Mack Center students create outdoor mosaic

RACINE Students at Racine Unifieds Mack Center have been busy in art class the past three weeks, breaking tiles and arranging them just right for a water-themed mosaic that will decorate the retaining wall outside the buildings entrance.

Students finished designing mosaic sections last week and those sections should be installed outside this week.

Its actually pretty cool that everybody will see it, said 16-year-old sophomore Connor Christensen, a special education student who worked on the mosaic along with about 60 other regular and special education students enrolled in art at the Mack Center, a Racine Unified program housed at 1325 Park Ave. that helps misbehaving and credit-deficient sixth- through 12th-graders get on track and back into their regular schools.

Mack Center art teacher Megan Goers came up with the mosaic idea in talks with a special education teacher.

We just started thinking about public works of art and getting our kids involved with something thats a little bit bigger, Goers said. A lot of our students have rough home lives and they dont really have much that happens that they can really be proud about so that was our goal to allow them to beautify their community and take pride in a space.

To fund the mosaic, Goers received some grant money from Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church, 625 College Ave., and then got donations of necessary supplies, she said. A mosaic is constructed using bits of tile, glass, stone or other materials that get grouted together to reveal a larger picture or design.

Mack Center students started their mosaic construction by measuring the buildings 50-foot long retaining wall, which ranges in height from 21 inches to 18.5 inches. It was selected as the mosaic site because the Mack Center building itself is a historic site and cannot be altered, Goers said.

The mosaic location set, students smashed and sorted tiles Im talking kids with safety glasses and gloves and hammers, Goers said. and then arranged the broken pieces into 1-foot by about 1-foot sections.

You had to fit different pieces in different areas to see what ones went best, student Connor said. It was fun to figure out what pieces went where.

When all the sections get grouted put together outside this week, the mosaic will show the Root River flowing along the retaining walls western side.

Excerpt from:
Mack Center students create outdoor mosaic