It’s all part of a project involving the popular activity of geocaching

During his involvement with the 2008 Teen Project, Bellevue High School student Gelan Damesa learned that art is not just about the object, it is also about the experience.

For the Bellevue Sculpture Exhibition Teen Project, Damesa crafted a sculptural travel bug he named “Hot Rod” and tracked its many adventures all over the city. Damesa entered the world of geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing), an activity devoted to the mixture of art and technology in a outdoor treasure-hunting game.

Geocaching participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and clues to hide and seek geocaches, a small treasure consisting of a toy, trinket, or object with little or no dollar value. The basic idea is to locate the hidden containers, called a cache, and share the experience online. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and treasure. There are 646,985 active caches in over 100 countries around the world.

Students from four Bellevue high schools and teens from Bellevue’s Boys and Girls Club participated in creating Travel Bugs, crafting more than 150 small-scale sculptures out of recycled and renewable materials. Each Travel Bug has an attached trackable tag with a code which the finder can use to log its travels on the geocache website.

Every Travel Bug has a goal given by its owner, varying from different locations to themed destinations. For the Teen Project, the ultimate goal was to start at City Hall, travel to a destination, and return to City Hall.

“It’s not just about seeing the work, but being invited to participate in the project,” Tamar Benzikry-Stern, the Public Art Project Coordinator explained. The Sculptural Travel Bug project was proposed by Bellevue Arts commissioner, Genevieve Tremblay and led by Benzikry-Stern and Arts Specialist, Mary Pat Bryne.

In the past, the teen education program that runs parallel to the Bellevue Sculpture Exhibit, incorporated one piece of work by a small group of students. When the Bellevue Sculpture Committee first began brainstorming for the 2008 Teen Project, there were concerns surrounding previous instances of vandalism. To redirect the focus, the committee decided to find a way to engage the teens while teaching them about the stewardship of public art.

“We decided to leverage the whole geocache community who are already so active in appreciating their community,” Tremblay said, co-founder of Cultural Entrepreneurs and avid geocacher. “Geocaching has a lot to do with the outdoors – walking and experiencing your city on foot.”

This year, the teen exhibit fostered a strong partnership between the Bellevue Schools Foundation, the Bellevue Arts Commission, the city of Bellevue and teachers from the Bellevue School District. The project also linked students from four high schools and teens at the Bellevue Boys & Girls Club Ground Zero Teen Center as well as the general public and the geocaching community. The participating Bellevue teachers included Jason Moodie, Faye Scannell, Amy Robertson, and Enid Smith Becker.

The grant given by the Bellevue Schools Foundation went towards covering the cost of materials including GPS systems and training. The committee brought in Seth Leary, founding president of the Washington State Geocaching Association, to introduce the students to the technology and culture of geocaching.

“The foundation really keeps their eye out for innovative, progressive, exciting and creative things that are outside the realm of what happens in the classroom,” Tremblay said. “When something like this shows up that engages the students both academically and creatively, it creates a unique community and a strong partnership.”

Going beyond your typical arts and crafts, the geocaching project encouraged students to tap into a number of areas of academics including narrative, critical thinking, mapping, science, and technology- all underlined with the theme of art. The teachers were able to morph their curriculum to fit the project.

Each teacher chose a media for their students to utilize when creating their Travel Bug such as papier-mache, ceramics, recycled and found objects. When creating a Travel Bug, the students were instructed to pay special attention to the scale of the object, its durability, and esthetic, avoiding anything pokey, dangerous, edible, valuable or an object with removable parts that could get separated.

Leary designed and installed the evolving display of Travel Bugs showcased on the second floor of City Hall through Oct. 5. Changing panels reflect adventures abstracted from the textual logs and photographs that track the bugs adventures along the way.

“Whether somebody was drawn here for the sculptural exhibit itself and stumbled upon the geocaching exhibit or came to drop off a geocache and then was drawn in by the expansive sculptural exhibit, it became kind of a cross-fertilization of events,” Tremblay said.

Out of the estimated 150 bugs launched, roughly 25 made their way back to City Hall and are on display at the exhibit.

“Since art gets the last spot on the docket for anything in schools, a lot of the more current, relevant, cutting edge things that are happening in art don’t always make it to the teachers and students. This was one way for them to get tapped into something that was very current,” Tremblay explained.

To join the geocaching community, go to www.geocaching.com or stop by the 2008 Teen Exhibit on display at Bellevue City Hall.

Lindsay Larin can be reached at llarin@reporternewspapers.com or at 425-453-4602.