Nothing connects communities quite like art. Especially when the artwork is done by students from multiple communities.
Each year, Apollo High School and Tech High School participate in an art collaboration with other area schools: Becker, Foley and Sauk Rapids-Rice.
The art collaboration formed by these schools is in its seventh year.
This year’s project was funded by a Central Minnesota Arts grant. The allocated funds are used for student murals. The goal of the collaboration is to ensure students are making a community impact and using 21st century learning.
Each year a professional artist is brought into the collaboration to work alongside the students and art teachers in the classroom.
Bob McCoy was this year’s artist.
McCoy is a local painter of abstract and landscape art. He assisted with the design, layout and painting of all the murals that are displayed at Promise Neighborhood.
Promise Neighborhood is a family, community and parent-focused organization helping to support home and community aspirations. It is located in the Talahi neighborhood of St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Each school had a different theme and artistic style for their murals. And each mural was comprised of many panels with two or three students assigned to a panel.
While Apollo student Maddie Powell painted a sunflower, she explained, “The sunflower [to me] is light and bright. It represents happiness.”
Alex Gonzalez chimed in, “Happiness creates happy!”
“For Promise Neighborhood, the flower represents growth,” said Gabby Sanchez.
Apollo chose a landscape of Promise Neighborhood with silhouettes of children and adults interacting around the building.
Mitchell Miller and Jose Guzman, Apollo students, worked on a silhouette of a child sitting on the ground. To them, the child represents learning.
This year, the art teachers decided to create art that impacts a space. With 50 to 60 students working on the murals, they were able to cover a large area.
With only two weeks to finish the project, it was a large undertaking.
Mike Carson, art teacher at Foley High School, is a past student teacher at Apollo. He and Apollo art teacher, Andrea Burris, met while working on their master’s degrees.
Carson and Burris wanted to do a project-based collaboration.
“It is import that what the kids do is authentic,” said Carson. “Because they can smell it if it isn’t.”
Carson believes the reason kids “want in” on the collaboration is because the projects in the past have been so good.
According to Joni Eichler, art teacher at Becker High School, “I think they’re mostly excited to do something good and art is mostly done in isolation. It was fun for them to do it together.”
However, the Becker students all agreed having McCoy in the classroom was the “funnest” part of the project.
Faisa Ali is a Tech 10th-grader. Her original artwork was chosen for Tech’s mural. Her inspiration came from another artist she admires.
One of the murals done by Sauk Rapids-Rice students is a comic strip style.
Shaelynn Waseka, a 12th-grader at Sauk Rapids-Rice, explained, “We wanted to do a bubble. Then, the dinosaur was brought in and then space.”
The other mural created by Sauk Rapids-Rice uses zentangle patterns to create the plants and wildlife in their natural landscape scene.
In the end, students, teachers and volunteers from five area schools brought together a stronger sense of community among themselves as well as to the Talahi neighborhood of St. Cloud.
Click HERE to view the photo gallery.