Did you seen them? The new students inhabiting the school? If you looked closely, you saw the students standing still. Their limbs were clear and full of tape, they sat and stared and never woke.

This was not an invasion, but rather an exhibition. On March 3, schools across Texas took part in Big Art Day.

“I was leaving late after school Wednesday night and had to close the gate when I noticed a student under the water fountain,” AP English IV teacher Linda Hengst said. “They looked very upset and I was really worried, but I didn’t want to bother them. Sometimes someone just needs their solitude, so I let them be.”

Big Art Day is an art movement intended to spread awareness of art in education. Students across Texas made works of art to show off their talent and invoke the artist in everyone.

Sculpture I students teamed up with Art Club and National Art Honor Society to raise excitement for the art program. Students followed the style of Mark Jenkins to create McNeil’s “Sticky Situations” exhibit around the school. This process involved wrapping packing tape sticky side up and layering it with another piece of tape, repeating the process with many layers until the sculpture was complete.

Students took part in modeling for these sculptures, standing as still as possible while various art students wrapped them from head to toe in tape.

“It was a very intimate experience,” senior Monica Bugh said. “We all had to get up close and personal with each other, but we ended up closer.”

The process itself was not the only thing that brought students together. Many students showed the empathy between Mavericks in stopping to check on the sculptures. Bugh’s sculpture in particular had many people stop in on it to see if it was ‘ok.’

“I worried about them that night while at home,” Hengst said. “The next morning other teachers began telling me about the art exhibit around the school. I, still thinking what I had seen yesterday was a person, talked about the other sculptures.”

It wasn’t until Hengst was told of the one placed under the water fountain that she laughed at herself in embarrassment. In her defense Hengst was not the only teacher emotionally concerned about these inanimate sculptures.

“The beauty of this project was in the people’s interactions with the art,” German teacher Keith Kregel said. “Our students are so talented that many people thought packing tape and hard work were actual living people. The virtue in students was shown through their interactions in checking up on these students seemingly in distress. It is absolutely beautiful that artists in our school can elicit such an emotional response in our students and staff.”