Remembering Carly
by Susan Gaines
You cannot miss it: the huge steel head, the quizzical eyeglasses upon its face, an image of Maria Montessori etched in the eyeglass. It is the face of curiosity and whimsy, an invitation to play thoughtfully and think playfully.
“Montessori’s Vision” has come to define Lake Country, welcoming all who enter the school. It is an archetype of the Montessori child, yet few of us know that it is also a very personal tribute to a particular Lake Country School student, Carly Fisher, who graduated in 1993 and died two years later from acute asthma.
“Lake Country was such a big part of Carly’s life,” says her mother, Mimi Fisher. “It really shaped her. She was there when she was four and she went there all the way through eighth grade. So for nine years of her life she went to school there. She thrived there. We felt very indebted to Lake Country.”
In thinking of a way to memorialize Carly’s life and also give back to the school that had nurtured their daughter’s mind and spirit, sculpture seemed the natural choice. “We know how much the school appreciates art. An art piece seemed like the right thing to do,” says Mimi. So the Fisher family, along with Larry Schaefer, Pat deLeon, and Sarah Endsley, began working with an architecturally-trained sculptor, Alexander Tylevich, to develop a sculpture that captured both the spirit of Lake Country School and of Carly.
Tylevich, who immigrated to St. Paul from Minsk, Byelorussia in 1989, had impressive credentials and a special knack for blending architecture with art. Throughout the conceptual process, Tylevich was guided by the tone of the school’s then recently completed remodel and addition.
But Tylevich is not all about scale and design. Many of his pieces speak to spiritual values as well. “The Tree of Life,” a bronze and brass sculpture he created as the centerpiece of the Meditation Place at Fairview-University Medical Center, for example, speaks of the soulful level of his work.
For “Montessori’s Vision,” Tylevich had to dig down to yet another level: he had to get to know a child he had never met through the eyes of grieving parents. “For them, it was very painful,” noted Tylevich. And the artist had to get to know Maria Montessori. “I didn’t know about Maria Montessori,” he says. “To me she was unknown when I was in the Soviet Union.”
Like any good student, Tylevich took both subjects on. He read about Maria Montessori with enthusiasm. “I learned that she was nominated for a Nobel Prize. That’s quite interesting.” He also learned about Carly, who “was a very good student.” And also, says her mother, somewhat whimsical.
The sculpture went through several designs, the first ones being rejected because they were not childlike enough, recalls Mimi Fisher. But at last, Tylevich presented the plans for the twelve-foot-high colorful profile cut from a single blade of steel that came to rest at the entrance of the school.
Sarah Endsley, Carly’s first teacher, recalls the day the sculpture arrived on a flatbed truck from Chicago and was lifted by crane high above the building top.
“I was out with the young children. Down the street came a flatbed, carrying a huge orange sculpture. It backed up into the parking lot. The kids were watching wide-eyed. The crane lifted it onto its foundation. One child declared the sculpture was coming alive as it rose up. We watched for at least an hour,” she says. “At the very end they all started to cheer and clap. It was almost as if they’d gotten the best birthday present.” A fitting response, says Endsley, for a memorial of a girl who was just that: “She was a gift to Lake Country. To know her was our greatest gift.”
Susan Gaines is the parent of two Lake Country alums
Photos by Betty Tisel