The Alternative Press

In Summit we are blessed with many good things.  We are very lucky to have fine people here in town and it's from these fine people that many of the good things emanate, including the fact that there is an active public art program in town that is 100% supported by voluntary contributions.  http://arts.cityofsummit.org/  

Now I want to share with you something else which I think really speaks to the quality and intelligence of our public schools and the men and women who run them - as well as the basic goodness of the students.   Assistant Principal Tony Akey and I have been running a test program of public art in the High School.  Tony has done all the hard work of acquiring funding from the the Summit Educational Foundation (Thank you Debra T!) as well as coordinating with students and teachers and keeping the artists happy, as well.  I know from my own experience that this is not as easy as it sounds.

In any case I recently introduced Tony to a very fine artist name Dan Bertelli http://danmikebert.com/danmikebert.com/Welcome.html  Before I knew it Tony had gotten all the necessary approvals and authorized Dan to go ahead with the installation, which was done on a recent Sunday. Dan and his brother and I assisted in the install and they also made a neat video of it which can be seen on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VUva1hINk

Imagine our disappointment when we learned that the beautiful installation had been vandalized in the small hours of Sunday night and there would be no spontaneous smiles from students and parents as they arrived at school Monday morning.  It was interesting to note that the vandals did have an expressive side and that there were some iconic elements to their graffiti work. (see one photo included here but Fernand Leger, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat all come to mind.)  But on balance it was a disappointment until the students and Tony and Dan got together and decided to make lemonade from lemons and the sculptures were repainted and a formal opening was held this past Monday in the Summit High School Library (see Peter Kane's excellent story  http://thealternativepress.com/articles/art-triumphs-over-evil-summit-high-art-students-re--2)  To top it off it's been learned that the vandals were students from another school.

This is what makes Summit special!