Seaford Students Help Environment Through Creativity

A dedicated Seaford art teacher and her students recently completed a project that displayed creativity while at the same time helping the environment.

Christine Donnelly, who has taught art at for the past 12 years, has a passion for green living and while doing some research came across an artist from Ohio named Michelle Stitzlein, who uses bottle camps to make sculptures. Donnelly decided to contact Stitzlein to find ways of implementing her ideas in the classroom.

Donnelly’s idea has been a smash hit with 144,000 bottle caps collected by her students that have resulted in various artwork that will be displayed around Seaford Harbor School. A contest to collect as many bottle caps as possible was held last May with the winning class being awarded an ice cream party. The amount of caps collected was so overwhelming that with the help of the Seaford Harbor PTA, all classes were provided ice cream treats for their hard work.

In February Seaford Harbor students with the help of their families began creating sculptures during art classes using the collected bottle caps. The creative idea by Donnelly generated such enthusiasm throughout the Seaford area that local businesses got behind the effort with Vinny DeLuca of and Ogilvie Construction donating materials to help mount the artwork. Many parents also donated supplies such as drills, screwdrivers, and plywood to help mount the pieces of art.

“It was such a community effort,” said Donnelly,  who grew up in neighboring Massapequa. “It far exceeded anything that I expected it to become.”

The cap collection was such a success that Donnelly still has thousands of caps leftover and is hoping to continue creating more pieces of artwork out of them. The artwork will be displayed in the courtyard of the school as well as in the multipurpose room and hallways.

Seaford Harbor School Principal Donna Delucia-Troisi is very proud of the creativity displayed by the students and for the initiative displayed by Donnelly to undertake the project.

“Christine Donnelly is a gifted art teacher and teacher in general,” said Delucia-Troisi. “She can produce projects with these children that I have never seen produced by children.”