Some local students are getting inspired by Desert X! Students are getting their facilities on display at Nellie Coffman High School!
The art teacher divided the class into teams of four. The four groups chose a topic that was significant to the students or a problem that they were dealing with. “So it’s the voice of the student and how they interact with the world,” says Mindy McEachran, an art teacher at Nellie Coffman High School.
Installation concepts:
- the effects of covid
- People die chasing wealth.
- Building edges/walls
- Ocean and environmental pollution
“We have these screens; these screens were in classrooms separating people to keep us safe,” says McEachran. So we gathered all the screens from the inside, the pencils were broken. Since coming back from COVID students we have had a lot of angst and anger and they break pencils and their broken pencils all over campus. So we’ve taken this idea of the broken pencils and represent the students in circles to show the domino effect. So there’s a smaller circle of pencils and then bigger circles. They also mimic past Desert X installations, and are site specific. So the pencils are upright. So throughout the day, as the sun changes, so do the shadows of the pencils. And then there are LED lights around the tree that represent the brightness of a computer monitor screen. These are student ideas. I am very proud of them. I think it’s absolutely brilliant.”
The students have the idea to interrupt the day by building a wall that represents the wall at the border. They located the facility on one of the shortcut routes frequently used to reach some classes.
Another art exhibit shows a student’s environmental concerns. “What I hope people get is they like to open their eyes a little more,” says Emani Jenkins, an eighth grader at Nellie N. Coffman High School. “It’s not okay to dump trash in the ocean or dump trash on beaches or anything like that. And marine life is important because you’re killing everything in there. And because once ecosystems are out of balance, so are we.” We’re out of balance.”
They hope that the facilities will be finished before Monday, March 20. The goal is Monday; school students can see the finished buildings.
