Muskogee students create Van Gogh mosaic

One of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, "Starry Night", is taking shape in a tile mosaic, on the cafeteria wall at Sadler Arts Academy in Muskogee. It's a student art project, which they hope to

Wednesday, January 25th 2006, 9:56 am

By: News On 6

One of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, "Starry Night", is taking shape in a tile mosaic, on the cafeteria wall at Sadler Arts Academy in Muskogee. It's a student art project, which they hope to finish by the end of the school year.

News on 6 reporter Rick Wells went to Muskogee for a look at this project in progress.

The students at Sadler Arts Academy in Muskogee are at the front end of a very ambitious project, a mosaic of Van Gogh's Starry Night. "It's basically a group learning project, for the students to basically act as a team." Carol Secor is their teacher and she says they are learning to interpret shape and color to create a picture. "I approach it as it's a puzzle and you have to make the pieces fit."

Here's how they do it. They work on the picture in sections, for example, she has a selection of tile pieces arranged on a card. They then transfer it to the wall.

Allyssa Vercruyssen has a section. "Yeah, I've been working on it since we started." And she's very protective of her part of the puzzle. Alyssa: "Yeah, He's scared of me."

Anyway, the work goes on, and its slow going they can only spend a little bit of time each day on this. And it's a little tough to visualize the finished mosaic cause so much of it is still just pieces of tile in a box, but they are getting there one piece and one section at a time.

Rick Wells: "You guys gonna finish before schools out?"

Students: "Hopefully."

Maybe they could work nights and weekends. Carol Secor: "They are willing to work extra now, but they have homework and testing coming up." Keep after it kids, we'll be back when you're done.

Sadler Arts Academy is Muskogee's art magnet school. It has about 350 students in kindergarten through 8th grade.