CLARKSBURG -- A public art sculpture made by local students is now a permanent fixture in front of the town library.
The three-dimensional mosaic made of Styrofoam and cement, as well as broken tiles, dishware and jewelry, was dedicated Monday evening during a ceremony at the library on West Cross Road.
"It's great to see it all come together," Renee Bouchard Franklin, who teaches art at Clarksburg Elementary School, said.
The project started in September with the idea of just having students make stepping stones, she said.
"As I started getting more and more materials, it just grew," she said. The result is a sculpture that has the feeling of being an ancient ruin or a glacial formation, she said.
While students in all grades at Clarksburg Elementary School have been learning about mosaics and sculptures in art class this year, the sculpture project has been an endeavor primarily for students in grades three through five, Franklin said.
"We started with different designs and plans for what the sculpture should look like," she said.
Some of those ideas included mosaics of eyeballs, the word "ideas" and butterflies, she said. However, the final product didn't really follow any of those designs, and was very abstract, she said.
Fourth-grader Julia Jammalo, 10, said the hardest part of the project was placing the tiles on the two pieces of Styrofoam covered in cement.
"You had to find a place that
They also had to clean the tiles and grout them, which was very messy, she said.
Bouchard said the Styrofoam, which was originally one long piece, came from the Katharina Grosse exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, and was donated by museum curator Susan Cross. The tile was donated by the Bennington House of Tile, which also put a slurry coat of cement on the Styrofoam for free, she said. Students used mortar to attach the tiles to the cement, and even brought in some of their own broken pieces of tile, dishware and jewelry to add to the sculpture, she said.
Fourth-grader Holly Boudreau, 10, said that while they had all made designs of mosaics to put on the sculpture, when it came time to attach the tiles, they worked without structure.
"It's really exciting to show people our artwork, and we're just in the third, fourth and fifth grades. This is usually a project for a big artist, but we did it, and we're in elementary school," she said.
To reach Meghan Foley, email mfoley@thetranscript.com.
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