Project logo designed by first grade students in the spring 2022
Project logo designed by first grade students in the spring 2022
When does a river become a cloud?
Water from these clouds was once the Touchet River. Someday, the water will become the river again.
How does water nourish the land around us? What might water say to us, if we listen?
As Robin Wall Kimmerer so beautifully said, all flourishing is mutual. As we study our river, we learn just how interdependent our lives are with the water around us—it is the lifeblood of our crops, our ecosystems, our jobs, and our households.
Image via MSU Hydrology & Water Resources
Each morning, we leave our homes, come to school, and trickle into hallways and classrooms. Like rain gathering into small streams, the school becomes our river.
At the end of the day, when the bell rings, like evaporation, we scatter and return home.
Each day, the river becomes a cloud and the cloud becomes a river.
An aerial view of the Touchet River as it flows through Prescott School’s campus.
This USGS image shows the complexity of the water cycle.
Context and Process
Context
A majority of Prescott School families work in Washington's agricultural industries. Approximately 80% of our students live in a predominantly Spanish-speaking farmworker housing community that serves one of Washington's largest apple orchards. Many of the remaining 20% of students live in the small town of Prescott, which primarily consists of white, working class families who support our region’s dryland wheat farming economy.
Our school includes many intergenerational families. Parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, and siblings attended Prescott School. The history of our school, like the river of time, is story of our community.
Questioning the relevance of contemporary art
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Is contemporary art relevant to rural communities?
- What is missing when contemporary art fails to account for rural, agricultural perspectives?
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In what ways does contemporary art reinforce class-based elitism in rural areas?
- How can rural communities create their own criteria for defining meaningful artwork rather than replicating urban-centric systems of artistic production?
- How can rural public art center culturally-responsive, culturally-diverse rural contemporary artistic practice?
A Collaborative, Co-Authored Rural Contemporary Artwork
Students collaborate on contemporary art projects that eventually live as permanent public artworks at PSD, and work with invited visiting artists on projects that are made by/with/for our school community.
Project Learning Outcomes
Collaboration with Peers: Students develop collaborative skills by actively participating in group projects that have public outcomes.
Self Empowerment: Students cultivate leadership abilities by making artistic decisions that directly influence project outcomes.
Social-Emotional Growth: Students engage in creative practices that encourage attunement to their full selves, lives, and stories.
Contextually-Responsive Research: Students study and emulate a broad canon of historical and contemporary interdisciplinary artists.
Visiting Lecture Series
Project Map
Click images to view projects
June 2022
Performance art with custom t-shirts and an installation with plastic, projections, and sound
Created by all students and staff at Prescott School
Developed with high school ASB students, and teachers Bob Young and Tiffany Hedman: Tyfany A., Fatima B., Yosceline E., Alexa M., Ayleen O., Yadira Q., Amy Q., Diego V., and Naomi V.
Throughout the entire indoor and outdoor school campus
High school students from Associated Student Body (ASB) designed a walking path for the river to flow from the Tiger Den to the soccer field. Students walked in pairs—one middle or high school student with one elementary student.
As we walked, we saw and heard art made by elementary, middle, and high school students: In the gym and cafeteria, middle school and high school students made huge inflatable sculptures that looked like ice. Video projections of the Touchet River made by seventh graders covered the gym walls and floor. Music filled the air. Third, fourth, and fifth-grade students carried balloons that bounced like a river. Everyone wore t-shirts with drawings made by first-grade students.
At the end, we gathered on the soccer field in the shape of a cloud. We were the art.
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Photos by Allyn Griffin (drone pilot), Kyle Peets and Tara J Graves
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June 2022
Sculpture with plastic beads and epoxy
Created by Ryan Anderson’s high school Advanced English Class: Brandon C., Violet S. and Javier U.
Outside the door from the lunch line to the playground
Water weathers the rock, gems fill the crack
Here is space to feel safe, to be wrong.
She could imagine herself in the future.
He didn’t know what it felt like to get older,
Time flew by.
When she couldn’t get her mind out, stuck.
Their favorite thing to do was to play in the fields.
Students used small gems to repair a crack in the sidewalk near the playground. The crack, like a miniature river, invites us to think about moments that are painful yet make us stronger and more resilient.
