Sustainability. Collaboration. Design. Persistence.
Not many projects fold in all these lessons. The mural in John Jay Middle’s library certainly does. The 16-foot work was fabricated by the school’s Art Club over the past three years, one bottle cap at a time.
“It looks wonderful,” said art teacher and club advisor Jean Capuano, who had the vision for the installation, and worked alongside the students every step of the way. “The students who helped create it are so proud of it,” said instructional coach Melissa Brady. “I love it,” said librarian Jenn Useted.
This year’s eight graders began working on the mural when they were in sixth grade. The project’s story goes back even further.
“We began collecting bottle caps during COVID,” Capuano.
She recalls that students and teachers collected caps for two or three years. As the design came together, the club would put the call out for more orange caps, or more blue caps.
“I washed all of the caps in the dishwasher in the Home and Careers classrooms,” said Capuano. “Some of them were from peanut butter jars. I wanted to make sure no one had an allergic reaction.”
Members of the Art Club glued the bottle caps in place, following a process much like paint by numbers. “The glue wasn’t holding,” Capuano recalls. She and other teachers came in on their free time and screwed each bottle cap in place. One at a time.
The bright and textured mural fills an entire wall in a newly opened space in middle school library, above the graphic novels section. It looks like it was made to be there.
The story of the mural isn’t over yet. The student council is running a contest this fall for students to guess how many bottle caps are in the mural. What’s the answer? Capuano knows.