If you take a walk through Learning Street at Community School of Davidson high school, in addition to noticing students both studying in classrooms and congregating in small groups along the hall, you will also notice art murals all around the walls.
Human shaped and larger than life, these variously posed large pieces of paper, each colorful and different, represent the individual students who created them. Their personalities come to life through design, messaging and meaning.
The visual arts classes created these pieces of art the first week of school and each student poured their own unique way into this piece of artwork.
Jessica Jones, visual arts teacher, introduced the project and this style of art to show that students can come together and work on a piece of artwork and combine ideas to truly show what teamwork looks like.
(Kennedy Donley)
“Students added shapes and symbols about themselves between line work and hope that viewers learn more about the artists and fellow classmates.” Jessica Jones said.
Having students make art so early into the year drives students to collaborate and feed off of each other’s ideas and make them learn more about one another.
“Building a community with collaborative projects at the beginning of the year helps classmates get to know each other,” Jones said. “This project includes symbolism and line.”
Gracyn McRorie (‘26) explained that by contributing her ideas through this art project, she also built new relationships with classmates.
“These pieces of art truly made me think outside the box and think of my own ideas to contribute, but I also got new ideas from my classmates,” Gracyn McRorie said. “It also made me make new friends from different grades.”
This art project’s main goal was to teach students how to combine ideas and form them into a piece of art but that was only possible if students came together and poured all of their ideas into one.
“I learned that you can contribute ideas to make an art project more fun because sharing art ideas made my own ideas grow into different ones which ended up making our art unique,” McRorie said.
If you’re wondering how long these flat Spartans will hang on the walls, Jones said these pieces of art will hang until they fall.
(Kennedy Donley)
