If you go
o What: First Friday celebrates VSAA Confluence Project.
o When: 4:30 to 8 p.m. today.
o Where: Scene Shop, 32nd Street garage door entrance, Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, 3100 Main St., Vancouver.
o Information: 360-313-4600.
To donate to VSAA’s Confluence Project
Contact the Foundation for Vancouver Public Schools at 360-313-4730 or http://foundationforvps.org. You can designate gift to “VSAA Confluence Project.”
A decadelong student art project consisting of two triptychs with about 50,000 mosaic pieces is finished. The last three Confluence Project panels awaiting installation will be displayed at Vancouver School of Arts and Academics as part of today’s ArtWalk.
To ensure every detail was correct, staff and students worked with an expert on Sacagawea and the Lemhi Shoshone culture.
If you go
o What: First Friday celebrates VSAA Confluence Project.
o When: 4:30 to 8 p.m. today.
o Where: Scene Shop, 32nd Street garage door entrance, Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, 3100 Main St., Vancouver.
o Information: 360-313-4600.
After students and staff carried a finished panel of Sacagawea and her infant son, Pomp, outside to inspect it in natural light, it didn’t look right. The stark white mosaics representing the Lemhi Shoshone Indian guide’s earring didn’t look like abalone shell. Instead, it looked as if a section of the artwork was missing.
After consulting with the great-great-great-grandniece of Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone expert, the white mosaics were replaced with creamy ivory. The result: an abalone earring that seems to shimmer in the sun.
“We took great pride in our shells,” said Rose Ann Abrahamson. “I was really appreciative that they wanted to make sure it was factual, rather than putting up something they believed, romanticized or idealized. They were willing to put up something very truthful and accurate, especially on an academic building. They made the effort to reach out for first-hand, primary information. That shows a little bit about the integrity of the school.”
Photographs of Abraham-son’s daughter, Willow, Sacagawea’s great-great-great-great-grandniece, served as a model for the Sacagawea mosaic, Abrahamson said via phone from Chief Tag-hee Academy Immersion School on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation near Salmon, Idaho.
Artist-in-residence Julie Brown began working on the project in 2010 and has doggedly pursued historical details. On the circa-1917 Interstate Bridge panel, Brown searched online to find vintage hubcaps to embed as rivets on the bridge. More than 100 recycled kitchen drawer pulls were gathered to form feathers on the owl mosaic.
The Sacagawea and Pomp panel will be hung with a panel of a drawing from William Clark’s journal and the bastion at Fort Vancouver. In the bastion panel, student artists embedded an array of found objects to signify artifacts: an old key, a china duck, bits of broken dinner plates. Fort Vancouver is home to the largest excavated collection of mid-19th-century Spode ceramics.
Jeri Swatosh, a teacher at VSAA, has led the project since its inception. When the current seniors were freshmen, every student made a tile for the project. More than 50 students worked on the last triptych.
In an after-school club and over two summers, students have worked on all aspects of the project: cutting tiles, figuring out how to create a big puzzle, mortaring, cleaning, grouting, cleaning again and curing.
Now that the work on the project is complete, the school plans to continue the mosaic club so students can work on their own projects.
Swatosh contacted consultant Abrahamson, who lives on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, and has consulted via phone and email. She has never visited the school.
“There was this big concern about not being stereotypical, not generalizing, but paying attention to the special culture of one of the most famous Native American women in the world,” Abrahamson said. “Paying homage to her. I guided them throughout the project. There are differences in Native American appearances, shape of eyes, shape of nose. We have real distinct features.”
The first triptych already is attached to the school’s west facade. The final triptych, tied together with Wy’east, also known as Mount Hood, is ready to be installed on the school’s brick exterior. The school already has raised about $70,000 for the entire project.
What’s needed to complete the installation is about $10,000. Donations can be made via the Foundation for Vancouver Public Schools, with gifts designated for the VSAA Confluence Project.
Glancing around the scene shop where the large mosaic panels were laid out, Swatosh nodded, “It’s very special. Especially Sacagawea and Pomp.”
