There’ll soon be some extra bodies in the halls of Dillingham’s Middle/High School – but they aren’t new students.
This fall and winter, local artists have been helping a group of Dillingham students make life-size representations of themselves for a mural at the school.
Angelica Marx, a seventh grader participating in the workshop, said they started by drawing in notebooks and creating life-size wooden silhouettes – students decided how they wanted to shape their silhouette, had a picture taken, and used a projector to make the large wooden figurines.
Then they spent some time deciding what imagery to use to represent themselves, based on their interests, likes and hobbies. Each silhouette is painted black, with the student’s images covering them.
The students have been meeting on Friday afternoons after school, and some Saturdays, to develop the silhouettes. Local artists Brook Spurlock, Pat Walsh, Apayo Moore and Elaine Philips were all working on the project, which received some grant funding.
Before they got to pull out the paint, they made sketches, said Jolynn Decker, another seventh grader.
“I made three sketches, and had to decide which one I wanted,” Decker said. “One was with B24s and fighter planes. The other one was random stuff.”
Eventually she settled on sketch number three: a dragon, colored with silver and gold and orange and red.
And then, they got to sophomore Sarah Fuller’s favorite part of the project.
“Painting and getting messy,” she said, taking a break to point to a spot of paint on her arm on a recent Saturday afternoon.
Her silhouette was mostly filled with colorful images from nature, like flowers and bugs. That afternoon, she was trying to figure out how to add a chipmunk.
Marx’s silhouette also had flowers, but hers were mixed with some other images.
“I have a soccer ball because I like soccer, and music notes and a paintbrush and pencil,” she said, pointing to each.
Zach Kolbe filled his silhouette with sports imagery….and a little bit of nature.
“I have my fishing pole, I’m almost done with my football, I need to do my wrestling mat,” he said. “I have some stars as well.”
Kolbe said he was participating in the project in part because it could be cool to leave a piece of his sixth-grade self himself at the school. He might even come back to see it, he said.
Andilynn Ishnook, a seventh grader, was painting things that related to a character in a book she liked – “Splintered,” by A.G. Howard – and said she thought art could also be good way for students to express themselves.
Fuller echoed the idea that art is a big way for people, including teens, to express themselves.
“A lot of people like to put down their emotions, or the things that they like on paper,” she said.
Although each student was focused on his own work on a recent afternoon, Fuller said she also thought the mural would be a way for students to learn more about one another.
“It’ll be really cool to see everyone else’s, to see the comparison of what they like or what they had ideas on,” she said. “Sometimes, maybe somebody looks different from you, and when you see what they think and what they like on art, (you could) easily be surprised.”