Process
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2022
Wall drawing with latex paint and Krink permanent markers
Created by...
First grade students in Jessica Johnson’s art class: Jose Juan A., Adriana A., Joshua B., Isabel B., Branson C., Leonardo D., Estella G., Aranza G., Ethan G., Angel M., Fatima M., Owen O., Kaitlyn P., Alexander O., Isaiah A., Jose B., Kayla B., Colton C., Danna C., Corinne H., Angel M., Dylan N., Miguel R., Regal S., Vivyana S., Jackson S., and Alex V.
High school art students and teacher Mark Grimm: Salvador R., Ayala Y., Fatima L., Karol C., Jaime P., Alejandra C., Lana H., Jose L., Jose G., Michell P., Matt P., Juanita P., Estefani J., Mirian C., Javier S.
with support from Zoemiel Henderson and Joel Gaytan
The Ag Building
First grade students made hundreds of drawings of their houses, parents at work, pets, friends, town, and school. The high school art class then chose the drawings that best showed our school community. We transformed the drawings into digital designs and traced them onto the building at night.
Our community is like a watershed. When we leave our homes and gather at school or work every day, we are like rain that falls on the hills and gathers into rivers and lakes. At the end of the day, like water evaporating, we return home.
Process
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2023
Digital photo collage printed on UV-resistant vinyl and mounted on Dibond panels
Created with contributions from Prescott School parents, teachers, and staff through the school’s communication app
The playground
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This project is inspired by the Mesoamerican ballgame, an ancient Central American sport played with a ball on a court with hoops facing each other. Historians believe the ball may have represented the sun. Like the Mesoamerican game, our basketball hoops face east and west.
The photos on the blue basketball backboard show sunrises near Prescott School. Photos on the pink basketball backboard show sunsets near Prescott School. A third basketball backboard near the Tiger Den, faces south and shows photos of the sky near Prescott School.
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2024
Ceramic Stoneware with Glaze
Created with contributions from all students (Pre-K–12th grade students).
The courtyard
Our feelings, like the weather, change quickly. Our emotions don’t last forever, but unlike our emotions, clay cannot change after it dries. Clay reminds us that we cannot choose our internal weather, but we can choose how we respond to it.
Process
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2024
Wall drawing with latex paint and Krink permanent markers
Created by sixth grade students in Ryan Anderson’s English Class: Bryan A., Jimena A., Noe A., Seb B., Ian C., Addilyn C., Val C., Harmony H., Peyton K., Orlando M., Edith Q., Julian R., Emmanuel R., Sirah S., Josue V., Anthony C., Vega G.
The middle school portables
Sixth grade students wanted to change the feeling of our middle school buildings, so our artists-in-residence asked them to choose part of the watershed that felt like middle school. The students chose a swamp.
Swamps can be strange, murky, and unknown. Middle school sometimes feels strange, murky, and unknown, but it is also an important place of growth and change.
Middle school is an in-between time when kids move from childhood to adolescence. Like middle school, a swamp is in between—not land but not water. Some animals in the swamp—like froglets that still have tails—are between childhood and adulthood. Like middle school students, the creatures in this mural are still growing and changing.
Process
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2024
Ceramic stoneware and rope
Created by sixth grade students in Ryan Anderson’s English class: Daniel A., Jasmin A., Dayana A., Darina B., Breahny C., Axel C., Justin D., Yahir E., Omar G., Haven G., Amber L., Alejandro M., Kevin M., Melanie P., Allison S., Esteban V., Mauricio V., Chayse W.
The heritage apple tree behind the gym
In spring 2024, sixth grade students studied how the wind moves clouds and storms across Earth. Wind is an invisible force that shapes our planet. It is caused by changes in atmospheric temperature and pressure.
An artist’s role in society is to make things that are less visible more visible. Sixth grade students made a long list of invisible things, including everything from invisible thoughts to intestinal gas, to WiFi, to laws.
Afterward, students chose a location to put an artwork that makes the force of wind visible. They decided to make wind chimes for Prescott School’s heritage apple tree. They made their wind chimes from clay and wrote on the clay about things inside themselves that are invisible to other people.
Process
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