Students at Nellie Coffman partnered with Desert X to create their own installations

   Some local students are getting inspired by Desert X! Students are preparing their installations on display at Nellie Coffman Middle School!

The art teacher divided the class into teams of four. The four groups chose a topic meaningful to the students or an issue they were dealing with. "So it's the student's voice and how they interact with the world," says Mindy McEachran, art teacher at Nellie Coffman Middle School.

Installation Concepts:

1. The effects of Covid
2. People die chasing wealth
3. Building Borders / Walls
4. Ocean and Environmental Pollution

"We have these screens; these screens were in the classrooms separating people to keep us safe," says McEachran. So we gathered all the screens from inside, the pencils were broken. Since we returned from COVID students, have had so much angst and anger, and they snap the pencils and their broken pencils all over campus. So we've taken this idea of the broken pencils, and they represent the students there in circles to show the ripple effect. So there's a smaller circle of pencils and then larger circles. They also imitate past desert X installations, with them being site-specific. So the pencils are upright. So throughout the day, as the sun changes, the shadows of the pencils change as well. And then, there are LED lights around the tree that represent the glow from the monitor screen of a computer. These are student ideas. I'm really proud of them. I think it's absolutely brilliant."

The students have the idea of disrupting the day by building a wall representing the wall at the border. They placed the installation in one of the shortcut routes used frequently to get to some classes.

    Another art exhibit showcases one student's environmental concerns. "What I hope people get out of it is for them to like open their eyes a little more," says Emani Jenkins, 8th grader at Nellie N. Coffman Middle School. "it's not okay to like litter the ocean or like litter the beaches or anything like that. And marine life is important because you're killing everything in there. And like once the ecosystems like Off Balanced, we're off balance too."

    They hope the installations will be completed before Monday, March 20th. The goal is Monday; students at the school can see the completed buildings.