Pasted to the wall just outside of the library is the first art piece of a new club at South, the Public Art Collaborative, according to English Teacher Scott Glass, the club’s sponsor. Glass explained that their first creation, a collage, is made using entirely priority mail stickers, playing on the idea of the club’s own priorities.

“We decided [on] something that played on the idea of using priority mail stickers,” Glass said. “This club is all about trying to prioritize artistic expression within the South community.”

The stickers, which together spell out, “Prioritize Expression” and “Public Art Collaborative”, were drawn and organized by 11 students. All club members worked individually on 10 to 12 stickers and three in-person students worked together on the main artistic statement. Glass expressed that the stickers are creative representations of whatever the students want to express.

“Most of them are abstract designs, some of them are just color,” Glass said. “It looks chaotic, but that was the intent.”

Anyone from the South community can contribute, explained senior Michael Jeon, a member of the Public Art Collaborative. Glass and other club members are working to make it possible for remote students to be able to contribute as well.

“I encourage those on the fence to take that leap of faith and to create something

unique,” Jeon said. “It doesn’t have to follow any guideline. Make it yours, and maybe you will learn something about yourself in the process.”

“I’m trying to figure out a way to make this accessible to the kids that are still remote, perhaps putting a JPEG online so that kids can work on it digitally, and we can print those out on card stock and put it up,” Glass said. “We want to make it so that anyone who wants to be involved throughout the GBS community can be involved.”

The club, which is still accepting members, is about expressing oneself artistically, Glass said. Glass affirmed that art, in all its forms, is crucial to the human experience.

“Creating art and self-expression, whether it’s visual art, playing music, performing or writing, is a critical human activity,” Glass said. “It’s always been something that we do, [but] some people just decide that making art is not for them. That couldn’t be further from the truth, expressing ourselves in artistic ways is for everyone.”