BCC professor, students creating "dino room" for Children's Museum

From the Herald News: BCC professor, students creating "dino room" for Children's Museum

FALL RIVER - Students of Erik Durant, a Bristol Community College fine arts teacher, were mixing designs and laying strips of fiberglass over chicken-wire frames for a tunnel in what has been dubbed the “dino room” at the soon-to-open Children’s Museum.

The layering process was akin to building a fiberglass boat, the instructor said.

On a windowsill sat a series of hardened and finely detailed clay bones, which will be used to create molded casts for pterodactyls and other dinosaurs. The bones of half a dozen dinosaurs will have color-coded magnets attached to them and will be stuck to a wall of sheet metal for visitors to pick and choose.

In another area, the bones will be buried for kids to dig up.

Durant has made his mark with sculptors in New Bedford, among other places. He designed and made the giant pink squid hanging outside the Whaling Museum. He was asked which age group might best appreciate the dinosaur room his eight students planned, designed, bought materials for and have started building.

“Sometimes you and I think, ‘Oh, 3 to 8.’ But I think it’s more like toddlers to ... adults. Adults have to play, right?” Durant said. His BCC students, most in their early 20s, laughed.

Handling one of the intricate pieces of pterodactyl bones he made, Enzo Cruz, 21, showed obvious pride. “It’s really incredible. We’re learning a lot of great practice.”

Cruz, an aspiring sculptor from Fairhaven, anticipated the fun kids will have with the dino bones. “It’s really cool to have your stuff be used and be interactive,” Cruz said.

Another student, a young painter who also likes mixed media and uses the alias Nived, said, “It’s just interesting to me to build a setting.”

Will the kids like it?

“The kids, they’re going to love it,” said Nived, whose real name is Devin McLaughlin, 24, of New Bedford. “What we’re trying to do with this is you come into an environment.”

Durant, who speaks with childlike enthusiasm, shared the genesis of his “Intro into Museum Fabrication” course at BCC.

“I wrote the course for this project,” Durant said. “I want my sculpturing students to be fabricating exhibits. This seemed very logical.”

It was personal, too.

Durant, from New Bedford, has a 3-year-old son. He gets caught up when they go to a children’s museum and his son might exclaim, “I woulda done this. I woulda done that.”

 The idea here is not building exhibits to elicit certain responses, Durant said. It’s to let the children find out what they want to do and learn. He said it will likely produce some more “I woulda done that” moments.

He took his fabrication class to the Providence Children’s Museum for them to get ideas and a feel for the project.

After taking this course — which Durant plans to continue teaching — he sees his students being able to tout their exhibit-building experience.

During a Friday class, BCC’s president, Jack Sbrega, was present. Not coincidentally, he was there with his wife, Jo-Anne, who is executive director of this newly minted Children’s Museum of Greater Fall River.

A soft opening — when the public can make a $10 donation and paint tiles for the museum — is scheduled for Sept. 8, with the first phase of eight rooms planned “by the holidays,” according to Jo-Anne Sbrega.

Sbrega said he was impressed by how the dino room was taking shape.

“The theoretical becomes the practical under Professor Durant’s leadership,” Sbrega said. He said the room blends what the community needs in a museum with an opportunity for a teacher and his students.

“Things are moving,” Jo-Anne Sbrega said. “We’re saying by the holidays we’ll have a grand opening.”

She encourages the public to stop by the former courthouse at 441 N. Main St. There, they can see progress on the first floor, with eight rooms being re-painted and new flooring being installed.

Bristol County Commissioner Paul Kitchen was among the visitors on Friday. He sounded certain to come back. “I have three children under 7,” he told Durant.

Durant, using the small model they built, described to visitors how children enter the dino environment.

Along the embankment was a familiar object, but one that paleontologists would have been hard-pressed to identify. Lying along a small cliff, it had four wheels and a short, bulky body.

What professed dinosaur lover and follower of “Jurassic Park” would expect a dino room without a jeep in it?