I was inspired to create this project when
Patricia Donnelly, the former Headmistress at SHSH came back from a conference
at the Sacred Heart School in Taipei.
From the presentation of her trip, I decided I needed to find out more
about this school. I imagined a
butterfly migration going to Taipei and then one returning to Halifax. The butterflies symbolizing the students who
are coming out of their formative periods into the discovery of the unique
persons that they will become.
I arrived in Taipei in March after a period
in China bringing with me the forty butterflies created by my grade nine
students. Created on mylar, a
translucent, plastic material, with the coloured wings created by an ink blot
technique in paint for the symmetry, they seemed to fly themselves over to
their ultimate destination of the entrance of the SHGSH in Taipei. The project was repeated with the grade nine students
at that school (although this time there were eighty students) and despite
communicating in different languages, the project idea was made visible and
uniquely so.
The experience, both of the
school and the classes that I worked with, was a very positive and enlightening
one. The school of one thousand students
operated like a ticking clock with a spirit very like the Halifax school. It was very interesting to see this spirit
and the Sacred Heart Goals alive in a very real way in a totally different culture.
The butterflies made by the Taiwanese
students were flown with me, back to Halifax where they were installed from the
ceiling in the large bright area outside the SHSH Headmistress’s office just in
time to welcome in spring.
Lynda Shalagan, Art Teacher SHHS
