Making Ways
The contained and the open
In December the Sevenoaks School Art department took a study trip to New York. Amongst
the packed itinerary to see as much art as possible and draw in the high-octane architecture
of the city, we found time to visit the newly opened Thomas Heatherwick Vessel in Hudson
Yards. This extraordinary hybrid phenomenon is part architecture, part viewing platform,
part sculpture and completely unique. Its 154 flights of stairs latticework their way up to
the height of 46 metres and open to commanding views over the Hudson River. A seemingly
endless array of stairs lead round and up, offering multiple fractural paths that trace the
volume of a clear, distinctive, inventive and exotic vessel that marries the contained with
the open. It is no surprise that it has quickly become a new landmark for one of the greatest
cities in the world.
As I lined up the students in front of the Vessel to take a group photo, its coppery metal
glinting in the cold December sun, I thought back to the sincere, scruffy art room at
Sevenoaks School that Thomas Heatherwick used as a boy in the early 1980s, and marvelled
at how far his creative journey had taken him.
Future success is often claimed by the institution that an artist or designer attended, but
it is often the drive, commitment and native talent that propels a creative mind forward.
However, early experience goes deep. It forms a foundation layer upon which further
growth is propagated. As well as pointing to possibilities in a far-off future, schools have
the duty of care to keep all doors firmly propped open so the curious minds and ambitious
creativity of its students can pass through with confidence and navigate the labyrinthine
stairways of artistic expression.
Making Ways comes four years after the Making It exhibition that celebrated the creative
achievements of ten artist/designers over 50 years who share a debt of gratitude to the
Art department at Sevenoaks School. Making Ways is an exhibition of recent alumni, most
of whom have gone on to university courses in the creative arts. All have started on the
complicated but endlessly rewarding journey to find a place in the world for their creative
voice. This can at times feel like snakes and ladders with as many paths down as up, but the
unique creative resilience and investment in personal imagination is ultimately enriching
both for themselves and, as Thomas Heatherwick has shown, for society. There is no telling
where a journey once started will end.
Oliver Barratt (OS 1981)
March 2020
Photo by Hugo Lagergren, Lower Sixth