'We Love Our Community'
The mural, a collaborative effort between the Wallace Junior/Senior High School Art Club and Silver Hills Elementary Students, was unveiled last Monday evening at Silver Hills Art Night.
Photo by MOLLY ROBERTS
A family viewing artwork that was created by elementary students at Silver Hills, displayed during the art night.
OSBURN — Spanish painter Pablo Picasso once elegantly said, “the purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
Last Monday evening, the dust of daily life was washed off in the packed cafeteria of Silver Hills Elementary School (SHES) in Osburn.
In a collaborative effort between Wallace Junior/Senior High School’s (WHS) Art Club and Silver Hills Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). The evening involved unveiling a mural collaboration between elementary and high school students and viewing artwork completed by each student in their classroom at SHES. In addition, new artwork was created as the Art Club students sat at different tables, helping the elementary school students use different mediums to make a variety of artwork.
“We ended up working with the teachers, and asked them to have their classes work on a piece of art with the theme ‘We Love Our Community,” explained PTO member Jessie Caraway, “These events like Family Art Night are only possible for PTO to host because of the massively supportive community of families, businesses, and other service groups who donate funds, volunteer and show up to support the events.”
Caraway continued, “PTO is so grateful to Katie and the Art Club, it was an absolute privilege to have them, and it couldn’t have been done without them. Thank you for investing in our students and encouraging their love of art, and thank you to the teachers, volunteers and families for supporting art night!”
WHS art teacher Katie Lund heads up the Art Club and is who connected with PTO in October last year about the idea of creating a collaborative mural between her students and the students at SHES.
“I have a really ambitious group of Art Club students who were excited about the idea,” Lund said. “I would like to emphasize that Art Club is an extracurricular club, so students meet during lunch each week. In order to complete the mural, students put in hours of extra time outside of school.”
President of the Art Club, Sophomore Kyanna Parks, and Vice President, Senior Jasmine Korasick, explained that they wanted to be incorporated with the elementary school and picked something they felt was simple yet fun and involved for the elementary students to do.
“We wanted to invite the community together,” Parks said. “Each piece of the mural is different, but they connect to each other.”
Korasick added, “The Art Club came to Silver Hills and broke into three groups, and we all worked in different classrooms. We gave the elementary students several sheets of these small squares and triangles and they basically arranged it however they wanted.”
Around 250 people visited the art night, with 20 volunteers of high school Art Club students, parent volunteers and Osburn Public Library staff helping make the event run smoothly with prep work, set up, clean up and art stations.
Caraway explained that it was one of the most attended events they have had, which is impressive for a snowy February.
“I hope this mural collaboration and Art Night will become an annual tradition,” Caraway said. “The amount of creativity that was on display was truly incredible. The students are all so talented and we would love to continue to foster their appreciation for art.”
