By Jesse Lopez/reporter

NW has a new piece of outdoor art for students and visitors to enjoy on campus.

“Brickolage at TCC Northwest Campus” is the latest piece by NW art associate professor Fred Spaulding.

Located at the south end of the Fine Arts Building, his new sculpture is made of a variety of bricks from across the U.S. and Mexico.

Spaulding said this sculpture is the “most massive” use from his collection, containing bricks from as far as Denmark and Thailand.

Spaulding said the reason he chose bricks can be found in a statement titled “Eighteen Sides of a Brick.” In it, bricks are described as “hard, structural building material with the potential for great fluidity of form.”

The title and the concept of Spaulding’s piece are taken from the French word “bricolage” — the concept of things being created from objects at hand. Since the piece is constructed from bricks, he combined the words for the title.

Some may not understand the piece at first glance, Spaulding said.

“The piece appears compact, almost like a mound when approached from the south,” he said.

Once it is viewed, the piece opens up, and people can walk into it until they feel enveloped by it, Spaulding said.

Inside, the viewer will notice that it doesn’t close off, which was what he was trying to accomplish.

“The piece never entirely encloses the viewer but rather provides breaks and openings that allow glimpses of the sky, surrounding grounds, structures, vehicles and people,” he said.

The piece doesn’t have a particular message but opens up an opportunity for dialogue, Spaulding said.

“For me, art is a physical and intuitive process, which starts with a curiosity about the properties of common materials and develops through building, assembling and questioning the connections and interactions of this activity with wider communities,” he said.

Spaulding says he didn’t always have an interest in art. It wasn’t sparked until he was a student at Ventura College in California.

“I was inspired to study art when I took a ceramics class to fill my fine art requirement for the A.A. degree,” he said. “That spark of interest led me to further study.”