Ambitious Art Students Turn Powell High School Into A 3D Museum

POWELL — There’s a wait list to get into Powell High School art teacher Jim Gilman’s classes, and walking around the school, it’s easy to see why.

The unconventional program incorporates taxidermy, large-scale sculpture and other hands-on projects that have turned the school into a student-led three-dimensional art museum.

From a space shuttle to a steam locomotive, a dragon to a B-17 Flying Fortress bursting through a wall, there’s something to see in nearly every corner of the school.

“If I had to say one thing, Powell High School is just so amazing because of all the opportunities that they give us,” said sophomore Cambree Dicks in a video about the art program. “When other schools come for sports, they walk in and the first thing that they're seeing is the Panther, or they're coming into the pods and they're seeing all these big artwork displays.

“It's just so cool, because that's what sets Powell High School aside from other schools, is we have all this artwork and students are allowed this creative freedom. And it's just so amazing.”

The students take ownership in the projects and get to leave their mark on the school for years to come. Gilman said anyone who sees the displays has a predictable reaction. 

“There’s an amazement of how big everything really is and how engrossing everything is when you walk into a display room because it's just everywhere,” Gilman said. “I think that's pretty neat to watch.”

An Interesting Idea

It was a simple conversation during a school trip that changed the direction of the PHS art program.  

When the new PHS building was completed in 2008, it included several breakout areas, or open air spaces built into the hallways. Gilman wondered what could be done with all that space.

It was during a trip to the Wyoming State Art Symposium in 2012 that he found the answer. 

After the event, Gilman and students were eating dinner at Sanford’s and admiring the over-the-top decor. 

“At Sanford's they have crazy stuff all over the place, and we were looking at all the airplane models, and I had a couple of students say, ‘We should do this in our school,’” he said. “I was like, ‘Let's do this.’ So we went back and we decided to build a biplane, and that kind of started it.”

It was a decision that not only revitalized Gilman’s teaching career, it also changed the perception of art for many students.

“I think it reinvigorated my career in that I was kind of stuck in that rut of just doing the same thing every year, traditional artwork, all year long,” he said. “But the way that I teach now, the trial-and-error part and problem-solving is so fascinating to the students and myself.

“Every day we go in there and have a new problem that we have to solve and we have to figure out how we're going to do it.”

It Begins

Not long after that discussion at the restaurant, Gilman and the art students created their first large-scale project, a World War I biplane.

“We basically took plans from online and scaled them to what we wanted to do,” he said. “It was 14 feet wide by 13 feet long, half the scale of an actual Sopwith Camel.”

Gilman decided it was something he wanted to continue with and over the next few years students continued to work on projects. This included a dragon skeleton and Viking longboat. 

However, with total buy-in from his students, projects continued to grow, and with the addition of vocational art classes, focus shifted to creating large displays encompassing the entire school year.

In his vocational art class, the project is the main focus with a few smaller units on subjects like taxidermy (also incorporated into some displays). He also has several students in advanced art who help with the work.

“Mr. Gilman is a really great teacher,” sophomore Paige Sanders says in the video. “He really goes into the little details, and he's really picky about everything that you draw, you paint, you make, because it makes us better as artists. He has visions, and he knows how to make them come to life.”

Students in the class brainstorm ideas for the displays, but Gilman said he also receives input from PHS staff members as well as those in the community who have become invested in the projects.

The only stipulation is it needs to fit the theme of the area where it will be placed. 

Pieces And Parts

The projects are all modular, as they learned quickly that building the structures in one piece wasn’t feasible. 

“We built a stagecoach that is an 80% size stagecoach in 2015, maybe 2016,” Gilman said. “It was one of the first projects we worked on and built as one big, huge thing, and it was so big and heavy that it was tough to move around and get it into a display. From there, we decided that we need to make these modular.”

They also discovered the hard way that the pieces for each project must be able to fit through the classroom door, as the fuselage for the spaceship wouldn’t make it out in its original form.

“So now when we start building an airplane or something we break it down into pieces, and then the pieces can be added together once it's up,” he said. “A lot of times, we'll never even see the final product until it's actually up in the air and hanging.” 

The structures are created mainly out of plywood, with a central beam and rib frames reinforced with stringers to keep them as light as possible.

The students often used 2-inch-thick insulation foam that can be shaved to fit the shape needed. From there they create the skin on a drawing board and form it around the creations. 

“Everything is about reducing weight and making sure everything's light,” Gilman said. “Most of the projects don't weigh more than 200 pounds. When you look at them, they look a lot heavier, but they just aren't.”

After several years of creating the large pieces, Gilman says many of the structural components, such as from an airplane to airplane, are similar. But when they’re designing a completely new piece like the dragon, it’s a fun challenge.

“I don't have the answers, and they don't have the answers, so we have to talk through it,” he said. “Here's what we're envisioning. How do we do it in the lightest way possible and the most realistic way possible and most believable, and then add an artistic flair to it in some way?”

Flak bursts in air? Bubbles rising from a submarine? Propeller blades that look like they're spinning? All problems the students have had to solve. 

Gilman said many who’ve taken the class also pass on what they’ve learned to incoming students.

