  We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong
gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the
photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep
imaging observations from the Wisconsin Indiana Yale NOAO (WIYN) 3.5m telescope
and the University of Hawaii 88-inch telescope (UH88). The clusters are
selected from an area of 8000 deg^2 using the Red Cluster Sequence technique
and span the redshift range 0.1 < z < 0.6, corresponding to a comoving
cosmological volume of ~ 2 Gpc^3. Our imaging survey thus targets a volume more
than an order of magnitude larger than any previous search. A total of 240
clusters were imaged of which 141 had sub-arcsecond image quality. Our survey
has uncovered16 new lensing clusters with definite giant arcs, an additional 12
systems for which the lensing interpretation is very likely, and 9 possible
lenses which contain shorter arclets or candidate arcs which are less certain
and will require further observations to confirm their lensing origin. The
number of new cluster lenses detected in this survey is likely > 30. Among
these new systems are several of the most dramatic examples of strong
gravitational lensing ever discovered with multiple bright arcs at large
angular separation. These will likely become 'poster-child' gravitational
lenses similar to Abell 1689 and CL0024+1654. The new lenses discovered in this
survey will enable future sysetmatic studies of the statistics of strong
lensing and its implications for cosmology and our structure formation
paradigm.
