MS. PAVAO'S WEBSITE
DESERTIFICATION
THE PROJECT - THE TIME IS NOW
Students: Rachel Frias and Jacob Resendes
One way we can combat desertification is through awareness. For our project we decided to use art as a way of catching the eye of the community. Our goal was to make the community aware of desertification and ways to prevent it.
Our project is divided into three parts. For the first part of the project, we taught an art class at our high school about desertification. As a way for the students to demonstrate their understanding, they froze time by creating three models of the world. These models depicted the impacts of desertification by showing the past, present and future planet. For part two, we expanded our audience to local sixth graders at our middle school. We also taught them the effects of desertification and challenged them to engineer solutions to the crisis through art. They demonstrated the power of reforestation by building tree models. The last part of the project was showing all the artwork generated by these classes in a window display located in the heart of our town. Not only does the exhibit physically show the effects and solutions of desertification, but we also included QR codes linked to various resources that emphasize the importance of preserving our home.
In order to show the drastic and eminent effects of desertification, three distinct 3D world murals were built titled "past", "present" and "future". Shown together, the pieces showed the progression of desertification and what we stand to lose. These pieces were made thoughtfully with recycled materials by Ms. LeSage's Art 1 students.
One way to combat desertification is through reforestation. In order to highlight this viable solution, a forest of trees was built. These trees were made out of recycled building materials by Mr. Ahern's engineering students.
Together the problem and solution were displayed in a local window store front to educate and motivate the community. With the help of the National Art Society and the support of the Rail Trail Flatbread Company the window store front was tranformed into an interactive exhibit - equipped with QR codes that supplied more information and solutions for interested community members.
Click to watch the whole project come to life
