The Montgomery High School ceramics department, under the guidance of Mrs. Tina Dailey, was awarded a $10,000 grant this year through Artists in Education and Young Audiences to have a visiting artist spend the semester with our ceramics students. The students and the artist, Ms. Gail Scuderi, have spent their time together designing and building, from scratch. a mosaic that will be installed on the exterior wall of the high school, facing the bus dock. This was the location of an unfortunate incident years ago when a racially charged slur was spray painted on the wall. Since that time, the wall has been covered with a plywood sign that had student hand prints on them with theme of unity. Over the years, this sign has deteriorated and is now beyond repair.

The mosaic will take the place of the plywood sign and also has the theme of acceptance and unity. The students worked with a well known poet, Jacob Winterstein, to write a poem about what their passions are, who they are, where they are from, and what makes them individually unique. This poem became the inspiration for their design and parts of the poem will be embedded into the mosaic. Our visiting artist, Gail Scuderi, has worked with the students both in design and ceramics technique. Most of the mosaic tiles have been made by students in Mrs. Dailey’s classes but we have also had many faculty, administration, middle school students, and community members make tiles as well. Over 400 people have made tiles that will be installed as part of this mosaic. Each of these tiles has a design that represents something the creator believes represents them.

There will be a public unveiling of this beautiful and important work on Friday, June 15th at 6:30pm, outside in the bus dock at Montgomery High School.

If the weather is bad, we will move into the bus-dock entrance. All community members are urged to attend this short, but very important event to commemorate the hard work of our student artists, unite against racism, and celebrate the diversity that makes our community so strong.