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LUMEN | WALKING WITH LA SALLE
Walking with La Salle
By Michael Ee
In the previous issue of LUMEN , I invited three young Josephians to share their thoughts on two of the sites that were unveiled at our school ’ s 170th Anniversary celebrations in April 2022 . Since then , three other sites have steadily emerged on the grounds of SJI , the conceptions of our creative alumni who have given of their time and talent to seeing this collaborative project through .
( from left ) Glen Heng , Jason Cheong , Michael Ee , Jon Max Goh , Viany Sutisna . ( Bonaventura is not pictured here )
Glittering from floor to ceiling is Into the Fire by Jon Max Goh ( Class of 2006 ), the same artist who created Ignite . It is found at the elevator landing nearest to the labyrinth . Further into the school , Snuffed Out is a gothic-inspired wooden structure atop the slope and tucked behind Brother McNally ’ s 神 sculpture . Rekindling can be seen emerging off the walls adjacent to the amphitheatre steps and across from the stained glass of the Chapel . The second and third sites were conceptualised and put together by Glen Heng and Jason Cheong ( Class of 2009 ).
Bringing A Walk in the Light of La Salle to life has truly mirrored the journey of La Salle and the Lasallian fraternity who sought to bring their belief in the values that education affords to those who needed them most . An adventure for the past three years , the opportunity to work on this series has also allowed me to reencounter La Salle as an adult , enabling me to learn how to become a better teacher and to heed the call to serve .
The Challenges of Foraging
Charting a new path will always come with resistance and set-backs and this project was no exception . It began with a proposition to create a unique experience for the school community to contemplate the various places of significance to our founder . After much research into the history of La Salle ’ s life as well as many conversations with several members of our school community , the idea finally developed into a walk with our founder . It became apparent that more important than reminding ourselves of his life story was to recreate his experiences in an immersive encounter that perhaps the arts could best do .
Having never endeavoured to bring our founder ’ s life to contemporary times , I knew that I needed the expertise of other individuals who had received a rigorous art training as well as a Lasallian education . Afterall , we would be in the best position to trigger the audience ’ s imagination through our visual arts background . Bonaventura Kevin ( Class of 2012 ), one of the artists behind Sharing the Light , shared how the creative process is full of imaginative potential . “ As art students , we are asked to do exploration and to do a process of reflection in our designs ,” he adds . “ Because of this process of reflection and exploration of identity and the self , we were also able to ensure that our mural was able to reflect the school ’ s identity and school mission well .”
There were also innumerable difficulties starting with having no budget at the beginning , needing to inspire the same shared vision and understanding of how the visuals would look like with the school administration , and even having artworks receive damage after they were installed . Yet with each hurdle and setback came a desire to find a better solution to ensure the project would be completed even better than how it was originally intended .