Mendota H.S. Veteran’s Day program features USO Shows & a mystery mosaic

Public invited to attend presentation at MHS on Nov. 11

Bonnie Morris
Posted 10/17/19

MENDOTA - Art, history and a bit of mystery are all wrapped up into what promises to be a very special Veteran’s Day program at Mendota High School this year.

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Mendota H.S. Veteran’s Day program features USO Shows & a mystery mosaic

Public invited to attend presentation at MHS on Nov. 11

Posted

MENDOTA - Art, history and a bit of mystery are all wrapped up into what promises to be a very special Veteran’s Day program at Mendota High School this year. The public is encouraged to attend the 2019 tribute to veterans, which will be presented at the high school on Monday, Nov. 11.

MHS began holding Veteran’s Day programs in 2008. Jason Artman, MHS history teacher, explained that rather than having no school on that day, the school decided to have a student led program presented to the whole student body and invite local veterans and the entire community to attend as well. “We wanted to make sure that students were learning the reason that we celebrate Veteran’s Day,” he said.

Artman began organizing the program in 2011 with a group of students in his Honors History class. That year, the students traveled around town and met with families who had lost a soldier serving their country during a war. For the first time, the program featured local history and the students used the oral interviews to teach about Veteran’s Day and the sacrifices made by local families.

Since then, Artman’s classes have tried to do something new every year, but he noted that there is no program in years when Veteran’s Day falls on a weekend, which has been the case the past two years. “So, it’s been a couple years since we did a program but this year, we’re focusing on the USO Show,” he said. “We have a couple of local connections to that.”

In addition, Artman had also been talking with MHS art teacher Brock Sondgeroth about incorporating some type of art project into the program this year. Posters were an initial thought but that type of project would limit the number of students involved. Sondgeroth had already considered doing a large mosaic piece, called a Blind Art Mosaic, that would involve all of his art students, but had not thought about connecting it to the Veteran’s Day program. “One day it occurred to him that we should do the mosaic using a patriotic theme,” Artman said.

Sondgeroth explained that the piece is called a “blind mosaic” because the students do not know what the end result will be. “They each do their own small piece,” he said. “They only know what that piece is supposed to look like and they paint it to look like that.”

After getting approval from administration to go ahead with the art project, Sondgeroth took some famous pieces of patriotic artwork and drew them into a collage. He then put the collage on the computer, divided it into 100 total pieces, each one a 4-by-4-inch tile, and assigned each student a different piece. Since he currently has 97 art students, he asked three former art students to complete the remaining three squares. He and Artman also drew a grid on each tile to help the students with proportion. “It took me 30 hours of work designing and cutting it up into the individual pieces, just to get it all prepared for the students,” he said.

He also tried to make sure that some pieces of the mosaic would be easier for the beginning students to paint while other pieces would be more detailed for the advanced students. “They’re all important pieces, it’s just that some are not extremely detailed, but the students all know that their piece does matter,” he said.

Each student was given their wooden tile to paint along with an electronic image of how their finished tile should look. They were also instructed to label the back of their piece with their code number, which will guide Sondgeroth in assembling the mosaic, as well as an arrow indicating the top of the piece and the student’s name. He also coded each piece based on the student’s skill level.

On the first day of the project, all the students got their pieces and were told to do a pencil sketch of their image on the wood tile. “Mr. Artman and I put them together later and the whole thing lined up - it was perfect,” Sondgeroth said.

Although the painting was going to be done gradually over a three-week period, when Sondgeroth doled out the paint to each student, he quickly realized it would have to done by the end of the week to conserve on paint. Each student had a plate and Sondgeroth gave them only the colors they needed for their particular piece. “They had to do all the blending of colors, though,” he noted. “Some people needed more tans and some more blues, but once I gave the paint to them, I realized I couldn’t do that every week because the paint gets expensive.”

Above: Students began working on the mosaic by first doing a pencil sketch of the image on their individual tiles.

A sample of some of the painted tiles. The finished mosaic will include 100 pieces.

When the 100 tiles are all painted and ready to assemble, Sondgeroth and Artman will glue them onto a board, frame it and cover the mosaic with a sealer or plexiglass. The finished product will measure 40 by 40 inches and it will be unveiled for the first time at the assembly on Veteran’s Day. “No one will see the finished product until the assembly - Mr. Artman and I are the only people who know what it is,” Sondgeroth said. “We hope it draws a crowd to our Veteran’s Day program so people can see all the work that was put into it.”

The following day, Sondgeroth plans take the mosaic to a meeting for veterans in Ottawa where some of the students will give a presentation. “Our goal is to be able to take it to a few different places, gauge the interest in it and then we would love to auction it off and donate the money to a program for veterans,” he said. “It’s a great way to show what students can do in the community and for them to help the veterans in some way, shape or form.”

After counting up the time students spent working on the project, Sondgeroth estimated they had put about 200 hours into it. “One of the coolest things is you’ve got all different talent levels, but you put it all together and you see how everyone’s work goes together,” he noted. “And it includes every single student in my class. I told them their piece might seem trivial, but it’s important because if one piece is missing, you don’t have a whole picture.”

Artman pointed out that other than a welcome given by the administration, the entire Veteran’s Day program will be done by students including the presentations given by his history students. “We keep saying art’s a risk and we’re taking a big one here, but we think we’re going to love the result,” Artman said. “When we’re done we can show students in a couple different ways that everyone plays their part and when everyone comes together, the sum is greater than the parts - both for the art students, for my students and for the students in band, who also perform during the program. In putting together this Veteran’s Day program, everyone is working on an individual piece and those pieces all come together.”

Artman estimated anywhere between 160 and 180 students are working on the program in some way. “That many students putting on a program for the entire community and for each other shows that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” he said. “It all comes down to student ownership. When they own it, they believe in it; when they believe in it, they learn from it.”

Although Artman and Sondgeroth will know how the mosaic turned out prior to the assembly, Artman said they still look forward to the big reveal on Veteran’s Day as much as anyone. “It won’t be a big surprise to us, but it will be to everybody else and we’ll be anxious to see the reaction.”