Mohawk art students create life-sized cow

Staff report

bessemer, Pa.

Students in art teacher Linda Joyce’s classes at Mohawk Junior/Senior High School have built a life-sized, mosaic cow.

The idea of the cow sculpture started when the classes received the Innovative Learning Grant sponsored by the Mohawk Education Community.

The grant provided the foreign language and art department with a traveling mural exhibit of work by Antoni Gaudi, an architect from Barcelona, Spain, and Surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

Focusing on Gaudi, Joyce thought it would be fun for her Arts III and IV students to create a sculpture using trencandis, a technique that uses broken pieces of pottery and glass, as Gaudi did on his buildings. She picked a cow to represent the district.

Twelve students worked on the life-sized art piece.

Joyce sketched a cow and drew up plans for its internal structure or armature. The students brought in hammers, drills and other tools to begin the build. Many had to learn how to use the tools. They also had to learn to work together for the build and the entire project.

Joyce’s evenings were spent going to lumber stores to get materials and tile centers to learn how to lay tile.

Once the wooden structure and platform were built, students wrapped the cow in plastic wrap and then began forming the cow’s shape with newspaper and masking tape. Next, the cow was encased in chicken wire to better form its shape.

A test run was then needed to make sure the moving sculpture could get through the classroom doorway. That could only be accomplished by making its ears removable.

The next step was to cover the cow with plaster craft, a material that is gauze covered with plaster. It hardens when wet, giving the cow a hard shell. At this point, the cow had become the talk of the school, with kids walking past the room daily to see its progress.

Students had to adorn safety glasses and broke all the stained glass and more than 100 dinner plates with hammers.

Each student learned how to apply mortar and grout on sample pieces before they began working on the cow. Then the cow was covered with the multicolored trencandis. At the tip of the cow’s tail is a fluffed fur-like shape made of paint brush bristles covered in paint. The platform has small mosaic pieces that read “Moohawk, 2015.” Moohawk is the cow’s name.

A custom leather strap holds the cowbell around Moohawk’s neck. A time capsule was placed in the cow’s head with letters written by the Moohawk Makers telling about themselves and their experience making the sculpture. The project took the students 42 days to complete.

To celebrate the event, the students, who are now known throughout the district as the Moohawk Makers, will have their own celebration picnic with hamburgers. There are two schoolwide contests planned to guess how much the cow weighs and how many plates were used in its creation.

The A.R.T.S. Club who funded the sculpture also is planning an ice-cream social for the staff. The students are discussing selling the sculpture to fund a trip and to buy beef for the needy in the district.

Students involved in the project are: Art III, Alyssa Covert, Riah Yost, Courtney Hepler, Ethan Hill, Violet Mathews, Devin Davenport and Sheree Moyer; and Art IV, Stephanie Anthony, Alison Horner, Melissa Verlotte, Mackenzie Shaffer and Sidney Vest.