Video How a collaborative after-school arts program transformed Ypsi’s Holmes Elementary

Ypsilanti’s Holmes Elementary has made major strides in academic achievement over the past two years. Now, thanks to a unique collaboration with a nonprofit and a local artist, the rejuvenation happening inside the school’s walls can also be seen from the street.

 

For six weeks in April and May, Holmes students worked with FLY Children’s Art Center artist-in-residence Thea Eck to design and install a colorful sculpture garden on their school’s front lawn. The project arose from the nonprofit Ypsilanti art center’s desire to take its make-and-take-style after-school art programs to the next level. FLY staff worked with Ypsilanti Community Schools to find a school where an art project could be used to solve a real-world challenge.

 

FLY board member Linette Lao says Holmes immediately stood out as a strong candidate for enrichment through art. Thanks to district-wide efforts to improve academic performance, Holmes was recently moved off Michigan’s list of lowest-performing schools and therefore no longer threatened with closure. But with a huge front lawn and no distinguishing markers near the street, Lao says she almost drove right past one of the district’s biggest recent success stories the first time she visited.

 

“I think it’s certainly not a presence in the neighborhood,” she says. “It has had so many positive changes in the past two years that are absolutely invisible to the community.”

 

Holmes principal Seth Petty agreed that a beautification project would be ideal for the school, and Eck was brought on board to work out what shape that would take. Eck says that was “a huge question to answer in six weeks,” but she settled on creating an installation that would combine student-designed sculptures with actual sunflowers and magnolias.

 

Working twice a week with Holmes students over the six-week period, Eck introduced them to the work of land artist Andy Goldsworthy. She also showed them what plants look like under a microscope, encouraging them to create drawings inspired by the cellular structures they saw.

 

“I didn’t want it to be like a one-to-one, like they draw a plant and then that’s the sculpture,” Eck says. “I wanted it to be a little more abstract and organic-shaped.”

 

She then helped the students turn their drawings into miniature mock-ups of finished sculptures, created with cardboard and popsicle sticks. Then Eck worked from those models to cut full-sized finished wooden sculptures on a CNC router.

 

“She worked for them and made their sculptures in collaboration with them, instead of imposing an adult voice on them,” Lao says.

 

Eck and the students installed the sculptures and planted flowers around them in late May. Holmes students attend school year-round, so they’ll be able to see real-life flowers sprout around their artistic interpretations all summer. Although the sunflowers will take a while to grow, the sculptures alone have already transformed the school’s front lawn into a riot of color.

 

“It’s really interesting to see cars slow down and look,” Lao says. “They have succeeded in disrupting what is the status quo of zipping by this school.”

 

FLY will pursue funding this summer to do similar projects in other Ypsilanti schools this fall. Lao says the model of a student art project that makes a lasting improvement on a school is “really powerful,” and her dream is for FLY to do similar work in every Ypsilanti school.

 

Petty, who will transfer to become principal of Ypsilanti Community Middle School this fall, is on board with that vision.

 

“This is just one,” he says. “I hope to be able to continue to build these types of programs into our schools. The value they provide is tremendous.”

 

Interested in learning even more about the transformative art project at Holmes Elementary? Seth Petty, Thea Eck, and Linette Lao will speak about the project this week at Ann Arbor’s Intermitten conference, which addresses the convergence of technology and creativity.

Christopher Slat is a videographer and occasional filmmaker in Monroe.
 

Patrick Dunn is the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer for numerous publications. Follow him on Twitter @patrickdunnhere.