Students Collaborate on Larger-than-Life Art Project

A drone whirred overhead as nearly all of Mesa View Middle School’s roughly 850 students merged onto a field, filling up an area marked off by mulch.

“We are going to create the largest animal on Earth,” photojournalist Daniel Dancer told the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at the Ocean View School District campus in Huntington Beach earlier this month. 

Some students wore white shirts. Others wore dark blue shirts. They stood up on command and crouched on command. A few minutes later, they erupted in cheers.

The activity may have looked odd to a passerby, but it was all a matter of perspective and that’s the point.

Mesa View was participating in Art for the Sky, an interactive art project where students come together to form a “gigantic living painting colored and shaped by the living forms of participants,” visible only from above. It’s also a creation that accomplishes something few school art projects can: campus-wide collaboration at the same time.  

Art for the Sky is the brainchild of Dancer, an author and artist who travels across the country to teach students about “skysight” and using their imagination to make sense of the world.

“It’s about seeing the whole picture,” Dancer explained in an interview. His focus is on educating students about how they can each impact their shared environment by looking beyond their own interests. “We have to make decisions for the whole, not just the part that affects us,” he said. 

For 25 years, Dancer has brought his lessons and creations to dozens of schools nationwide, including several campuses in Orange County. Students have made eagles, bears, a dragon, and more. At Mesa View, the students created a blue whale – an artwork Dancer had never accomplished before as he needed a school with enough students to make it possible. The blue whale design measured over 130 feet in length, which Dancer noted was bigger than any actual blue whale.

Art for the Sky is a three-part experience that weaves messages of environmental stewardship throughout. First, students hear about skysight and Dancer's six teachings in a school-wide assembly or through videos seen in class. At Mesa View, students also watched a video about the blue whale, an animal that inhabits the Pacific Ocean just a few miles from their campus. 

Some students also help set up the “canvas” by painting the field or sprinkling mulch to form the shape’s outline. Then all students assemble into the design, as described above. Finally, Dancer takes his recordings of the process and edits together a school-specific video, telling a cohesive story that pieces together the entire lesson into a format shown to the entire school and sent home to families. 

Mesa View students viewed the final video in their gymnasium just one day after forming their blue whale on the field. Before showing the video and revealing the students’ design, Dancer reminded the kids about the meaning of their creation. 

“Each artwork is our gift,” Dancer explained, and said it was also an apology, citing pollution in the ocean as harm caused to the blue whale’s environment. He said it’s also a “promise to do better.”

The students laughed and cheered while watching themselves in the video. And there were notable “oohs” and “aahs” at the first sight of the final aerial shot of their blue whale design.

“You guys were part of a masterpiece,” Mesa View Principal Isis Ortiz told the students after the big reveal. In an interview, Ortiz shared that she tapped into her school site’s Proposition 28 art funds to cover the roughly $3,500 cost for Art for the Sky. She said she was looking for a way to infuse art into the school’s curriculum while also building community.

“This was great because everybody at the school site was involved,” Ortiz said. “I like the fact that it was us all working together.”

Ortiz also received volunteer support from the school’s Parent Teacher Student Organization, including from PTSO Secretary Bobby Guillen, the parent of a sixth grader at Mesa View. 

“[Ortiz] is thinking outside of the box,” Guillen said, and added later, “Art doesn’t need to be something that’s drawn.” He was happy with how the project turned out and called it “amazing.” 

A stormy forecast almost derailed the project. The day students were supposed to wear designated colors was moved up at the last minute to avoid the rain. Some students didn’t see the message. Guillen and other PTSO leaders scoured their closets for blue and white shirts to let students borrow for the picture and it all worked out. “If the PTSO can help out in a supporting role, it makes me happy,” Guillen said. 

“It was cool,” eighth grader Phoenix Arazi said of the experience, and shared that he enjoyed seeing “a bird’s-eye view” of himself with his friends. “It was a different point of view for me.”

That aligns with Dancer’s mission with Art for the Sky, for students to see themselves as part of something bigger. “Everyone is equal. They are all just one pixel. No one is better than anyone else," he said.