When 9-year-old Mae Linton first saw the Cache Valley bus featuring her and her classmates’ artwork, she felt like a celebrity.
“Somebody wants my autograph, like movie stars,” Linton said. “So, I thought like, that is pretty sick, wow.’ Then, I was like ‘that is freaking amazing. I get my artwork on a bus so that whoever takes that bus can look at my artwork and all my classmates, so they can say like ‘a child did that.’”
The soon-to-be fourth grader at Utah State University's Edith Bowen Laboratory School is just one of dozens of students who took part in creating art for a bus now visible at stops throughout the valley. Each year, the Art in Transit: From Schools to Community program invites teaching artists to different elementary schools in Utah to help students create art featured on a bus wrap. Program director Aurora Villa said this benefits both the students and the community.
“It’s kind of like a gallery on wheels going through your community,” Villa said. “I think, any art that you have in your community, makes the community stronger, makes people enjoy being there. We just feel better when we are around art when we engage in making art.”
This year, Villa invited Salt Lake City photographer David Hyams, who specializes in cyanotypes, a photographic printing process that uses UV light to create blue-toned images. The 2024 bus showcases cyanotypes from students at Edith Bowen Laboratory School and Lewiston Elementary in Cache Valley, and Bluff Elementary and Tse’ Bii’ Nidzisgai Elementary in Southern Utah.
Edith Bowen art teacher Lisa Saunderson has been creating cyanotypes with her students for four years. This technique involves placing objects on light-sensitive paper, blocking UV light to create silhouettes. After exposure, the paper is rinsed in water, turning the exposed areas cyan blue while the blocked areas remain white.
“It’s this sort of leap for students to conceive of really space and shape and the photographic process,” Saunderson said.
Her students used seashells, buttons, botanicals, seeds, and alphabet soup letters to create various elements on the bus wrap.
The magic of this artform, Saunderson said, is in its blend of art and science.
“When you develop it in the water, that is really exciting,” she said. “Because then they get to see, okay, the exposure comes out, they knock the materials, they slide them off the board. And it doesn’t look like much, but when it just crystallizes and comes into vision in the water, they’re really captivated. And they’re seeing chemical change happen before their eyes.”
Linton said she enjoyed the whole process, particularly designing her cyanotypes.
“You can just like, let your creativity flow," she said, "like ‘do I want an animal, or do I want to write somebody’s name on it, or do I just want to be crazy and fill up the entire page?’ So, you can just like, choose what you want to do with your art because it’s your art. It’s not anybody else’s art.”
