Some of the most powerful parts of a story are the ones you can’t see at first. John Muir High School drama teacher Courtney Scrabeck built her PEF Teacher Grant project, The Grief Underneath: Painting with Light, around that idea, using ultraviolet (UV) paint to support her students’ social and emotional health. Although grief is a tough topic to discuss, especially after the Eaton Fire, Scrabeck knew that it is an important emotion for students to understand in order to grow. With this two-part project, Scrabeck’s students tackled their emotions and learned to use them to push themselves forward.
Scrabeck chose UV painting as the medium for this project because working with it mirrors how difficult it can be to work through emotions. To ease students into the project, Scrabeck had students create UV-painted sculptures and 2D paintings revolving around the theme of grief. UV painting can be a tricky technique. The UV paint needs several coats to show up, but if a student used too much paint, the hidden image would be too visible. In order to master this new medium, the students worked together to problem-solve the balance of how much paint each of their pieces needed in order to get the effect they wanted.
Students had a chance to open up about the pieces they were creating and the emotions behind them. One student painted a self-portrait with a UV shadow of a friend who had been displaced to Connecticut after the fire. Under the UV lights, the friend stood beside her. When the lights went off, the friend slowly disappeared as the UV paint ran out of light. Piece by piece, students discovered that art could hold what was hard to say out loud, and give them a way to start working through it.
Guests at Muir got to see the hidden layers revealed in person, and students brought a mini gallery of their work. They were given mini UV lights to use as they explored each student’s artwork. Some of the student art was also displayed at PEF’s Celebrating Our Schools, where the presenting artists talked with community members about the meaning behind each piece.
For the second half of Scrabeck’s project, students carried their UV techniques onto the stage for John Muir’s production of Ride the Cyclone, a musical that also tackles themes of grief and acceptance. Students used UV paint to show the characters entering the underworld and brainstormed hidden details with Scrabeck, like a “NEXT EXIT” sign that became “LAST EXIT” and cyclones tucked into the backdrop hinting at the characters’ fates.
Ride the Cyclone was a great way for the class to wrap up their project as they applied their new UV skills in a professional environment. Skills such as innovative and thematically relevant set design as well as an eye for creative solutions are just some of what the students had a chance to hone over the course of the play’s development. Many of these skills are useful for future careers in the arts and theater, showing off the broad capabilities of each student.
If you are interested in supporting teachers like Courtney Scrabeck? Consider donating to Teacher Grants here.
