North Star students collaborate to create Strands of Community project
Home is hanging from the spacious entryway ceiling at North Star High School, reflecting the daylight and the thoughts of those who spend their days there.
Look up as you walk through the doors of the four-year-old building and see home defined, in all its guises, on a canvas of silver CDs.
“Comfortable.”
“My country, Taiwan.”
“My purple chair and popcorn for dinner.”
Now, turn right, and see the impetus for this collective art sculpture: The Stories of Home sculptures, 12 pieces that comprise the Lincoln Arts Council’s public art project that teamed artists with families to tell those families’ stories.
The project, which has been making its way to various venues in town, has ended at North Star, where the pieces will be auctioned on March 3.
Deb Weber, Lincoln Arts Council executive director, said the council was looking for a place in north Lincoln, to make sure the project visited all parts of the city. And a school seemed perfect.
“We really knew we wanted to have a public venue where everyone would feel comfortable, and a school is just a fabulous location.”
North Star, one of Lincoln’s two newest high schools, is a great venue because there’s so much natural lighting, she said.
“It’s really just worked out beautifully.”
Principal Nancy Becker and the school’s art staff would agree with that.
Becker likes that having a public art project there connects the school to the community, and helps students understand the importance of that connection.
“Any time we can get the community into our building, and have our children be part of the bigger picture, that’s important for us.”
For the art staff, it was a dream come true. Imagine having the whole school focused on the arts.
“It’s exciting,” said Lynette Fast, one of the school’s art teachers.
And what better way to help students understand the Stories of Home projects than by having them create their own?
Frankly, Becker was a little skeptical when the art department pitched the idea. CDs? Hanging from the ceiling?
“I was thinking along the lines of an English project,” she said.
But then she started thinking, posing the question in her own mind: What does home mean to me?
Images came to mind: Her grandmother and her cookies, how they used to make them together.
So she brought an old cookie sheet, the cookie recipes, pictures of her and her grandmother baking. And she hung them up in the teachers’ lounge.
Other teachers followed suit. Stories of Home in the lounge. An art project. Perfect.
And so, the art staff bought silver CDs and bright-colored markers and charged the students with this task: Use those markers to write what home means, what family means. Decorate the other side. Use bright colors. Be bold. Be thoughtful.
Students met in small advocacy groups, part of the school’s academies that group students with similar interests with one teacher.
The idea of the groups is to create smaller communities where students can connect with a teacher and each other.
The groups seemed like the perfect venue for Strands of Community.
“We’re not advisers; we’re building relationships with kids,” Fast said of the advocacy groups. “That’s where the sculpture fit in so well; it’s about relationships with people.”
The staff strung CDs from each of the groups together and suspended 130 strands from the ceiling. Teachers in the advocacy groups also participated.
Fast’s count: 1,832 CDs glittering overhead.
Teachers wanted to use the project to help students understand abstract art, and each other — how they’re individuals, how they’re connected.
“We all have different feelings about what home is,” Fast said.
The groups talked about home, told their stories, then took markers to CD. There are no names attached. Anonymity, Fast hoped, would encourage students to be honest and open. She wasn’t disappointed.
In the end, home for North Star students was Bosnia and Iowa, Texas and Germany. It was comfortable and safe; mashed potatoes and Christmas cookies; basketball hoops and household chores.
Not all the images were happy ones: Insanity. A big black hole. Where the devil lives.
Many students defined home by how they felt there: loved, protected, happy, free.
David Pustovit, a sophomore who moved to Lincoln from Russia less than a year ago, said he drew the Ukranian flag.
“I miss the Ukraine,” he said.
But he also wrote that home is more of an atmosphere, one that includes parents wherever you end up.
“It’s not always a place,” he said.
Osman Eviberahim, a sophomore, has seen the sculpture hanging from the ceiling but was gone the day students made their CDs.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Eviberahim, who was born in Iraq but lived most of his life in a Syrian refugee camp before coming to America on Aug. 9, 2000.
“Home to me is where you fit in,” he said. “Since we live here, you might as well make it your home.”
Brittney Hurst’s home has always been here, with her brother and sister, her parents and a little cousin. Home is all of those people, she said, plus two dogs, five cats and a hamster.
“It’s a place where you can relax, be safe and with your family.”
Maggie Hahn, a sophomore who also grew up in Lincoln, liked the idea of the project.
“It’s something different that’s never really happened before,” she said.
Her CD talks about feeling safe, about being able to be herself.
Students made their CDs shortly before the holiday break and staff assembled it so it would greet students their first day back.
“That was fun, the sun was sparkling in,” Fast said. “I was just hoping so much for a sunny day and it was.”
The art project, Fast hopes, will be perpetual.
“That’s kind of our vision of it anyway,” she said.
Each new class of freshmen will add its own thoughts and pictures to CDs, a way to introduce them to their new school.
Even better, Fast hopes, the CDs will illustrate how they’re part of something bigger.
