Elementary school students turn Cache Valley buses into mobile art galleries

When 9-year-old Mae Linton first saw the Cache Valley bus decorated with her and her classmates’ artwork, she felt like a star.

“Someone wants my autograph, like movie stars,” Linton said. “So I thought, this is pretty dope, wow.” Then I thought, this is amazing. I bring my work of art onto the bus so that everyone who rides the bus can see it and all my classmates can see it so they can say “a kid did this.”

The soon-to-be fourth-grader at Utah State University’s Edith Bowen Laboratory School is one of dozens of students who have participated in creating art for the bus, which can now be seen at bus stops across the Valley. Each year, the Art in Transit: From Schools to Community program brings teaching artists to different Utah elementary schools to help students create art for the bus cover. Program director Aurora Villa said it benefits both the students and the community.

“It’s kind of like a gallery on wheels that runs through your community,” Villa said. “I think any art you have in your community makes it stronger, makes people enjoy being there. We just feel better when we’re around art, when we’re involved in making art.”

This year, Villa invited Salt Lake City photographer David Hyams, who specializes in cyanotype, a photographic printing process that uses ultraviolet light to create images in shades of blue. The 2024 bus displays cyanotypes of students from 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 making cyanotypes with her students for four years. The technique involves placing objects on photosensitive paper, blocking UV light to create silhouettes. After exposure, the paper is rinsed in water, turning the exposed areas cyan while the blocked areas remain white.

“It’s kind of a leap for students to understand space, shape and the photographic process,” Saunderson said.

Her students used shells, buttons, botanicals, seeds and letters of the alphabet to create various elements for the bus wrap.

The magic of this art form, Saunderson said, is the combination of art and science.

“When you develop it in water, it’s really exciting,” she said. “Because then they can see, okay, the exposure is coming out, they’re knocking the materials off, they’re sliding them off the board. And it doesn’t look like much, but when it just crystallizes and becomes visible in the water, they’re really fascinated. And they see the chemical change happening right before their eyes.”

Linton stated that she enjoyed the entire process, especially designing the cyanotypes.

“You can just let your creativity flow,” she said, “like ‘do I want an animal, do I want to write someone’s name on it, do I just want to be crazy and fill the whole page?’ So you can just choose what you want to do with your art because it’s your art. It’s not anyone else’s art.”