The Bay’s Bounty boots were sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth Bank and designed by Lancaster Middle School students and their art teacher Marilyn Sprouse.
It only took five weeks, a lot of uncomfortable bending positions, many coats of paint and a whole lot of cooperation for a class to create the story of the Bay’s Bounty Boots.
Lancaster Middle School art teacher Marilyn Sprouse was walking through the studio gallery of the Rappahannock Art League last December when she caught sight of a large pair of boots that seemed to beg for a person to climb into them. Beside the boots was a sign describing Waterman’s Way, a public art project honoring the people who work the waters of the Northern Neck.
With Lancaster County surrounded by water and a large majority of the parents of her students employed by businesses that benefit from local waters, Sprouse saw the boots as an ideal art project for her students. Principal Jessica Davis supported the idea enthusiastically, but both knew funding a $4,000 project would be a challenge. The LMS PTA supported the project but was unable to justify the cost.
Not long after, Virginia Commonwealth Bank offered to sponsor the middle school art students’ boots, their only request being that the boots were placed at various VCB locations for the first 18 months to share with the community and that their logo appear on the boots.
Weeks before the boots arrived, students started discussing pop art in their art classes and experimenting with color combinations and simplistic designs that were repeated. Final inspiration was found in studying Andy Warhol’s “Soup Cans.”
Their original concept was to create a stack of cans three tall, but instead of soup cans, they planned to use pop art-styled oyster cans from Lancaster’s history. Sprouse took to Facebook to ask locals which cans should absolutely be included in the project, brought in her own, and photographed cans at the Steamboat Era Museum, the Kilmarnock Museum and the Morattico Waterfront Museum.
The cans and color photos were brought back to school for students to look at and they each drew a can of their choice. All cans were numbered and placed on the wall so each student could vote on their favorite. Students selected cans that they felt accurately represented the companies and then transferred the designs onto the boots to create a giant coloring book. As students worked hard to accurately represent the cans, they moved further away from the concept of true pop art using pop colors. Many felt that pop art would destroy the integrity of the watermen and women story that they now wanted to tell.
Carefully mixing and selecting colors that matched the original cans as best they could, the students colored and painted for two and a half weeks. Sprouse saw it as a great learning opportunity, with all students invited to participate. If a mistake was made, the group simply left them and filled them in differently. In some cases, cans were repainted entirely because students felt that they hadn’t accurately rendered the image.
Once the can images were completed, fourth and fifth graders painted in the river, sand and boats and students who were comfortable drawing added details to the boats.
The students decided that the stand on the back needed to be incorporated into the design. Seventh grader Berkeley Kellum – a fourth-generation harvester of W.E. Kellum Seafood – thought that they looked like shipping boxes for seafood and brought some in the next day to demonstrate. The boxes were incorporated in a unique way on the stand.
The design of the boots reveals the traditional dress and boat styles of the 1930s through today, with no sea life included except the oyster.
The students did not want to leave the inside of the boots white, but felt that drawing more oyster cans would be too challenging and difficult to finish by the deadline. Their idea was to do something fun like “tag” – a term for graffiti that signifies a person or group – the interior of the boots.
So, a brick wall was drawn on the inside of the boots. The students signed their names to it, but only after contributing to the boots as an artist. Everyone got an A for effort.