For the last 5 years the principal of the Compass School has commissioned me to create a piece of art that celebrates the past year’s accomplishments. The art piece is revealed at the school vision night and parents write new wishes or goals on the matting. In this way, the artworks have become time-capsules. We can see what we have envisioned and what has actually come true. Here are the past years:
What’s kind of funny is the randomness of the things I am asked to incorporate in a painting. Things that have been asked are could you combine a new garden, new farmer, a walking path, a soccer field, goats, sheep, a new basketball court, a family dance party and bank funding for a potential building?…… umm… I guess so? Every year I have no idea how I am going to illustrate it, but somehow something comes out.
This year the principal wanted to celebrate the completion of a new garden high tunnel, two calves named Fuzzy and Bulls-eye, a new soccer field, and the beginning of a new middle school that is being renovated from an old seed-mill. This required incorporating, diggers and cement trucks which have become part of our everyday existence at the school. I added a beautiful dahlia garden the 7th and 8th graders maintain and chickens. The school always has chickens. How could you not add the chickens? Next is figuring out how to communicate these concepts when they are stretched out of acres of land? This year I literally painted each idea separately , cut them out and then collaged them together. I think each objects separateness, coming together, summed up the chaos of an elementary school!
So next year should be the unveiling of a new building, the new middle school. This will be my son’s last year at the school, which in turn, will be the last painting I contribute.
These artworks will be a nice legacy of the time spent at this school.
We can see how far we’ve grown literally and figuratively.
Be Creative Mary 
These are wonderful!