District 300 students to create skateboard art

Students from three Algonquin-area high schools will give new life to old skateboards by turning them into artwork.

A group of 60 advanced art students from the three Community Unit District 300 high schools will travel this week to Fargo Skateboarding park in DeKalb to learn how to create wearable art from recycled skateboards.

Students will work with DeKalb-based artist and skateboarder Ariel Ries Thursday and Friday, learning how to carve and sculpt the multicolored wooden deck layers of old skateboards into unique jewelry pieces. Typically, skateboards are made from seven plies of maple, each dyed a different color and arranged in different ways.

Ries, an avid skater, studied metalworking, sculpture and business in college. She opened the skate park in the old Fargo Theatre built in 1929, where she gives skateboarding lessons, teaches how to build ramps and sells skateboards and gear. She collects broken skateboards for art, channeling proceeds from sales to support skateboarding in the Midwest.

She will guide District 300 students on using a variety of tools, such as drill presses, hole saws and an oscillating sanders, to cut shapes from the wood and sculpt them into wearable rings exposing the multicolored layers.

The project is funded through a roughly $3,000 grant from the District 300 Foundation for Educational Excellence, which has awarded nearly $500,000 in local grants supported through private donations and fundraisers.

Hampshire High School art teacher Laura LaRue, who is administering the grant, said getting students out of the classroom and into the environment of working artists is invaluable.

"One hundred percent of our students' understanding of art making and the design thinking process exists within the construct of the classroom environment," LaRue said. "To truly see themselves as an artist and understand that they, too, are engaging in an experience larger than themselves, it is beneficial to leave the school environment and participate in the world at large. Having a real world experience will give them practical knowledge and a framework for 21st century learning that is applicable beyond their high school years."

Dundee-Crown, Hampshire and Jacobs high schools will display the art pieces students produce.

The education foundation has funded other student field trips, such as to an Elgin alpaca farm, to create artwork.

"The products that they came out with were just amazing," said Diane Magerko, performing and fine arts chairwoman for the education foundation. "It becomes part of their portfolio."