Tonight the middle school held a "Celebration of the Arts" event.
Our school district places a remarkable emphasis on the visual and performing arts - remarkable particularly for a lightly populated area with a declining enrollment. Our administrators are not letting the arts go down without a fight.
The purpose of tonight's event was primarily to celebrate the unveiling of this mural:
Sponsored by YouthArts, a privately funded and volunteer-run organization, and in collaboration with artist Eric Hopkins (who, by the way, is to be commended for letting a bunch of tweens loose on a re-interpretation of his work), with an astonishing commitment of time and energy from the middle school art teacher, the project was created by the students - all the students - a bit at a time, after school and during study hall.
Forty-seven thousand bits of tile.
Hopkins' work was the inspiration for the design:
Islands and trees...
...and seagulls:
I love these guys - detailed right down to the orange on their herring-gull bills.
And in one very special place...
...a tile cut to the shape of Thing One's first initial.
The mural, though, was only part of the evening's show. There was the chorus, and the dance routine from the spring play, and the saxophone quintet playing "Satin Doll."
Throughout the hallways were displays of this year's art projects.
This one of Things One and Two cracked me up:
And here is the mural from three years ago, a YouthArts project from way back when Thing One was in fifth grade, which is still gracing the hallway:
Just before the program I went to the polls and voted not for the noisy slash-and-burn anti-tax Tea Party freaks, but for the school board and selectman candidates who understand that a comprehensive education is more than a line item on the budget. The ones who understand that providing such an education is this community's responsibility. The ones who believe that a crazy idea like this mural can actually happen, and is something the kids and the community can be proud of.
By the way: This article in the latest issue of Down East Magazine should be required reading for the 38% of voters whose knee-jerk support of the anti-regulation trickle-down supply-side prosperity fairy tale put our gawdhelpus of a governor into office last year.
Jack DeCoster is a menace to his employees, the health and wellbeing of his customers, and the animals he farms - and we're about to give him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he likes because any regulations about health and safety and the environment and worker protections are anti-business.
Because Maine is now open for business.
And closed to everything else.
Help.
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