how the shape morphs, you know?” Singleton said. “We also want them to look at it and say, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve seen this in my math book. What does that mean? How did I see it? How can I change it? What do these shapes do?’ ”

The sculpture was paid for with a $25,000 grant awarded to the museum by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Andrew Eck, owner of Georgia Artisans, was contracted to help build the sculpture, which Upchurch named “The Temple of Wonder.”

“One of the cool things about the star is it’s supposed to be where it’s interactive where you can climb inside of it,” Eck said. “You get in and you can see everything through the stars and at the top there are inspirational words like marvel and wonder” and imagine.

The brightly colored panels of the shape are made from recycled milk jugs, a heavy-duty plastic material that will retain its color for years to come and “it weighs as much as Sheetrock,” Eck said.

The 50 star-shaped cut-outs on the panels were made with a hand-held tracing machine, as Eck said his company didn’t have a high-tech computer-controlled cutting device. Once all the panels were completed, rough edges and extra plastic were sanded off to create a smooth surface.

Though Eck said his company, created in 2014, focuses on artisan crafted furniture, “I’m very honored to be on this project.”

The Dublin native said his grandmother took him to visit museum at least twice a year when he was a kid.

“She loved it and would have loved this project itself,” he said.

This story was originally published June 10, 2017 at 8:53 AM with the headline "You can crawl inside Macon’s new ‘Temple of Wonder’ sculpture."