PHOTOS + STORY: Missing paperclips point to artists at work at Prairie Elementary

Kari Lucin, The Daily Globe, Worthington, Minn.
·2 min read

Jan. 30—WORTHINGTON — Vanishing paper clips, a trendy new fashion among students and kids' increasing understanding of design are part of a pattern at Prairie Elementary — a pattern about patterns, an important element of art students learned about with the help of an artist residency last week.

"I want you to be very creative," resident artist Bobbie Alsgaard Lien told Brienna Bahl's class of first-grade students Thursday. "You're artists now!"

A $4,000 grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council paid for the artist residency, as well as 465 white T-shirts and dozens of fabric markers used for the workshop, which involved every student in first and second grade at Prairie.

First, Alsgaard Lien shared a presentation with students in Kelly Knips' art classes, introducing critical concepts such as lines and shapes, as well as beginning color theory and clothing design. Then Knips and Alsgaard Lien offered the kids a chance to create their own designs, using repeated elements that together become a pattern, not on a sheet of paper but on T-shirts they could wear. The patterns could be as simple as lines or dots, but could also be as complex as human figures, ice cream cones or faces. Being able to observe and produce patterns is a skill that will translate to other subjects as well, including mathematics, music, language and science.

To spur their creativity, they were told not to use words, letters, numbers or rainbows, but to use lots of bright colors, both cool and warm.

And every student received a white T-shirt, stretched across a piece of cardboard and secured, by adult hands, with six paperclips.

As such, the project required nearly 2,800 paperclips, and Knips and Alsgaard Lien reported that they'd run the office out of them, though the clips can be returned when the T-shirts are complete.

It also required a lot of fabric markers, which held up surprisingly well throughout the project, thanks to students' diligence about keeping marker caps on and teachers' helpful reminders to "listen for the snap" indicating the cap was truly affixed to the marker.

Classroom teachers, too, have made an extra effort to send washing instructions for the T-shirts home, helping the students' artwork last as long as possible. They also had students record video reflections on what they did during the project and how they did it, encouraging them to synthesize what they had learned.

"The teachers are delighted," Alsgaard Lien said.

So are the students.

"Overall, I think they just had a blast," Knips said. "They had a lot of fun."