EJD Students Create Uplifting Art Project

PHOENIX, NY – Students at Emerson J. Dillon Middle School are lifting one another up through a schoolwide art collaboration.

The annual project, spearheaded by art teachers Brandi Finniss and Beth Pritchard, gives students in fifth through eighth grades the opportunity to combine their talents into one large-scale creation. As part of this year’s project, each artist created a drawing on a balloon shape to represent themselves with the theme “What Lifts You?” The goal of the project was for students to use art to share more about what inspires them in their life.

“We were inspired by the contemporary artist Kelsey Montague, who creates murals all over the world with this theme and hashtag,” Pritchard said. “Similar to her balloon murals in California and Pennsylvania, we combined all of the individual balloon designs from each student with strings so that they could pose interactively in the hallways with our work of art as if they were physically being lifted up.”

Pritchard noted that the students enjoyed the project were excited to see the individual balloons added to the mural each day.

“They always love to see our beginning of the year, large-scale works come together because it is such an impressive feat, and students really feel good about being part of something bigger with their individual art,” Pritchard said. “These yearly collaborative projects are a great way to remind them how our individual creativity is so important and unique, but we are also one big team of artists here at EJD.”

Both Pritchard and Finniss said they were impressed with the collaborative efforts and inspired by their students’ stories.

“In a time when some days are not always as bright, our What Lifts You Project hanging in the hallway is a great reminder of how there are many positive things in our world to be thankful for,” Pritchard said.

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