Back to Barrel List

The Future is Green
Woodford County Middle School, 8th Grade

Barrel Location: Life Adventure Center, Woodford County

Artist Bio:  Woodford County Middle School 8th Grade Art Students
Laura Burchett
Nicole Lake
Shannon Hughes
Li Jackson
Sam Rusher
Megan Langston
Shelby Kratt
Lindsey Smith
Chad Hunter
Chad Goodrich
Meagan Darby
Julie Coy

Artist’s Interpretation: Color, shape, size, and texture are morphological characters that identify plants.  Visual characters also suggest chemical properties. Learning about native plants and how they behave is foundational to new green-technology.

Educational experience:
The students learned that art can be persuasive and informative.  Art can create a sense of awareness in any discipline, especially science and the environment.
The Students:

• Researched and listed native plants
• Observed and sketched a variety of native plants
• Researched rain gardens and wrote about heir purpose
• Listened and discussed information about native plants/Griffith Woods, plant remediation, erosion, wet lands, and bio-fuel with a guest UK graduate student in biology.
• Observed how the Greeks painted designs on their vases and used their idea of patterns and narration ideas.
• Brain stormed ideas on how to create a design on a round surface
• Presented and completed rain barrel with interpretation and explanation to class peers with question and answer session.

Additional information:

• Plant/trees on the barrel include elm, pin oak, locust, goldenrod, butterfly weekd (milkweed), red clover, liverwart
• The back ground colors represent the sky, water, and earth

The top symbolizes a cross section of a leaf with vacuoles morphing into an airplane, factory, car and train to reporesent plants as a source of fuel.