A blog by one of the re’s summer Steppingstone Scholar interns, William

During the first week of my internship at the Resource Exchange, my fellow intern and I were given our own opportunity to ReCreate a project of our own. During my interview for the Resource Exchange I stumbled upon this truly amazing room, with all sorts of weird, and out of place things called the random room, even though I didn’t know what my project was going to be I knew that I wanted to use many of the materials in the random room. When I came back to the Resource Exchange, I was struggling to be creative, though I wanted to create a truly amazing project I couldn’t find an idea. As I looked around the building I knew that I had the potential to make a Greek/Roman project.

During my childhood I was always encouraged to read, it became one of my favorite after school pleasures. I read many books, big and small, fantasies and novels, but one of my favorite series was Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Now before this book I knew some fantasy worlds and how imaginative they could get, but I never read a book that brought the past to the present. This book brought the days of the Greeks and Romans to the present. They recounted of stories of heroes fighting vicious mythological creatures and the famous epics they would go on. This series inspired me to read and fill my brain with the knowledge of the Greek and Romans and the times they lived in. Well, since now I go to Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia, and Latin and mythology are required classes I have excelled to a practical expert of all things mythical.

So, when Ms. Alison told us to ReCreate our own project I knew that it had to be Roman/ Greek themed. As I looked around the random room I saw these buckets that were close to the Tartarus pits of containers. They contained probably millions of slides containing pictures of art and architecture around the world, I thought to myself “Hey I could do something with this.” I looked around the store, to try to figure out how I could bring these tiny 2×2 slides to life. After several dozen trips around the store I wandered over to the lamp section that contained vintage shades and lamps. Then an idea hit me as looked up at the IKEA Billy lamps.

I walked around the store looking for other supplies I would need and I got a 12×22, and two 4×12 pieces of plexiglass, a piece of 12×22 piece of Lenstar sheet, and just about 78 slides. I sat down and got to work, cutting the glass for the most precise measurement, measuring the glass to find how many slides I would need to fill it completely, and then I taped the piece of Lenstar to the back of the two billy lamps for a reflective shine.

Then I continued to paste the slides on the glass using tile glue, but after a while I had to switch to tape because the slides weren’t sticking to the glass well enough. Three rolls of tape later my project was finally finished a lamp made of Greek and roman civilization. Now I am off to my second project and since I have started I have grown accustomed to creativity. …I am thinking of doing something combat related.

Here’s a shot of William showing his reMade project off to a tour of Steppingstone Scholars and potential future interns!