Painted stones bearing colorful, whimsical, mysterious, and symbolic images suddenly turned up in four different places around the world — perched on a stone wall in Westover’s woods, tucked amid playground equipment in Da Nang, Vietnam, and popping up around the streets of Amherst, Massachusetts, and halfway around the world in a neighborhood of Beijing, China.
The stones were created by four students in art teacher Sara Poskas’s “Exploration in Painting,” a course this fall that she described in the curriculum guide as one designed for students “who may not previously have been able to fit in a Drawing or Painting elective but would like to learn to paint.”
For the painted stones assignment, Sara first gave a series of written exercises to the four students in her hybrid class — Grace Brown, a senior in Watertown; Morry Ajao, a junior in Amherst; Nicole Nguyen, a junior in Da Nang; and Mata Qin, a sophomore in Beijing.
“Even before I told them about painting the stones,” Sara explained, “I asked them to think about a memory of having stumbled across something unexpectedly, and then to write about how that experience made them feel — did it bring them joy or was it disturbing?” In this assignment, Sara said, she wanted the students to explore the concept of discovery as part of the artistic process — both for the artist and for the viewer.
In fact, Sara’s use of the stones in the art assignment was the result of one of her own memories of an unexpected discovery.
“I spent the summer working on my art curriculum,” Sara explained, “and when we went into lockdown because of the pandemic and conditions were intensified, I would go out for walks into the woods near Westover to take a break.”
While on her walks, Sara kept coming across painted stones in several locations this summer – on the Bridle Trail in Middlebury, in Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury, and even in a woodland area on a trip to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. They reminded Sara of her first encounter years before with similar stones when she and her then five-year-old daughter Isabelle (now a Westover senior) visited Three Rivers Park in Woodbury. Both of them were captivated by the stones — Sara told Isabelle they had been painted by a fairy — and they brought them home and put them on their mantle.
So, after all those encounters, Sara said, “I realized it would be a good project to do with my students because rocks are easily accessible — and it would save them money on art supplies for the class.”
But when Sara first told her class about their assignment, both Mata and Nicole were initially uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the stones they had painted in public places. Their initial reaction, Sara recalled with a laugh, was: “What is she asking us to do?” Neither student had ever heard of artists in their countries displaying their art in a seemingly random location.
“This is not the first time I painted a rock,” Mata said, “but it is the first time I put a rock outside or hid one to be found. We just don’t put our artwork out there like that.” As she got used to the concept, however, she realized “it was interesting to think about where to put them and what other people would think when they saw them.”
So, despite their initial reluctance, both students followed through and Sara praised them for “going out of their comfort zones. I was impressed by how much thought all of the students put into the assignment,” she added, both in their artistic efforts and in where they chose to place their finished stones.
During a recent virtual class session, the students shared with Sara and each other photos of their stones and the spaces where they had placed them.
For her stones, Nicole painted designs that featured crescent moons, clouds, animals, and flowers in a variety of bright, contrasting colors. She placed her stones around a neighborhood playground’s swing, slide, rocking horse, seesaw, and other equipment. “It would be amazing if a kid goes down the slide and just finds it,” Nicole said. She placed one stone on a spinning wheel. “My sister likes to play on this one,” Nicole added, “so maybe she could find it and give it back to me.”
For her assignment, Mata chose to celebrate the environment in her subject matter, painting very different images on her four stones — a rabbit, a duck’s webbed foot, a star, and a triangular spiral. She then decided to place her stones in various locations — the one bearing the rabbit was left in a construction zone, the rock with the spiral pattern near a crossroads, the stone with a star on a manhole cover, and the one with a duck’s foot near a flower nursery — to bring her images of the natural world into very urban settings. Mata hopes passersby will be surprised and delighted at seeing her painted stones in these unexpected places.
Mata discussed what the duck’s foot symbolized to her. When people see a duck swimming, she explained, it appears to be moving effortlessly across the surface of the water, but underneath its feet are paddling furiously to push forward. “It is working hard,” she said, “but no one knows how hard it is working.”
For her assignment, Grace painted flowers on nine stones and shells that had come from as far away as Florida and Colorado, as well as from locations around Connecticut.
“I chose these bright colors that are not commonly found in nature — orange, red, bright white,” Grace explained, so that her flowers would appear to belong in nature “but also were supposed to pop out at you. I wanted to make them as loud and as vibrant as possible to make it a jarring experience to see them — but in a good way.”
“I placed them in the Westover Woods because Westover is a major part of my life,” Grace said. But she didn’t want them to be in one of its more public spaces, so she found a rock wall in the woods and — unlike her classmates in their assignments — grouped her stones close together.
“They are unified in color and shape,” Grace said, “but they are meant to be together so you can also notice their subtle and not-so-subtle differences. If I had spread them around, they wouldn’t have the same cumulative effect.”
For her assignment, Morry drew inspiration from the word “sonder,” a neologism created by the writer John Koenig on his website, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Koenig defines sonder as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”
“It has a lot to do with empathy,” Morry explained, “and the understanding that there is more than just you in the world.”
Morry’s six rocks included painted images that represent various forms of connection everyone shares, such as a skull to symbolize death and loss, and lanterns in a blue sky (echoing Van Gogh’s Starry Night) to symbolize dreams and aspirations. She placed her stones in various locations around her hometown of Amherst.
In creating their artwork, the students also were reminded of their own connections with one another, even though they were working in their homes far away from their classmates.
“The project unites us because we were all doing the same things,” Grace said. “I was staying up at night to paint these rocks and I knew my classmates were doing the same thing. But on another level, each person had a different thing they wanted to say.” Looking at one another’s painted stones, Grace added, “gave me insights into my classmates’ minds.”
For Sara, this assignment in a sense captures the unique situation the world is facing today.
“I think this is a project for our times,” she said. Because of the pandemic, “a lot of people are finding themselves at home and are losing faith and hope. This kind of art project may bring joy to a person who finds one of our painted stones.”
