Funny how certain patterns repeat themselves in nature. Capillaries look like trees, honeycombs resemble tessellated fish scales, and Fibonacci’s spiral is expressed in objects ranging from nautilus shells to pine cones.
So one could easily be forgiven for interpreting this third-floor permanent art installation inside Meridian High School in Falls Church as an homage to ocean life. At first glance, the 1,200 or so ceramic forms look like a vibrant coral reef. In fact, they were inspired by pollen spores viewed under a microscope, says local sculptor Marc Robarge, who orchestrated the project with funding from the Falls Church Education Foundation.
“I had gone to a natural history museum in Norway with a big display about pollen. I was struck by how many different shapes and forms there were,” explains Robarge, a former art teacher for Falls Church City Public Schools and Arlington Public Schools. Though he retired in 2022, this project—which engaged more than 850 Meridian students and faculty in making the clay pods—is evidence that he is still teaching.
“The pollen was a metaphor everyone could get their heads around,” he says. “The kids got into it. They used all kinds of things to create different textures—nuts, bolts, electrical components, chopsticks, walnuts. Some were obsessively precise about it. Others were wild and more organic.”
Nature has long been a source of fascination for Robarge, whose body of work includes likenesses of tree limbs, burls, leaves and fungi. When he first presented the 3D mural concept for “Through the Looking Glass: A Murmuration of Cellular Life” to the Meridian community, he described the overall shape as evoking a flock of birds. (A murmuration is when birds form a synchronized cloud in the sky.)
Holly Garcia, a Spanish teacher at the school, was reminded of the John Updike poem “The Great Scarf of Birds,” in which the writer describes feeling uplifted by the spectacle of starlings taking flight.
“This was after Covid, so part of this project was to reunite people and bring joy,” Robarge says. “The poem was so much about that. The shape of the installation is almost like a sine wave—a great scarf across the wall. I studied a lot of images of bird murmurations and realized not only does the shape morph as the birds fly, but there’s also a density that happens.”
Installed in the summer of 2023, the mural features a colorful cascade of diverse forms, fulfilling the project’s goal to “affirm our connection to one another and the natural world” and to “be a part of a schoolwide community project whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
In July, Robarge completed a similar project with 650 students and faculty at Oak Street Elementary School near his home in Falls Church. Illustrating that school’s “Local to Global” motto, the wall mural depicts a colorful school of ceramic fish swimming in the direction of nearby Tripps Run, a small stream that runs into the Potomac River, the Chesapeake Bay and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.