In October-November 2019, I was welcomed to South Fayette Elementary School to create a grouping of outdoor can murals to re-enliven the school’s garden. Second graders study the lifecycle of the butterfly in their science curriculum, so featuring milkweed and monarchs was an obvious subject matter.

In a unique model, each residency day, I worked with two classes of core-group students, chosen by assessment by their art teacher (measuring for creativity and ability to follow complex directions among other qualities), and then saw each second grade classroom for one session, an arrangement that meant that all second graders would have participated in the project to some degree. This model proved a fascinating reminder of how much core group students had grown in confidence and ability over the course of the project as each day their experience was contrasted with students who had never done the process before. This model also meant that core-group students would all have a chance to participate in the project with their own home room and allowed for an adorable chance for them to be ‘deputized’ as ‘junior metalsmiths’ and encouraged to help and support their peers as classroom leaders.

Overall, we created three large panels as well as three free-standing, rotating flower sculptures, utilizing can collage in a smaller format along with vitreous enamel action painting to create abstract flower centers on enamel steel plates.

Special thanks to principal Tyler Geist, for elaborately arranging the busy school day (and his support in then re-arranging the schedule when I had a family emergency when my new baby spent a month in the NiCU), dedicated school sub Ms. McKee who was a consistent co-teacher with me, ALL of the second grade teachers, and to the wonderful and generous enrichment teacher who shared his room and his Sharpies with me.