Spread across half a dozen long tables the art room at Bellows Springs Elementary School, , thousands of tiny tiles are arranged in the shape of kid-friendly foods, from tacos and pizza to kabobs and corn.
"We have foods from China, we have foods from Mexico," said fifth grader Griffin Haberern. "And it kind of just shows that there's a lot of different people and cultures here at our school."
Students in all grades at the Ellicott City school contributed to the creation of 14 mosaic food portraits that will be installed in the school's cafeteria in mid-June. With help from their art instructors, the students chose the foods to be featured, created and painted the tiles, then arranged, adhered and grouted the tiles into place.
"The point of it is to bring everyone in Bellows Springs together," said fifth-grader Madisyn Jones. "And the reason why we're putting them up in the cafeteria is because that's where all the students go for lunch, and in assemblies, that's where everybody — pre-K through fifth — we're all sitting their watching the presentation.
"And we can look up at the mosaic and say, oh, the fifth-graders did this, the fourth-graders did this, and it can make our day more brighter," said the 11-year-old.
Bellows Springs art teacher Rebecca Rubock said she had wanted to create an art installation for the cafeteria for a couple of years; the wall where the mosaics will hang has been covered with cinder block since an addition was made to the school a few years ago.
"I immediately thought of food because of the location, and I wanted it to be something that really connects our community together," Rubock said. "Food is something that everyone has in common. Eating a meal with friends and family provide people with those special moments where they talk and connect to one another, just like our students do when they eat their lunches in the cafeteria."
Rubock and part-time art teacher Pari Papaoiannu had their students write down and vote on 14 foods they wanted to see represented in the mosaics, including their favorite vegetables, fruits, breakfast and dinner foods, desserts and ethnic foods.
"We have students from Puerto Rico and El Salvador, and then we have students from the Middle East, too, like Iranian families, and even families from Afghanistan," Rubock said. "We all eat different things at home, depending on our backgrounds and cultures. It was really fun to kind of see the students talk about where they're from and what they eat.
"I had to Google some of the foods they mentioned; it was interesting," she said.
Fifth-grader Uswah Zaidi, whose family is from Pakistan, said there is more than one type of food shown in the mosaic that she eats at home.
"If we have people over, for the kids sometimes we order pizza," she said. "Or sometimes if we're going to an outside party, or stuff like that, we can have some kabobs, and stuff like that, and just some ordinary things like cheese grapes."
The two art teachers sketched out the top 14 foods selected by students and enlarged and drew them onto plywood panels measuring 2 feet by 2 feet, onto which the students would place the tiles.
They wanted to get as many students, staff and parents involved, so Rubock and Papaoiannu had the kindergartners, first graders and second graders cut the more than 18,000 tiles required for the mosaic panels from wet clay. These same students then painted the tiles with shiny ceramic glazes, based on the colors needed to evoke the different foods.
"They love it, because we're telling them what they're working on, giving them the images, and they're saying, 'Oh I made all the watermelon colors!'" Rubock said. "They feel like they've all had a huge part in it."
The school's artist in residence, Suzanne Herbert-Forton, then helped the art teachers instruct the older students in third, fourth and fifth grades on assembling the tiles into mosaics, which required adhesion and eventually grouting, a somewhat messy process.
The students had to spread thick layers of black grout onto their glossy, colorful creations, then scrape and wipe it away using Popsicle sticks and sponges — all the while making sure there was enough of the goopy material remaining between the tiles.
"We're putting a little bit of black stuff into the background to make it more amazing and seem more realistic," Madisyn said.
Alongside Rubock, Papaoiannu and Herbert-Forten, other staff and parents have been helping the students throughout the project to create, paint, cut and place the tiles, Rubock said. One father who wasn't able to help out during the school day measured the spaces in the cafeteria where the mosaics will hang and supplied and cut all of the required plywood panels.
Other families donated plates and silverware for a larger panel that will feature more abstract art than the other, smaller mosaics.
"The students haven't quite started with that one yet," Rubock said. "It'll look like a type of space, galaxy scene, abstract with swirling lines of forks and spoons."
As they grouted the smaller food panels, Madisyn, Griffin and Uswah agreed that the best part of the entire project has been collaborating on it with their fellow students.
"Working on it with my friends was the funnest part," 10-year-old Uswah said. "And just building it and looking at the different types of food was just awesome."