The works created with help from Lafayette College and an Easton artist were unveiled along the Karl Stirner Arts Trail.
Melissa "Mel" Strom, a graduating senior at Belvidere High School, knew she wanted to pursue art, maybe do some tattooing on the side, but welding? No way.
That was until she started working on a steel sculpture through Lafayette College's Lafayette Experience for high schoolers. She credits Connor J Pirruccello-McClellan, who just graduated from Lafayette and assisted students in the program, with helping to get her hooked.
"Huge like shoutout to him. I actually really like welding and I wouldn't have known that if it wasn't for him," Strom said. "When I signed up for this I was like, 'I'm not going to weld.' I had no idea. So giant thanks."
Strom joined students from Easton Area and Phillipsburg high schools on Wednesday in unveiling their steel sculptures along a bank below Route 22, on Easton's Karl Stirner Arts Trail. Connecting Bushkill Drive to North 13th Street, the trail is named for the late Karl Stirner, an accomplished metal sculptor himself.
Jim Toia, director of community-based teaching at Lafayette in Easton, has been working with high school students to create art since 2001. The four metal works presented Wednesday are set to remain in place for a few years, he said.
He thanked the students' parents for their backing of what could easily, though perhaps unfairly, be derided as an impractical career.
"You guys all provide the confidence and backing to help these young artists be as good as they possibly can be," Toia said at Wednesday's event. "Very often I hear parents say, 'Oh God, they're going to get an art degree, how are they going to be make a living?' You guys don't really ask those questions. You just provide them with the support that they need. The art world is a wide open, big place right now that can be very lucrative and very successful."
Several of the works seek to narrow the divide between the Easton and Phillipsburg communities. "Free Disc Bridge" features a cutout -- in steel -- of the Easton-Phillipsburg free bridge that, paired with a horizontal disc below, acts as a sundial.
Student Galen Deery got acquainted with the acetylene torch to make that.
"We decided on the bridge because it was kind of like the connection between P'burg and Easton," said Charles Fernandes, who worked on it with fellow graduating seniors at Easton Area High School Deery and Andrew Foley, and Phillipsburg High School rising senior Juan Pereanez. "Since this project had both P'burg and Easton involved in it, we thought we'd have a piece to bridge the two different sides together."
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Strom, from Belvidere, crafted hers as an homage to the State Theatre. She calls it "A Soaring Debut," in part, because of its birdlike look.
For their project, graduating Easton Area seniors Julia Mattes and Samantha Soffera drove around Downtown Easton looking for inspiration. They already had one part of the work in mind based on a balsa-wood bathtub Soffera made. That came during a program in class led by Easton artist Ken Kewley, who helped all the students develop and refine their ideas for the sculptures.
"Ours is basically based off of the Lafayette Hotel," Mattes said. "So on the side there's like stairs almost like a fire escape. And on the inside we have like a frame of a bathtub on the second floor."
The work's name? "Bathtub after the Lafayette Hotel."
The sculptures did not come easy.
"My shoe got stuck to a piece of steel," said Phillipsburg High School rising senior Britney Leubert.
She worked on "Steadfast," named for a line from the Stateliners' alma mater, with classmates Sarah Steidle and Alyssa Luongo. It's crowned by an homage to the clock tower at the old Phillipsburg High School. Students began classes in the new school last September. The clock is set to 2:14 p.m., the end of the school day in P'burg, Luongo said.
Toia, from Lafayette College, said students are selected for the program based on their teachers' recommendation, and he's open to working with any local school.
In addition to the students learning new skills, the projects ended up being full of surprises as they went from small models to life-size sculptures.
"It was an interesting experience because we didn't realize how like big the actual structures were going to end up being," said the Easton Area's Soffera.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.