RUMFORD — Mountain Valley High School art students recently displayed their creations to the public at an art show. But the real story happened long before the show as students encountered setbacks, crashes and the need to do and redo their work. Yet, they persevered.

Freshman Haley Cole created a three-dimensional flower out of ceramics. She learned about engineering principles by making her flower so it would stand up and be viewed from all directions. 

“The thing that challenged me the most was trying to get the stem to support the top. The top had a lot more clay into it. It was very top heavy, especially when the clay was wet. I ended up having to lay the piece down sideways until it dried out a little,” Cole said. “The whole thing collapsed on itself about four times. It was very frustrating. Once the stem dried a little it was a lot easier to work with.”

Another freshman, Starlee McKenna, also worked with clay and produced a red and black steel-toed-looking boot.

“There’s more than just putting it all together, there’s a lot of things that need to be scored and slipped,” McKenna explained. “The scoring and slipping was the most challenging because if it wasn’t just right it fell apart.”

Senior Victoria Baptiste created three-dimensional work but with a very different medium. She described, “I decided to make a robot. I used an antique lantern for the body, an old outlet cover for eyes, a metal ring for the head, assorted metal gadgets and a string of beads to serve as intestines for the robot.”

“What challenged me most about creating this sculpture was trying to disguise the robot as more than just a lantern and outlet cover. The goal of the project was to make the viewer forget what the sculpture originally started out as,” Baptiste said.

Inspiration was the purpose of freshman Kylie Glover’s work. “My work is a cherry blossom tree and a dream catcher. The cherry blossom is my favorite tree to draw and a dream catcher hanging from the branch to inspire people that dreams can come true.”

She explained, “I learned that clashing bright colored feathers on the dream catcher to the cherry blossom was bad because the human eye focuses on brighter colors, so I had to keep changing colors to make it not clash.”