A Colorful School Community Builder

It was a fun and colorful way to end the 2024-25 school year at Westerly Creek Elementary School in Central Park.

For the fifth year, students, and some parents, wore new white t-shirts which didn’t stay white for long. They traveled the three-quarter-mile route around the school, getting doused with colored chalk dust along the way.

By the time the racers reached the finish line for the final toss of color, they sported colorful hues of blue and orange and green. Race watchers also got a dose of fine chalk dust thanks to a brisk afternoon wind.

Tracy Robert is the chair of the event. She’s the mother of two students at the school and said the run is great for community building and as a fundraiser for the school PTA. The shirts cost $25 each. There was no charge for the color. Robert said the students always have a lot of fun at the color run and some also take the run seriously.

“It’s funny, because I completely underestimated how fast the kids were last year. It was a real race to them. I thought they’d sort of jog along. No, these kids are in it to win it.” Robert said.

Students Collaborate to Create Works of Art

The program is called Crazy Creatures, an art collaboration between Northfield High School, Inspire Elementary, and Denver Green School Southeast. For the past two years, high school students in the ceramics studio have worked with the younger students to turn their colorful crayon drawings into 3-D clay sculptures or “creatures.”

Jessica Story, visual arts and ceramics educator at Northfield, said the collaboration is a positive community building project and with two years of projects completed, she hopes to continue the program and expand it next year.

Story has a lesson plan for the high school students focusing on “connections and inspiration,” learning to recreate the younger students’ artwork while maintaining the pureness and simplicity of the original work. The finished clay sculptures are given to the elementary school artists along with their original drawings.

A Local Artist Focuses on “The Good in Simplicity” After Hiking in Spain

In March and April, Central Park resident and artist Carol Fennell and her husband, Karl, took 28 days to walk approximately 500 miles on the Camino de Santiago. They completed the hike in honor of Carol’s young nephew, Davis, who was diagnosed with a missing chromosome which may impede his future ability to walk.

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage starts in various locations across Portugal, France, and Spain, where all paths converge on Santiago de Compostela. The town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain, is considered the “edge of the earth” and to be the holy pinnacle of the Camino as it is home to the tomb of St. James. The Fennells took the route starting in the Pyrenees mountains in southern France before crossing into Spain.

To honor Davis, the couple brought a stone and placed it at the Cruz de Ferro, or Iron Cross, as is tradition when walking the Camino. “We kept him in our intentions and walked for him,” Carrol said.

After returning to Denver, Carol feels driven to use more recycled materials and keep her art more minimal. “The trails taught me about the good in simplicity,” she said. Carol wants her art to “reflect on the stillness” going forward from their journey on the Camino.