Releasing a Wave of Beautiful Butterflies
A wave of butterflies alights on the wall between the auditorium doors at Windermere Boulevard Elementary School. The building-wide collaborative art project developed by art teacher Nicholas Colantino includes a butterfly made by every student in the building.
Teaching the concept of symmetry in nature, students were given a butterfly design and creative freedom to design it how they wanted with sparkle and shiny papers and markers. Each side of the butterfly had to match the other to satisfy the goal of symmetry.
Colantino hung all the butterflies on the wall and swooped them up over the doorway. With a photo booth concept in mind, students are able to stand near the butterflies with his or her hand palm up to simulate a butterfly release.
Last year, Colantino arranged a school-wide collaborative art project with each grade creating feathers of a wing, some were painted, or printed and even made with scratch paper. He taped the wings to the wall with a space between for a person to stand and be photographed so it looked like gigantic wings were on the person's back.