Courtesy photo Bark River-Harris students used recycling to create a work of art this school year.

BARK RIVER — Students at Bark River-Harris School turned recycling into a work of art this school year. In honor of the 51st Earth Day this year, Visual Art Teacher Terra Stenberg decided to have Bark River art and photography students create a recycled cap project.

“I wanted to bring awareness to some of the challenges we are facing with plastic oceanic pollution, recycling and landfill issues,” said Stenberg.

Students were presented a slideshow and engaged in discussion about what they’d like to create. After taking a vote in all classes, a turtle image with a message won the majority. The art room started collecting caps in February with the goal of having enough by April 22.

“If there hadn’t had so much family, community and peer support, we never would have had enough caps to complete the project. There were days I’d find bags of caps on my porch, in my mailbox at work and even mailed to me!”-said Stenberg

“The frame for the turtle is made of upcycled wood. A community member replaned scrap used wood for the frame and ground down paneling for the painting base. Because we didn’t have access to an actual sea turtle, we chose a royalty free image. I had students run different art filters on the image to create a vivid color scheme. Once we had our reference,” Stenberg said..

Stenberg sketched the turtle on the board. Students then began receiving tutelage on acrylic painting. Learning how to apply and blend (sometimes starting over). Learning the difference in an unprimed and primed surface. Once our turtle and background colors were painted, students began placing and layering the colored caps. This process took awhile with some caps being shifted according to color and some caps being layered to create a color cap we didn’t have. After cap placement and gluing, students searched and brainstormed ideas for their message for the frame.

“Overall, it was a successful project and it was exciting for them to work on it- it was exciting to be a part of & we’re already talking about the next image we’ll try,” Stenberg said.