Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Thursday, May 21, 2009

Gallery (click any photo to view the gallery)

Dixie students painted tiles mostly in cool shades of blues, greens and purples.

Having heard how thousands of children in China lost their schools in an earthquake a year ago, students at Dixie Elementary Magnet are helping with the rebuilding a few inches at a time.

Kindergarteners and first-graders at Dixie, who are learning to speak Chinese, have painted small ceramic tiles with bright colors and cheery rainbows, flowers and landscapes to help make a mural for the Xiang-E Elementary School, which will be rebuilt.

“They had an earthquake, and their whole school fell down. So the tiles are for their art room,” explained 7-year-old Brianna Sveich.

The kids gathered in Dixie’s cafeteria to work on their 6-by-6-inch art masterpieces. Elizabeth Painter chose a panda while classmate Tommy Svetich opted for a tiger and forest.

“We had to draw on the piece of square paper and trace it on a tile,” Tommy said. Added Elizabeth: “We drew pictures about nature and after that, we painted them.”

“A lot of them have tried to do happy scenes to make the children smile,” said art teacher Rachel Losch, who will have Dixie’s tiles fired at Kentucky Mudworks before shipping them to China.

Dixie will contribute a fifth of the 1,000 tiles for the new mural.

“They’ll have a lot of pictures on their walls,” said first-grader Morgan Buckner.

Losch and colleague Yan Wang, who teaches Chinese language at Dixie and Yates, have talked with the Dixie students about earthquakes, their destructive power and the psychological after-effects on kids.  Many children in China were among those killed last May.

Kentucky’s Chinese community pulled together and raised more than $115,000 to help rebuild the Xiang-E Elementary School. In addition to donating a rainwater collection and conservation system, supporters decided to help develop an art and music program for the students’ recovery by equipping classrooms for art, music, nature and crafts.

“The ceramic mural in the art classroom is the most important part of our contribution, and we will follow up to establish a ceramic art program in the school,” Wang said.

Several others schools also joined in the Sichuan Earthquake Relief mural project: two high schools in Louisville and three schools in China, including survivors of the Xiang-E School disaster.

“We’ll try to maintain the relationship with these students (in China),” Losch said. “It’s using art as the pathway for outreach.”

Online extra:

Wangyi, a Web site in China, recognized the ceramic mural project.

http://news.163.com/09/0505/07/58HJH1P50001124J.html

Translation: Yesterday afternoon (May 4), a ceramic mural activity was held at a ceramic artistic village in Chengdu (the capital city in Sichuan province). About 20 students from (the rebuilt) Xiang-E Elementary School and students from two elementary schools in Chengdu painted a hundred biscuits on the topic “Nature, green and love.” After firing, these tiles will be combined with tiles made in Kentucky to make a ceramic mural and decorate the walls in the art room at Xiang-E Elementary School.