Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2008
Chipped coffee mugs, cracked china and broken glass are just what students at Great Seneca Creek Elementary School in Germantown will be bringing to class for the next few weeks.
Fourth- and fifth-graders at the school, which was the first public school in the state to receive LEED certification for its environmentally sound design, are creating a mosaic mural out of recycled materials such as stones, seashells, beads and other non-porous items that ordinarily would’ve been headed for the garbage can.
Artist Sue Stockman of St. Michaels created a sketch for the mosaic, which will feature a bullfrog, the school’s mascot, sitting near the bank of Great Seneca Creek. She incorporated elements that the students used in sketches they worked on in class last week.
During art classes on Friday, the students traced Stockman’s sketch onto two pieces of board.
Over the next month, they will break ceramic and other materials into smaller pieces and glue them to the boards, which will be hung in the school’s lobby. The 10-by-3 mosaic was financed by the PTA and grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and The Washington Post Company Educational Foundation, according to PTA member Pam Malmgren, one of the project’s organizers.
‘‘A lot of schools do artist-in-residency projects, but we were able to tie in environmental issues,” she said.
As the students gathered around Stockman’s laptop and looked at murals she had worked on at other schools, she wove in lessons about the Chesapeake Bay and endangered species as well as the mosaic-making process. The kids excitedly jumped in with their own stories about nature and wildlife.
‘‘Have you ever made slugs?” asked fourth-grader Danielle Robinson of Germantown.
‘‘I always tell the adults I work with, ‘Fifth-graders do this all the time and they do a great job,’” said Stockman, who will be at the school until Feb. 6. ‘‘...Hopefully it translates into the bigger world. They can join together and get things done and bring things of beauty to their communities.”
Parents have so far donated iridescent ceramic tiles, the lid from a toilet tank and a burlap sack of nuts and bolts to the crafty artisans, and this week the students break out the goggles and nippers and start smashing up the objects to create a whole bigger than the sum of its parts.
‘‘I’m excited about breaking it and putting it on,” said fourth-grader Jasmine Moss of Germantown.
