Invited guests, students, staff and members of the community celebrated the grand opening of the mosaic furniture project, 'Seat Yourself!' in the Quad at Laytonville High School the afternoon of November 7. High School Principal Joan Potter told the gathered audience "This project exemplifies everything we're trying to do in connecting community, school and project based learning."

This esthetically pleasing and utilitarian piece of art is shaded by a pergola waiting for vegetation and flowers to climb the trellis sides. High School students under the skilled direction of community volunteer Matt O'Neill, who is also a teaching member of the high school staff, erected the open redwood structure to frame the furniture piece as well as to provide shelter from the elements. In this setting, parent and volunteer Vicki McKenzie arranged tasty and attractive refreshments provided by community members supporting this endeavor.

Special guest Jan Hinson, Mendocino artist who has pieces of furniture she's created in a public park area called "The Garden" in downtown Mendocino, was the inspiration and technical advisor for this work. She developed the technique of making cement based furniture lighter by adding perlite to the mixture. "I'm very impressed," she stated. "This piece of art is more than twice the size of anything I've done. It's difficult to keep up the momentum to finish a project of this size." She went on to say that she's been talking to the students about ideas on how to move the piece of furniture to the new school when construction is complete. "I think that it needs to be done with a lot of pipe rollers," she said.

Student Philip Cogrin explained the way the art piece was constructed from beginning with a welded metal lath frame, to finishing with mosaic tile representations that depict thematic scenes of "The American Dream," chosen and placed by students. One of the scenes is an image of the old high school as it now appears, "So that we'll have that memory at the new high school," Cogrin said. Community volunteers Steve McCaffrey and Doc Bolton welded and helped students shape the metal frame into the "S" shape the students desired and then the students "sewed" additional baling wire into both sides of the frame to make the mat on which to apply the ferro-cement. Cogrin said that they used artist Hinson's recipe for the cement mat. Then the mosaic tile, which was broken up with hammers, was applied. "All of the students in the school worked on this year long project whether they were in the art class or not," Cogrin said with pride. "There's a lot of personal stuff, subtlety, history and humor in this artistic piece," he stated, adding that even some of his blood was preserved in the scenery. We were treated to a view of the scar above his knee resulting from the on site work related injury that had produced the blood.

Community volunteer artist Marguerite Maguire who has overseen the project and along with the students brought it to completion by working "every day all day" this Fall, said, "It was a much bigger job than I'd ever anticipated, but a great challenge to take such a big idea and help to bring it to fruition. What has inspired all of the projects I've helped with in this district is to be able to bring people together and to work with them. Ideas flow when you're working with your hands and talking with people at the same time. There's a coming together and a sewing of seeds that is very inspirational to me. It erases differences and we find that people are people. I get inspired by working with people on big projects and what it might mean to our society to look at ourselves in a bigger way. I would like to do a big project with the people in the town of Laytonville, that would speak to who they are. I'm looking forward to working with more of the students and their parents."

High School art teacher Carolyn Carpenter told how the project developed and how the ideas and work came from the students as she integrated the project with their assignments. The students made individual and small group designs for what they wanted to see in the Quad. A student committee then picked the "S" shaped bench design of student Gretchen McKeag as the format for their project. The theme "The American Dream" was chosen by students in the same way with Cogrin's theme being the one they decided to use as their guide. Students in Carpenter's art classes made mosaic self portraits and mosaic mirrors as a precursor to the project. "I thought we'd have one mirror for each student but they liked the project so much that we ended up with 150 mirrors!" Carpenter said. Carpenter also thanked teacher Dave Bowles as their expert problem solver, Harwood Products for furnishing the wood chips that carpet the area, and parent Doug McKeag for delivering the materials. Carpenter also wrote the grant to the Christiansen Fund that provided the funds to make this project possible.