Trash to Treasure

Mrs. Pedersen’s 2D/3D Design class just finished their “Trash to Treasure” project.  Their artwork is a seascape with a sailboat on the water while stars twinkle in the night sky. This artwork represents several design elements and principles like line, shape, color, texture, rhythm, movement, and contrast. 

This artwork is made up of plywood, paint, and reused bottle caps. They started by sketching the scene on the board in pencil. Next, they went over their lines with a sharpie marker before painting. Once they were finished painting, they used hot glue guns to glue down the bottle caps in the respective places, sometimes alternating what way the lid was facing to give the artwork even more texture.

This piece was inspired by artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi.  Her giant animal sculptures are made entirely of beach debris and are used to educate about plastic pollution and encourage change.  Mrs. Pedersen saw some of these giant sculptures in person at SeaWorld in San Antonio and brought back this passion to her class. 

It was “Art with a Purpose”.  The 2D/3D Design students’ objective was to use contemporary issues to redesign an object, bringing awareness to plastic pollution around the world and encouraging people to keep our seas plastic free.  The students are happy about the recycling bins in the classrooms and hope the school adds recycling containers in the commons for all of the bottled water at lunchtime.

Working as a team to create this beautiful work of art, pictured below from left to right: Winter Gibson ’25, Tristyn Leymaster ’25, DeLaney Brown ’24 and Jayden Medina ’24.

Trash to treasure artists