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Students help create school mosaic

Thanks to many hands and hearts hard at work, Bowen Island Community School has a shiny, new addition.
Building the mosaic

Thanks to many hands and hearts hard at work, Bowen Island Community School has a shiny, new addition.

As a result of an initiative supported by Arts Starts, an organization that encourages educations through the arts, the Bowen Island Community School Eco Mosaic Project is now complete and installed in BICS Outdoor Learning Classroom.     

Local artists Bill Hoopes and Gerald Morrisseau conceptualized and organized the project. The artists, along with BICS co-ordinator Sarah Haxby, BICS principal Jennifer Pardee, and BICS staff helped all 308 students from Kindergarten to Grade 7 complete this ambitious and educational endeavour.

“Spending the time to create significant pieces of public art with young students is an investment in the future of artistic and cultural development in our community,” Hoopes said.

This spring, Hoopes and Morrisseau visited BICS classrooms giving students an overview of the history of mosaic making. The next step was for the student artists to spend time learning how to draw and create images based on what they saw in their local environment.

The students discussed the abundance of plants and animals surrounding them in their day-to-day lives on Bowen, and they set forth to create artwork based on the lifecycles of the familiar plants and wildlife, all of which they studied in their classes.

Inspired by the students’ drawings, Hoopes and Morrisseau created black line and colour drawings of salmon, butterflies, dandelions, frogs, eagles and the Orca whale, which has only recently returned to Howe Sound.

Over a period of three weeks, every one of the 308 students placed glass tiles, donated by Bowen resident Kim Hauner owner of Interstyle Glass, to create seven magnificent mosaics. The 12x 40.5-inch panels are now mounted onto the benches at the school’s Outdoor Learning Classroom.

The students were very enthusiastic about the teachers and the entire challenging process.

“The instructors were awesome. They explained everything really well and they were really funny too,” said Grade 3 student Sophie Jarvis, who also took great satisfaction in knowing that the mosaic project would be part of the school for many years to come. “I loved that our work is now a permanent part of the school.

When I leave the school and come back in the future, I can know that I was part of creating this artwork.”

Morrisseau is feeling very pleased with the end result of everyone’s efforts. He recently visited the site and witnessed a young family enjoying the artwork. They were talking about the individual pieces and the children were asking questions.

“It dawned on me this morning,” Morrisseau said following that particular experience, “that the work is there and families can sit and connect with their kids about lifecycles of the plants and animals that surround them.”

Next time you are in the neighbourhood, stop by and take a look at the eagle, the frog, the dandelion, the Orca whale and the other stunning pieces that now grace the benches of BICS Outdoor Learning Classroom.

Hoopes described them perfectly, “I think they are little gems in a sea of concrete.”

The staff and students at BICS  would like to thank the PAC, CSA, Rotary,  Smoothstones Foundation and ArtStarts for helping to create this lasting piece of public art. It is located on the “Snake Field” adjacent to the BICS parking lot.