Students and teachers of the Omer Arrondell and Clair St. Maximin schools in French Quarter have put together a creative, detailed and ENORMOUS art display – a regional map that’s made of tens of thousands of bottle caps!
The huge art project is on display at the entrance of Clair St. Maximin School, and shows the Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, and even some coastal countries of South America! From a short distance, you might not even realise that the little “pixels” are actually lots and lots of bottle caps – more than 90,000 bottle caps were collected for the art project.
“Pixels” are what you call the lighted/coloured dots of a computer or TV screen that together compose an image – and that’s exactly what the different coloured bottle caps do! Look closely. All the coastlines are white; some borders are shown by using different colours, and some places have all of the colours together. Each country/island is also labelled (in French).
That’s a fun way to learn about geography, art, teamwork, planning and problem solving. It’s also a nice way to reuse plastic items and turn them into something beautiful.
Bottle caps, in particular, are very, very hard to recycle. In fact, most recycling factories all over the world don’t even accept the bottle caps. They often end up jamming up the machines, and usually end up still being dumped into the landfill.
And we all know by now that plastic does not decompose (break down and become part of the soil again) the way other materials do. A plastic bottle cap can take about 450 years to decompose! Many of them also end up in the ocean, and with sunlight at the surface, they do tend to degrade more quickly there.
However, they don’t really “break down” as in disappear, they just “break apart” into tiny pieces. The process releases toxic chemicals, and the tiny pieces get eaten by sea animals. Even whole caps can be eaten by sea animals, as well as birds. This is obviously bad for them and can even kill them.
The artistic project was in fact initiated as a way to increase environmental awareness, Ms. Joëlle Petchy-Dorville of Clair St. Maximin School told The KIDS Herald. It started in the school year 2017-2018, just after Hurricane Irma. It was an idea of teacher Elodie Mondesir and then teacher Sabas took the lead, along with the students of the two schools.
The project took lots of collaboration and learning. Artist Jimmy “Mash” Sabas drew the map, and cut all of the plywood, explaining the workshop techniques to students along the way. He also finished the work of each island, with the different coloured bottle caps.
Around 600 students, ages 6 through 12, collected bottle caps, while it was up to the older students (some 400 children ages 8 through 12) to stick them into the display.
Besides what the students were able to collect, the Matouba bottle factory in Guadeloupe assisted in providing bottle caps for the project. A major project partner was the organisation AUDAS-ASP in Guadeloupe. Other supporters and contributors were Suki Supermarket, Orleans Hardware, Compagnie des Iles du Nord (CIN), The Collectivité of St. Martin, Claire Javois and the Carry Le Rouais' merchants, Association ZEP des Iles du Nord, teachers of both schools, other workers at Clair St. Maximin School.
What’s next? The students have already started another bottle-cap art project, which displays a strong message: “Stop Plastic Pollution”. It’s part of “Aire Marine Educative”, which aims to promote environmental awareness amongst the youngsters at Clair St. Maximin School.
The regional map project will be on display on the school grounds of Clair St. Maximin through June, where the public is welcome to view it. It might even be temporarily displayed in Marigot!
