Students in the News

Senior Amanda Rengli fits bus-pass pieces into the shape of a tree for the Edmonds-Woodway Art Club’s mixed-media mural.  In the background, seniors Mikey Moran and Matthew Allred cut bus passes into the shapes of leaves.

Up until this school year, Community Transit bus passes were in surplus at Edmonds-Woodway High School.

At the end of every month, the passes either went in the trash or were absentmindedly left somewhere on campus:  In class, at lunch, in the halls, on the ceiling.

“The bus passes were really pretty, just different colors and with shiny stickers on them, and so it was really sad that we were just throwing these away,” said senior Amanda Rengli, president of the school’s Art Club.  “So we thought, well, here’s an awesome [opportunity] to link community transit, recycling and art.”

The Art Club in collaboration with the Environment Club at Edmonds-Woodway is constructing a mural out of recycled bus passes.

“We were interested in doing something mixed media,” said senior Mikey Moran, secretary of the Art Club.  “So we’re using different mediums, like bus passes, instead of traditional mediums like paint and charcoal.”

In 2008, the clubs started a collection for expired bus passes.  Month by month, they were collecting green, purple, black, pink, orange and brown passes by the dozens.

The Art Club had plans of building a giant mural – 20 feet by 15 feet – to hang somewhere in the school, but then the flow of bus passes stopped.

Due to budget cuts, the Edmonds School District stopped offering Community Transit bus passes to Edmonds-Woodway students and instead hired school buses.

With just short of 200 bus passes, the Art Club was forced to rethink its plans for the mural. The mural is now going to be 40 inches by 32 inches.

The club is thinking of incorporating other mediums, like used gift cards, glass and broken mirrors if they find they need more than just bus passes to build the mural. 

Rengli sketched the design for the mural.  She drew a tree with a floating rose, rushing water, the sun and moon, and twinkling stars at its sides.

“We wanted to do something that would promote the environment, community transit and conservation,” she said.  “That’s sort of the theme of this project.”

Currently, the club is cutting and sorting the bus passes by color.  It’s a slow, slightly painful process using scissors, but they’re getting really excited about finishing the mural.

“Right now, I’m helping cut out the leaves for the tree,” said senior Matthew Allred, club treasurer.  “My fingers hurt a little.”

Rengli is fitting the bus-pass pieces onto a black mat, starting with the tree.  She said she wasn’t very optimistic about the project until recently because they don’t have very many colors to work with.
 
They have too much pink for the rose and no blue for the water, but they’ll improvise.  Rengli already plans to use a combination of green and purple for the water instead.

“It’s awesome that Art Club is working with mixed media,” said senior Sasha Hale, acting club vice president.  I think it’s [important] to get more mixed media out there so people can realize that art isn’t just painting or drawing.”

The Art Club plans to submit the mural to the Edmonds Arts Festival in May.