“I had a kid who graduated and ran his own business building houses,” Gilman said. “He had a snow day one day, and he came in and worked the whole day with the kids on the locomotive.”

Divide And Conquer

To make sure all the different pieces get done by the end of the school year, Gilman puts up a list of tasks that need completed on the project and students work together in teams to achieve them. 

“I let them choose parts of the project that they want to work on,” he said. “So, they're allowed to say, ‘Hey, I want to go work on the engine for the B-17.’ After three weeks, we sit down and critique. And then we start a new part of the project.”

Along with the larger pieces there are also murals painted on walls to fit the themes, as well as smaller pieces. Look closely and you may spot Marvin the Martian or Snoopy flying his doghouse.

The students are gaining real-world experience incorporating math, science and even some history.

Many of the projects include animation or other elements that require assistance from teachers and students in welding, CADD or robotics classes, so communication is key. 

“This class has really made me consider pursuing some sort of degree in the art field, whether it's taxidermy or whether it's oil painting,” said senior Danica Bobick in the video. “But it also really has helped me learn other things and open, I would say, other paths that I didn't know that I was leaning towards, and that's a really good thing when you're in high school.” 

So Much To See

With eight displays around the school there is a lot to see.

Outside Gilman’s art room is a space that featured some taxidermy students have done, including a grizzly bear and wolf. There’s also a locomotive with moving wheels heading across a track, as well as the stagecoach.

“I had a student who had a whole idea for it in his head and vision for [the steam engine], and so we started talking about it and adding from there,” he said. 

Then there’s the plane room.

It features an F-22 Raptor, the Sopwith Camel biplane, a  B-17 Flying Fortress and the planned F-47 sixth-generation fighter. There’s also a flight control tower.

The next room has a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, as well as a model of the White House and Washington Monument.

Keep walking and there’s the Mission to Mars display, which includes a SpaceX Super Heavy rocket and what the students call a space tractor — a John Deere tractor made to look like it would be working on Mars. 

“If we're going to go to Mars, how do we sustain life on Mars?” Gilman said. “It’s going to be agricultural-based and mining-based, much like our own community, so that was kind of the theme for that particular display.”

In another section is the smoke jumpers display, which has a fire bomber and smoke jumpers coming out of the ceiling. There’s also taxidermy such as bobcats, pheasants, elk and otters.

“So, we have a hill in that one and it is on fire, and the smoke jumpers are coming down to put out the fire and the fire bomber is dropping retardant on it,” Gilman said. “And then we have a watchtower that we based off the Sheep Mountain Watch Tower in the Bighorns.”

A little farther down is a space shuttle that is one-seventh scale. There’s also a fictitious Russian satellite that is in reference to the movie “Space Cowboys.” 

“When I say one-seventh scale, it's 17 feet long and 13 feet wide,” Gilman said. “It's a massive, massive display.

“My youngest son was in robotics at that time, and he was our electrical engineer for that project, and he built the system for making the doors open and close.”

Then there’s a 30-foot long German Type VII submarine, as well as two Liberty ships, one of which is upside down and sinking.

“On the murals there is a German submarine off in the corner and a British ship dropping mines,” Gilman said. “There are mines floating in the sky, or the sea, above the submarine, and survivors of the Liberty ship in rafts.”

Around the corner is the dragon display which includes a one-third scale Viking ship and a dragon that is 35 feet long with a massive wingspan.

It has a “Viking skeleton-looking zombie creature” riding it, Gilman said. There’s also a Viking village, castle, second complete Viking ship and a partial third coming out of the wall.

After more than 10 years of large builds, Gilman and the students are running out of space.

In recent years they’ve gone back and added items to current displays. That included putting skin on the dragon a few years ago and adding the B-17 coming out of one wall.

“So that's kind of how the last couple years have gone,” he said. “We've taken areas that have already been worked and go back and add things that fit in that display.”

There are also a few individual projects including a Panther Macrobot in the commons area that’s 10 feet long and about 6 feet high. In the library sits a replica of Aslan, the lion from “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“This year we built the Panther to go out in the commons area,” he said. “The commons area might be another area where we eventually expand to.”

So Much Fun

Gilman said he doesn’t have a favorite display or piece, as each brings up memories of the group of students who worked on it. 

“There's so many different things that I love,” he said. “When I walk through it, I'm excited and think about the amount of problem solving that went into it that made it so much fun.”

It also reminds him of the students who stepped up to be leaders. 

“They take leadership into the projects and they're there in the morning when I get there, at lunch, during their class times and after school to work on them,” he said.

Each project costs about $4,000 that is completely funded from donations. The students also do a T-shirt fundraiser every year featuring pieces from the displays.

Gilman does updates throughout the year with pictures on the Powell High School Art Facebook page, but he says those who see it all in person are amazed by the scope and amount of detail.

They give many tours, whether it's groups of international students from Northwest College, faculty from other schools or most recently Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder last month.

“The expressions when people come through, there's lots of, ‘Oh my gosh, I can't believe this,’” he said. “My friends that have been in for tours have told me they’re in amazement of how big everything really is and how engrossing everything is.”