Fairbanks students piece together mosaic project

Woodriver Elementary School kindergartner Judy Reynoso and her father Ray look at the mosaic murals the students at the school in Fairbanks, Alaska have been working on Feb. 4, 2011, during an open house.

Flowers and bears, clouds and cabins, moose and eagles, birch trees and ravens — all are depicted in the spare detail of children's drawings, but with a twist. Each is rendered brightly in mosaic form with either tiny scraps of paper or glass.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Flowers and bears, clouds and cabins, moose and eagles, birch trees and ravens — all are depicted in the spare detail of children's drawings, but with a twist. Each is rendered brightly in mosaic form with either tiny scraps of paper or glass.

A dozen ofthe large, colorful mosaics brighten the walls of the Woodriver Elementary School Commons area.

Soon, four similar, 3-foot by 5-foot panels made of cut glass, glued and grouted to cement boards, will be permanently displayed above the school's front entrance.

The design sheets and boards are the work of Woodriver students, who crafted under the artistic eye of Fairbanks printmaker Sara Tabbert, who has been teaching and encouraging students in grades K-6 for the past three weeks as an artist-in-residence.

"I think this says this is a school that loves children," said Leslie Dolan, an extended learning teacher at Woodriver who assisted Tabbert during the three-week project. "It is not a commission of an artist's work but the work of the school children."

Tabbert concurs.

"The purpose of the program is not the