After months of planning, the annual Sculpture Race was officially held on Saturday, May 11! The sculpture class students were able to showcase their themed vehicles and the hilarious tasks they had planned for each other.
How did the Sculpture Race start?
The Sculpture Race has been a part of Northside for quite some time now. It had started as a segment in Elephant with Riders.
Ms. Minyo explained that Elephant with Riders was a “big community festival sort of thing where we had free workshops, and we invited the public to come and make art with us. And I would try to do some sort of big event at each elephant with riders.”
The types of events included “puppet shows…parades, and then one year, I decided to do a sculpture race. I was inspired by these big sculpture races, these kinetic sculpture races that happen in Baltimore and also in California.”
Eventually, the sculpture race became too big to host with Elephant with Riders and became two separate events. Elephant with Riders would happen in March and the Sculpture Race in May.
However, after some time, the Art department stopped hosting Elephant with Riders but kept the Sculpture Race.
What is Sculpture Race?
For people who have never heard of sculpture race, Ms. Minyo described it as “sculpture kids build these themed rideable sculptures that they race around the school, stopping to do ridiculous tasks. It’s very, very silly, and it’s really performance art. It’s kind of something that I plan like crazy for it. But then once it starts, it’s a beast of its own. And unless someone is in danger of getting hurt, I just let it lay out.”
Ms. Minyo and the sculpture students begin planning for the sculpture race this year a couple of weeks before spring break. Organizing includes deciding the different themes for their teams, what their vehicle, costumes, and mascot will look like, what bribes they will have for the judges, and the dirty tricks each team will play on each other!
For example, Ms. Minyo shared about when a segment was inspired by the Pope stepping down a couple of years ago. “The year that happened, we created this thing called a Let’s Not Pass…inspired by the pope stepping down. One of the first Let’s Not Passes was the pope pass. And it said, you’re just not feeling up to this anymore. So you can skip the segment.” Throughout the years these passes evolved into a variety of Let’s Not Passes.
As mentioned by Ms. Minyo, “Some of them were good that let you skip a segment. Some of them were bad like maybe you had to do a segment again… or they were funny… like you had to do a segment with your tongue hanging out…and they were all referencing something that had happened over the year.”
Then at some point, sometimes they “…started having one of the Let’s Not Passes stop the race and everyone would go someplace and do something.” For instance, the year that same-sex marriage was legalized in Illinois, they held a Let’s Not Gay Marriage Pass officiated by a drag queen.
Preparing for Sculpture Race
Current students working on their vehicles.