Strands of a community, sparkling in the sunlight.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com
Look up as you walk through the doors of the four-year-old building and see home defined, in all its guises, on a canvas of silver CDs.
“Comfortable.”
“My country, Taiwan.”
“My purple chair and popcorn for dinner.”
Now, turn right, and see the impetus for this collective art sculpture: The Stories of Home sculptures, 12 pieces that comprise the Lincoln Arts Council’s public art project that teamed artists with families to tell those families’ stories.
The project, which has been making its way to various venues in town, has ended at North Star, where the pieces will be auctioned on March 3.
Deb Weber, Lincoln Arts Council executive director, said the council was looking for a place in north Lincoln, to make sure the project visited all parts of the city. And a school seemed perfect.
“We really knew we wanted to have a public venue where everyone would feel comfortable, and a school is just a fabulous location.”
North Star, one of Lincoln’s two newest high schools, is a great venue because there’s so much natural lighting, she said.
“It’s really just worked out beautifully.”
Principal Nancy Becker and the school’s art staff would agree with that.
Becker likes that having a public art project there connects the school to the community, and helps students understand the importance of that connection.
“Any time we can get the community into our building, and have our children be part of the bigger picture, that’s important for us.”
For the art staff, it was a dream come true. Imagine having the whole school focused on the arts.
“It’s exciting,” said Lynette Fast, one of the school’s art teachers.
And what better way to help students understand the Stories of Home projects than by having them create their own?
Frankly, Becker was a little skeptical when the art department pitched the idea. CDs? Hanging from the ceiling?
“I was thinking along the lines of an English project,” she said.
But then she started thinking, posing the question in her own mind: What does home mean to me?
Images came to mind: Her grandmother and her cookies, how they used to make them together.
So she brought an old cookie sheet, the cookie recipes, pictures of her and her grandmother baking. And she hung them up in the teachers’ lounge.
Other teachers followed suit. Stories of Home in the lounge. An art project. Perfect.
And so, the art staff bought silver CDs and bright-colored markers and charged the students with this task: Use those markers to write what home means, what family means. Decorate the other side. Use bright colors. Be bold. Be thoughtful.
Students met in small advocacy groups, part of the school’s academies that group students with similar interests with one teacher.
The idea of the groups is to create smaller communities where students can connect with a teacher and each other.
The groups seemed like the perfect venue for Strands of Community.
“We’re not advisers; we’re building relationships with kids,” Fast said of the advocacy groups. “That’s where the sculpture fit in so well; it’s about relationships with people.”
The staff strung CDs from each of the groups together and suspended 130 strands from the ceiling. Teachers in the advocacy groups also participated.
Fast’s count: 1,832 CDs glittering overhead.
Teachers wanted to use the project to help students understand abstract art, and each other — how they’re individuals, how they’re connected.
“We all have different feelings about what home is,” Fast said.
The groups talked about home, told their stories, then took markers to CD. There are no names attached. Anonymity, Fast hoped, would encourage students to be honest and open. She wasn’t disappointed.
In the end, home for North Star students was Bosnia and Iowa, Texas and Germany. It was comfortable and safe; mashed potatoes and Christmas cookies; basketball hoops and household chores.
Not all the images were happy ones: Insanity. A big black hole. Where the devil lives.
Many students defined home by how they felt there: loved, protected, happy, free.
David Pustovit, a sophomore who moved to Lincoln from Russia less than a year ago, said he drew the Ukranian flag.
“I miss the Ukraine,” he said.
But he also wrote that home is more of an atmosphere, one that includes parents wherever you end up.
“It’s not always a place,” he said.
Osman Eviberahim, a sophomore, has seen the sculpture hanging from the ceiling but was gone the day students made their CDs.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Eviberahim, who was born in Iraq but lived most of his life in a Syrian refugee camp before coming to America on Aug. 9, 2000.
“Home to me is where you fit in,” he said. “Since we live here, you might as well make it your home.”
Brittney Hurst’s home has always been here, with her brother and sister, her parents and a little cousin. Home is all of those people, she said, plus two dogs, five cats and a hamster.
“It’s a place where you can relax, be safe and with your family.”
Maggie Hahn, a sophomore who also grew up in Lincoln, liked the idea of the project.
“It’s something different that’s never really happened before,” she said.
Her CD talks about feeling safe, about being able to be herself.
Students made their CDs shortly before the holiday break and staff assembled it so it would greet students their first day back.
“That was fun, the sun was sparkling in,” Fast said. “I was just hoping so much for a sunny day and it was.”
The art project, Fast hopes, will be perpetual.
“That’s kind of our vision of it anyway,” she said.
Each new class of freshmen will add its own thoughts and pictures to CDs, a way to introduce them to their new school.
Even better, Fast hopes, the CDs will illustrate how they’re part of something bigger.
Strands of a community, sparkling in the sunlight.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com
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