It might be a little early to call Rosemary Sloggatt’s Saddle Rock Elementary School art class a dynasty.
But for the third straight year, Sloggatt’s students participated in the Town of North Hempstead Recycled Artwork Contest.
And for the third time, students earned awards as fifth-grader Lior Cole was honored in the “Use of Recycled Materials, Grade K-5” category for her diorama piece entitled “Window of Seasons.”
All 86 fourth grade students at Saddle Rock were also honored as their flower screen, in the style of artist Jim Hodges, won an award for “Outstanding in Creativity” in the group projects category.
“It’s something that (we) work really hard to create,” Sloggatt said of the recycled artwork. “I am the art teacher at Saddle Rock, so I get them kindergarten through fifth grade. I have six years with them and honestly I treasure that because I do get a chance to build a love of art and a respect for the commitment that art is and the ways it can change the world.”
The Town of North Hempstead Recycled Artwork Contest is part of the town’s School Recycling Partnership Program.
In addition to handing out awards, the Recycled Artwork Contest assures each of the projects submitted will be put on display somewhere in the community.
All of Saddle Rock Elementary School’s participants, including the 40 fifth-graders who submitted projects in the “Use of Recycled Materials, Grade K-5” category, currently have their projects on display at the Great Neck Arts Center until Jan. 9.
“One of the things I really like about the exhibition is that they don’t just display the award winners,” Sloggatt said. “They display every project from every child that’s submitted and that’s really important to me.”
It was the initial selling point that originally got Sloggatt involved with the project when she received an e-mail from Town of North Hempstead Director of Environmental Planning Fran Reid about it in 2009.
“I think it’s terrific that Fran and the Town of North Hempstead give us the opportunity to put their work out in the community,” Sloggatt said. “People look and they go ‘wow, this was garbage. This was things people are going to throw out.'”
Instead, the students of Saddle Rock Elementary School turned that garbage into award-winning works of art.
“This is our third year participating,” Sloggatt said. “In our first year participating, the coordinator Fran Reid sent an e-mail and we happened to be doing a project on recycling anyway. I thought ‘oh well, OK, we’ll submit that because that would be good exposure for the kids.”
In 2009, the students won an award in the “Best use of Recycled Materials” category.
With more notice last school year, Saddle Rock Elementary students won an award in the “Best Group Project K-5” category for their nearly nine-foot-tall sculpture made in the style of glass artist Dale Chihuly.
The award-winning project was later put on display in Saddle Rock Elementary School last year.
“We all worked together to create a project that was probably about nine-feet tall and lit and very colorful,” Sloggatt said. “The kids love it. It went to Albany to be in the legislative gallery there. That was very exciting because Fran kept sending us pictures of it traveling to different locations.”
“They felt like it was something,” she added, “that sort of represented their class.”
The same can be said for this year’s crop of award-winning artists.
“By the time this year rolled around, the kids arrived at school saying ‘what are we doing,'” Sloggatt said. “Now, it’s something the kids look forward to doing.”
Cole’s winning piece was a diorama, inspired by the work of Joseph Cornell, which represented the four seasons.
“It was a very high-quality project,” Sloggatt said. “She’s a committed young artist.”
In anticipation of the contest, Sloggatt gave this year’s fifth-grade students sketchbooks, with plastic bags attached to collect materials for their project, last June.
“It kept them working over the summer and I also got to kind of see their summer,” Sloggatt said. “One kid said his theme was going to be restaurants he had visited over the summer. He collected business cards and any objects like toothpick boxes and stuff that they were willing to give him.”
“It was kind of fun to see what they were thinking.”
For Sloggatt’s fourth-grade students, their flower screen work of art turned into a strong source of pride as well.
“That’s quite large,” Sloggatt said. “I’d say maybe 10-by-12 feet and of course we all worked together on that. They were delighted to win. They were all excited because they thought their project was fabulous and were quite certain it was going to win before it was ever sent. It’s very gratifying to them that it did.”
The project was constructed from donated artificial flower arrangements, Sloggat said.
“Honestly, they thought I was a little crazy at the beginning of the year when I said ‘what we’re going to do is collect everybody’s old artificial flower arrangements,'” the teacher said.
Sloggatt asked for donations from parents and other members of the community. She said students received plenty of her requested “unwanted floral arrangements” to complete their project.
“We took them apart and began to see them in a new way,” Sloggatt said. “That’s a lot of fun for me as a teacher and to be there when the kids do that too, when they go ‘oh look at this. Look at what we can do.’ It is the reason I am a teacher.”
And Sloggatt hopes her students are able to focus on more than just the awards they have won for their artwork.
“It’s not really about the award,” the teacher said. “It’s really about participating and showing that you are supporting recycling in the community and showing people ways that they can do that. It really is about everybody’s sculpture.”
