highlights

Highland Middle School

Highland Middle School, in Blackhawk School District (Beaver County), is the site of our longest partnership with Art Teacher Leslie Kunkel. Highland Middle School began hosting PCA&M residencies in 2003-2004 with Teaching Artist/Puppet Maker Cheryl Capezzuti

Ms. Kunkel, who retired after the 2023-24 school year, was a passionate supporter of bringing novel arts experiences into the classroom, and a trusting collaborator who fostered thoughtful, multi-year partnerships with her visiting Teaching Artists. After hosting Cheryl Capezzuti for many years, Ms. Kunkel worked with Teaching Artist/Ceramicist Becky Keck, to create ceramic tile mosaics using colorful tile pieces that were stamped, embossed, glazed, and fired on-site at the school. She then worked with Teaching Artist/Interdisciplinary Artist Tom Sarver to create several beautiful installations utilizing scrap wood, discarded furniture, and colorful, patterned painting.

In 2018, Ms. Kunkel began collaborating with Teaching Artist/Metalsmith Lindsay Huff, creating a series of hanging sculptures, mobiles, and installations throughout the school building utilizing a myriad of repurposed materials. Early projects exclusively used scrap metals including pennies, electrical wiring, roofing copper, and old building keys. During the pandemic, Huff and Ms. Kunkel pivoted to art materials that could be utilized through virtual teaching, creating mobiles from scrap Venetian blinds and rivets in 2020-21 and using repurposed steel springs, wire, beads, and copper coil to create a collaborative installation that was installed in the school courtyard in 2022. In 2022-23 and 2023-24, the pair returned to working with students to expand on their initial school atrium hanging installation, adding chains of “visual poetry” amongst other strands created by students in 2018 and 2019. These later iterations of the project included scrap wood, etched brass, and recycled notebook springs (saved by a like-minded custodian at the school for us)!

In addition to her eye for collecting interesting materials, Huff reflected: Ms. Kunkel was a real inspiration in her commitment to community-building and to inclusion. Each year, she would share out our project dates and invite teachers and administrators to stop by and to participate. Not only were other educators demonstrating their support of the arts to students, but they were also having fun creating alongside the students. Ms. Kunkel also regularly invited the students in the PRIDE program, which included Life Skills Support, Autistic Support, and Emotional Support students (depending on their schedules) and their paraprofessionals to the art room to create both personal projects and pieces to add to the installations. My favorite parts were always watching the visiting students surprising themselves in what they were able to accomplish (hammering a name into a piece of copper or holding a torch to melt glass enamel onto a pendant) and in seeing how the art students would help support and guide the visiting students through the different stages of the art processes. I learned so much in collaborating with Ms. Kunkel and I wish her the best in her well-deserved retirement from teaching.