Several members of the Yale community let their imaginations take fire recently for the third annual Leonardo Challenge sponsored by the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden.
Through the Leonardo Challenge, the museum seeks to celebrate the spirit of inventiveness of Leonardo da Vinci by inviting area artists and designers to take ordinary objects and transform them in shape, meaning or application.
This year, participants were asked to work with an ordinary box of Diamond Kitchen Matches. Patrick J. Lynch, director of Center for Advanced Instructional Media at the School of Medicine, used matchsticks and parts from a cigarette lighter to create a replica of an Archeoptryx fossil, while Peabody Museum designer John Maisano chose a science-fiction theme for his work, "First Strike." Among the other members of the Yale community who participated in the Leonardo Challenge were Hunter Nesbitt Spence and Ellen McNally of the School of Drama, M.J. Long of the School of Architecture, Dr. Charles Duncan of the School of Medicine, Patricia Garland of the Yale University Art Gallery, and graduate students Nick Kouchoukos and Regan Huff.
Their works, and those of the more than 70 other individuals who took part in this year's challenge, will be on display May 15-25 at the Eli Whitney Museuml, 915 Whitney Ave. in Hamden (just over the New Haven border). There will also be an auction on May 15 to raise funds for scholarships to the museum's summer design programs for children. For further information, call 203-777-1833.