Forget lockers. Jacobs' students decorate desks

In Community Unit District 300 this year, art and education are colliding in the form of desks that students and local artists have fashioned into works of art.

As part of a project called Desks on Parade, more than 25 artists are giving voice to their artistic vision on the desktops, seats and seatbacks of 19 1960s-era high school desks.

The project is a fundraiser that will support the scholarships and awards given out to students and educators in the district each year by the District 300 Foundation.

"All the money that we raise all year long gets put back into the schools through all of this grant money," said Linda Keys, a volunteer with the foundation.

More than a dozen District 300 students from all three high schools -- Jacobs, Dundee-Crown and Hampshire -- are participating.

The largest contingent is the 10 students in Tisha Ellis' AP Art class at Jacobs. The class has spent more than a month designing three desks, on top of the extensive portfolio each student must prepare for the class.

"It was overwhelming to think of how much work our group had to finish, and adding to that," Ellis said.

One of the groups in Ellis' class is working on desk it's calling "Lichtenscream," a fusion of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and the comic-book influenced art of Roy Lichtenstein.

"We liked both of the artists, and we wanted to combine their art together," said Jacobs senior Kate Phillips, one of the three artists working on the desk. "We're trying to combine this fine art with a comic book style."

Using acrylic paint, the artists have reproduced the famous image of the screaming figure on the desktop and on the seat, accented with little comic-book-style dots and speech bubbles.

Another group of students in the class are re-engineering the desk. When they're done dismantling the desk and putting it back together, it will be in the shape of a student poised to enter the next phase of her life.

"We pretty much thought about being in school and it being chaotic, so we thought we'd disassemble it and assemble it," said Jacobs senior Meaghan McMahan, one of the artists on the project. "It's just something else to add to the load, but it's a cool concept, and it's for a good cause."

Students in the Industrial Arts program are helping take apart and reassemble the desks. They're also designing portable wooden bases the desks will be displayed on.

The desks will be unveiled at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Westfield Community School. The artists will be on hand to discuss their work.

From Wednesday to April 25, the desks will be on display at sites throughout the district. A complete list of sites where you view the desks is on the foundation's Web site, www.d300foundation.org.

On April 25, you can see the desks at the foundation's annual Spring Gala at 6:30 p.m. in the Raue Center in Crystal Lake.

Finally, you'll have a chance to bid on the desks at some point -- just check the foundation's Web site.

Volunteers from the foundation say they're excited to see what students and the other local artists have come up with.

"It'll by really exciting what they do with them -- if they're even recognizable as desks," Keys said.