NEA Education Spotlight: Westside Art Students Collaborate to Turn Two-Dimensional Art into 3-D Masterpieces

It all came about from a post that Westside Middle School art teacher, Beth Yearta, saw on Instagram. She quickly set out to make it happen within the Westside Consolidated School District.

Yearta, along with fellow Westside Middle School art teacher, Kelly Richardson, brought the vision to Westside Elementary School art teacher, Lisa Carroll, who was immediately on board.

The idea: “We do ceramics at the middle school from fifth grade on, so our seventh graders have done it at least a few years in a row,” Yearta began.

“So we thought that having some kids from the high school, the middle school, and the elementary school, we thought it would be sort of a neat collaboration,” Richardson continued.

The project: Carroll’s second-grade art students drew pictures of monsters. Yearta and Richardson’s students turned those drawings into ceramic figures, which they later presented to the original second-grade artists.

The idea left Carroll with a mission.

“She did a whole lesson to get the monsters out of the second graders,” Yearta explained.

Carroll described the experience. “I just did a little lesson on how to draw a monster, and I talked about what monster eyes might look like, and I did a little demonstration. I talked about how to make eyes look angry,” she recounted.

Then, Carroll cut her students loose to fulfill their part of the assignment. She delivered the drawings to Yearta and Richardson on October 6.

The 3-D creations from Yearta and Richardson’s students were revealed to the original artists on October 30 in the elementary school cafeteria.

In addition to receiving a three-dimensional manifestation of their drawings, the young artists were able to discuss the creations with the upperclassmen from Westside Middle School.

All three art instructors were pleased with the end result of the project, but they say it took a little work getting there.

“Some of them, I’m sure, were challenges because they had all sorts of tentacles,” Carroll said of her second graders’ drawings, but she went on to commend the seventh-grade artists.

“Every one of them was just amazing,” she said of the finished 3-D figures, and the instructors weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the whole process.

“I believe it’s of very sentimental value because we are talking to younger generations that look up to us, and we’re giving them something that they can actually use,” explained Westside seventh grader Annah Blanchard.

Blanchard turned two of the second graders’ drawings into ceramic art. Unfortunately, neither of the second-grade artists was at the unveiling at Westside Elementary.

Blanchard’s classmate, Zena Boatman, was also thrilled to participate in the project. Boatman recreated Jaxon Glidewell’s artwork.

Both Boatman and Glidewell were pleased with the finished product.

“I wanted squiggly arms. I wanted tiny hands so I gave him tiny hands,” Glidewell said of his original monster drawing, and he was pleased with Boatman’s 3-D replication.

While Boatman was pleased that Glidewell liked her work, she said the project had a deeper meaning.

“When they’re in seventh grade, maybe they can do it for the second-graders, and doing this for them probably motivates them to do this in the future,” Boatman said.

The Westside art teachers hope to continue this project in the coming years.

Yearta said the value of this experience has been well worth it for her students and the second graders who also participated, and the skills they learned went far beyond artistic abilities.

“I think they had to pull out their soft skills to talk to little kids… and also create those experiences for the second graders so that when they’re seventh graders, they will do this project and remember what it meant to them,” she explained. “And that was the other piece, that connection piece.”

These art teachers have also connected. They’ve connected because they’re united in a mission.

“The art is the thing that can synthesize everything that you do in every other class because there’s science in art. There’s literacy in art. There’s a lot of history in art. There’s social studies in art,” Carroll said.

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Carroll wants her students to leave her class with a very clear message, and it’s a message that resonates with all three of these instructors: “Art is in your heart and there’s nobody who can take that away from you.”