Two Newport High School students are better off by $500 and will be seeing their artwork traveling around town for years on the side of a Thompson’s Sanitary Service garbage truck.
The Newport company last March approached the Lincoln County School District with an idea to have the school’s commercial art class students create designs for the sides of a recently purchased rear-loading truck, which has its whole side available for graphics.
In a news release, Thompson’s said the idea originated from staff who had seen the truck mural idea at a national convention.
“We thought, why can’t we do that here?” said collections supervisor Rick Hernandez. “So we contacted the school district … we wanted it to represent our community.”
The district jumped aboard and connected the company with Casey McEneny, Newport High’s commercial art teacher.
“This project is an amazing collaboration giving students the opportunity to work through the business process of creating art for a client,” McEneny said in a news release announcing the winners. “They learned how to present their ideas, interpret feedback, and work through their designs to deliver an end-product the client would be happy with.”
The design winners are junior Cruise Beckstead and senior Jasmine Lytwyn.
McEneny and the students worked with Ken Spencer of Newport Signs to digitize the artwork and create decals of the artwork for the truck. The decals include the students’ names to recognize their work.
“We are just thrilled with this project,” said Thompson’s collections manager Victor Purpuree. “This truck will be rolling through their hometown for years to come.”
