Monster art lets students show their stuff
Pinehurst Elementary kindergartners read poems about monsters in front of the audience at Kellogg High School. Pictured from left: Rikki Holmquist, Zoe Herold, Scarlett White, Eli Orton and Beau Kelling.
Courtesy photos Kellogg High School senior art student Anika Sundstrom shows off her ceramic monster sculpture as well as the design for it. The design came from a local elementary student.
KELLOGG — It was a night of monstrous art and poetry at Kellogg High School last week, but despite the ghastly theme of the event it was full of heart.
KHS art director Rachel Kruesmark put out a call to the local elementary students to commission any who wanted to participate in the creation of monsters.
“I asked the elementary teachers to ask their students if they would like to design monsters for us,” Kruesmark said. “I gave them a rundown of what we were looking for, like how many eyes, hair, big or small, short or tall?”
Kruesmark got back roughly 150 monster designs and from there her advanced art students got to work sculpting their chosen monster designs into ceramic sculptures.
“My kids loved it because the design part was already done for them,” Kruesmark said. “It cut out half the problem.”
The elementary students who had their designs chosen for sculptures were then invited to come to an art show to see their monsters, and some wrote poems about monsters.
“I sent an email out to the elementary teachers with a very simple lesson plan about how to create a poem about a monster,” KHS creative writing teacher Kelton Enich said. “It asked kids to think of things that they don’t like or things that they find unpleasant and use those things to construct the monster’s body or how they smell, things like that.”
Students as young as kindergarten and all the way up to high schoolers wrote and performed poems for the standing room-only crowd.
“I had some very cute 7-word poems from the kindergartners and it was fun to watch them get up there and perform them after watching the older kids do it first,” Enich said. “Then of my students wrote some more serious poems by using a symbol or something symbolized a monster in their life. One student wrote about multi-personality disorder.”
Each design was displayed and had a placard with them, as well as the sculpture and attendees were able to purchase tickets that would allow them to choose any monster display that they wanted.
All the proceeds from the event went toward the KHS art programs.
“Events like these support our program,” Kruesmark said. “We don’t get funded like band, or sports, or technical education. We’re like English or math. This pays for the clay and the glaze that we use.”
Enich’s creative writing students will be hosting a poetry slam event before school lets out, but the time is still to be determined.
Krusemark’s art students will be hosting an art show on May 23, at 6 p.m.