STEPHEN RICCIO
QUYON Jan. 19-22, 2021
Students of all grades at Onslow Elementary School in Quyon got the opportunity to test their artistry from Jan. 19 to Jan. 22, with artist Marc Walter in town to show them how to sculpt various snow structures.
Grade five teacher Kayla Savard spoke with THE EQUITY about the four-day long sculpting spree. She said the children spent Tuesday and Wednesday collecting snow throughout the schoolyard and placing it in molds before moving to sculpting on Thursday and Friday. Each class spent . . .
an hour outside, while the kindergarteners . . . spent half an hour, to ensure that none of the class bubbles mixed.
“[The kids are] pairing up into small groups and they’re choosing what sculpture they want to do,” she explained. “We have the Lorax, there’s Homer Simpson, a thumbs-up emoji, a snowmobile, things like that, [there are] lots of dogs.”
She said that students were thrilled to get the chance to create some art in the snow.
“They’re super excited, yeah they’re loving it,” Savard said on Thursday. “They’ve already asked if they can keep doing it next week, so we can walk around and look at them next week.”
She said that it was fun to watch how the students had to think about sculpting a 3-D shape and having to factor in how it would look from each side, as well as learning to carve into the snow as opposed to just padding on more.
Savard explained how she had successfully applied for a series of grants in an effort to enrich the level of art in students’ lives through the remainder of the school year. The grant that paid to have Walter visit the students was through the Artists Inspire program.
Walter specializes in practicing environmental art and is originally from France. He has spent the last 17 years in the Outaouais and is the first of many creators that Savard has invited to visit the school through those grants.
“We have either an artist or an author speaking to students in the school or leading us in activities almost every week from now until the end of the year,” Savard said. “[The] kids will have exposure to authors [from] all around Quebec, that is all virtual. We have three in-person artists that are going to come in and do some projects with the kids.”
She added that the in-person artist visits planned would be coordinated outdoors so that bubbles could not mix and the tools used could be sanitized.
Savard said that organizing the snow project was part of an effort to reunite the school after being largely physically disconnected due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“I wanted to be able to create an opportunity for the entire student body to work together on a project, while still remaining physically distant,” she said in an email.
