January 19, 2006 Issue                                               

©2005 The Chestnut Hill Local

GFS students make tiles to celebrate a legacy
by Jennifer Katz

A GROUP of GFS students, parent and faculty volunteers make tiles for a community mosaic as part of a service project on Martin Luther King Day of Service. The mosaic is to be installed at Lovett Library in Mt. Airy to commemorate the Mt. Airy Learning Tree’s 25th anniversary.

A group of Germantown Friends School students, parents and teachers descended on Mt. Airy mosaicist Jessica Gorlin Liddell’s studio, Tesserae, to make tiles that will be used in a mosaic at Lovett Library as part of the city’s 11th Annual Martin Luther King Day of Service. The Mt. Airy Learning Tree commissioned Liddell to create the mosaic to commemorate its 25th anniversary later this year. Liddell and GFS coordinators joined forces to include some of the tile making as part of the school’s roster of community service oriented activities to help students celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.

“The goal of the mosaic is to bring together the ideas of education, diversity and community. And so I thought it would be a great project for the students to see how these ideas are expressed,” said Liddell. The mosaic’s border, including designs of African mud cloth, Amish quilt patterns and Chinese brocade, reflects the neighborhood’s diversity, according to Liddell.

Middle school student and volunteer Johanna Velasquez said she was excited about the project because “the pattern includes different cultural patterns all together, like Martin Luther King talked about bringing people together. This does it in one piece.”

For her part, 3rd and 4th grade teacher Teresa Maebori hopes that the students will gain a better understanding that Dr. King’s message of equality and inclusion is still relevant for everyone of us. “This is a way we can live out in small ways the idea that we can help each other and come together. Projects like this one promote the idea of service to others and maybe will plant a seed in these young people that will hopefully grow.”

Fellow volunteer Anna Hoover seemed to echo the teacher’s sentiments describing her tile making experience as “great.” “It feels good to help with a project for the library and hopefully the mosaic will make the city a prettier place to be, kind of like Dr. King was trying to make the world a better place to be,” said Hoover.