Students' recycled-trash artwork headed for Albany exhibit

Gazing at a take on Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” assembled entirely from items headed for the trash, Christian Sikiric, a fourth-grader at Notre Dame School in New Hyde Park, pointed out the items he and 31 of his classmates used to bring the piece to life.

The sky was made of blue labels peeled off water bottles. The stars were the bottoms of egg cartons painted yellow. This version also featured a bridge constructed with cardboard tubes from paper towel rolls, the New York City skyline comprised of milk cartons and the Statue of Liberty, which Christian created with a water bottle and packing peanuts.

“I also made the torch out of tinfoil,” he added.

The project earned the “Best Overall” prize for the Elementary School division at the fifth annual Town of North Hempstead Recycled Artwork Contest, which challenges students to create art by upcycling items that would normally be discarded.

This year, the town received 73 submissions, reflecting the work of 1,731 students at area schools. All the artwork was on display Monday night at the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, where town officials handed out 22 awards at a reception for students, their teachers and families.

The goal of the contest is two-prong, said Frances Reid, the town’s chief sustainability officer.

“It engages children that maybe wouldn’t normally be interested in environmental things,” Reid said. “It also kind of uses the kids to bring out the message to other people in the community.”

The projects will be on display in Great Neck until Jan. 6. After that they’ll be moved to Albany, where they’ll be on display in the New York State Capitol building.

Other winners included New Hyde Park Memorial High School juniors Jay Shah, Joel Thomas and Ashneel Raj, who erected a model of the Empire State Building using 200 soda cans. More than 760 students at Great Neck’s Lakeville Elementary School won with a giant fish crafted out of cardboard, discs and empty chip bags.

“This stuff would have been chucked,” said New Hyde Park sixth-grader Katie Gray, of her winning project, a miniature replica of The White House that she created with classmate Reva Schroff. “You can’t just throw things out.”

Shira Lichter, a second-grader at JFK Elementary School in Great Neck, also won with her oversized bar of musical notes made from brown paper Whole Foods Market bags

She said, “They’re already 100 percent recycled, but now I made them 101 percent.”