Dragons, planes, buggies, lions, panthers and bears crowd the hallways and common areas of Powell High School. This year, under the leadership of art teacher Jim Gilman, Powell High School students added half of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules plane and a forest fire. 

Each year Gilman’s art classes take on a large-scale project to decorate a common space in Powell High School. The projects incorporate different art mediums, history and enlist the help of other CTE programs at Powell High School. 

This year Gilman chose to have his students build a C-130 — a military transport plane also used in aerial firefighting — for a number of reasons. The project had to be able to fit the  available space so the students built only half of the C-130 which they then mounted onto the wall. The large plane was too big to fit into the school's study space in its entirety even if it was cut down to 1/6 scale. For reference, last year’s project was a full diorama of a F-22 Raptor at 1/4 scale. 

Students had to focus on a lot of different aspects of the plane and everyone had a different job. Student Will Jackson primarily focused on “skinning” the plane which meant that he cut matte board to size and stapled it to the frame of the plane.

“It gives you a surface to paint on and make whatever design you want on it,” Jackson said. 

Parker Williams created paper-mache for the wings and display pieces with his friend Seth Siebert and fixed imperfections on the plane.

Another challenge for Gilman and his students was incorporating taxidermy pieces that were already in the space. 

“That was a major challenge for us this year … trying to come up with what do we do with a bunch of animals, how do we make that into our project when we've been doing all these vehicles basically,” Gilman said. “So this is the way we figured out would be a great way to kind of make a tribute to the animals as well as our local firefighters, Forest Service, Hawkins and Powers and then those smoke jumpers and some local history with the Japanese balloon bomb.”

Powell High School student Stevee Walsh helped create some of the historical references that surround the plane including the watchtower, which was built around a column in the hallway as well as the smokejumpers’ parachutes and the creation of the firefighters.

“The parachutes took two months, the dolls didn't take quite as long and then the parts of the tower probably took about a month to do,” Walsh said. 

She said that the parachutes were difficult to construct “because they took so long and a lot of hot glue.” She credited Gilman for figuring out the mechanics and guiding her to make the parachutes work. 

“[The plane was] about like everything else that we do, it's a constant learning process, Mr. [Joel] Hayano was major in making all that happen,” Gilman said. “Because I don't know anything about Arduino or coding, or any of that. So he's got to take kids and help them through that, so it's kind of a learning process all the way through as far as making something like that work.”

Gilman added that neither this year’s plane nor last year’s would be possible without Hayano’s dedication and help with coding, 3D printed parts and electronics.

While the plane wasn’t quite done at the time of the interviews it was only a few small touches away from completion. This fall, Gilman and his art students will return to one of the earliest projects: a dragon and a viking longship.