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Sonja Kipper, Waterford
3/11/2009 3:57:53 PM
At Waterford Union High School, stained glass panels adorn 19 of the school’s windows, the product of six years of work students have put in under individualized art study in Sonja Kipper’s art classes.
There are panels displayed at WUHS’s special education office, the student services office, the main office and the main student entrance. There’s even a panel at the district office. And for Kipper, more prime spots are calling out for specialized stained glass art to liven up the school day.
“There’s plenty of windows left,” she said with a laugh.
Kipper began having students produce stained glass panels six years ago as part of their individualized art studies. Kipper has been an art teacher for 32 years – all but one of them at Waterford – and helps students through six to eight weeks of stained glass work each fall as part of their semester-long individualized art study.
In the independent study, students typically contract with Kipper to work on pieces. In 2003, Kipper decided to have independent study students collaborate on the panels, which can be more than four feet in length and feature as many as 300 pieces of individual stained glass.
“I wanted to challenge them,” said Kipper, who also teaches pottery, sculpture, arts metals and crafts. “I see this as commissioned artwork. When you do a commissioned piece, you work with the client to determine what they want.”
Students work with the staff of the department in which the panels will be permanently installed. This past fall, students finalized panels for the school’s special education office. In the initial stages of the process, students brainstormed ideas to be featured on the panels – such as a therapy ball and the Special Olympics logo – and ran them past the staff for feedback.
In the special education office, four panels depict different facets of special education, from early childhood to elementary, middle and high school and on to post-secondary learning.
Trisha Savignac, now a student at Carroll University in Waukesha, worked on the special education office panels before she graduated. She become so proficient in stained glass work that her parents helped her create a stained glass studio for her at home to continue her art.
“It was a lot of hard work,” Savignac said. “It was fun, but a lot of hard work.”
Adam Hoefs, a senior at WUHS, worked this past fall on finishing the special education office panels. Not only did Hoefs take part in those panels, he designed a Bucky Badger panel for a table that he created in woods class during the same semester.
Hoefs, demonstrating the process for prepping the glass pieces and sandblasting etched words into them, said students such as himself go through a learning curve from taking an initial art foundations class all the way to their independent study covering the panels.
“At first you’re kind of nervous,” Hoefs said, scoring a piece of glass. “But then you get it.”
For most of the time the stained glass panel program has been running, Kipper has received help from volunteer Andy Corrao, a stained glass artist whose children went to WUHS. But recently Kipper has been running the program herself.
The panel program is open to students – only seniors – who have been through the art foundations class as well as stained glass and advanced stained glass courses.
The panels are a way for students who might not be on a sports team or other school activity to give back to their school.
“They’ve left a part of themselves here,” Kipper said. “This is their contribution to the school.”
Some people in the community have brought up the idea of having students do stained glass panels for places outside of the school. Kipper said that, for now, she is having her students focus on leaving a legacy at WUHS.
“We’ve got to fill our windows first,” added Savignac.
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