Scarecrows And Changes Will Be Right At Home At NMS This Month

By Shannon Hicks

The front lawn of Newtown Middle School is about to become home once again of scarecrows of all shapes, sizes and forms. Students in the Gifted Art and Discovery classes have divided into small teams and are preparing for the 5th Annual Sculpted Scarecrow Contest.

The contest began in 1996, when nearly 60 students participated in an autumn event at the middle school. Students were given wide parameters to work within and during the last week of October, over 30 presentations were set up for public display.

In what has become a tradition thanks to the ongoing efforts of teachers and students of the Queen Street school in Newtown, the public is once again being invited to visit the middle school lawn this year in late October. Students will be setting up this year’s creations on Saturday, October 21. The scarecrows will remain on view through Monday, October 30, and the public is being asked to once again name their favorites.

A small booth will be set up on the front lawn, where ballots will be able submit their ballots. Students will be manning the booth on one-hour shifts during the weekend days, a new addition to the contest.

Votes will be $1 each and all the money that is collected is again being divided between the top three vote-receiving teams. The students on those teams will then donate all of the money to a charitable organization of their choice.

Ballots will also be accepted at the offices of Bee Publishing Co., on Church Hill Road, during the voting period.

Also new this year, the scarecrows will be sold off at the end of the competition. In the past, the works have been dismantled, but this year the public will be able to purchase their favorite sculptures. The money from scarecrow sales will also be donated to charities.

Scarecrows, according to author Valerie Littlewood (Scarecrow!), are homemade figures that have been used around the world to protect precious crops for more than 3,000 years. Scarecrows are very popular figures in legends and horror stories, responsible for everything from hiding dead bodies and spiriting children away during the Halloween season to playing host to ghosts and spirits.

Although originally portrayed only as frightening, menacing, sinister spirits in ancient myths and legends, more recent portrayals have shown scarecrows to be loyal and friendly companions.

Scarecrows are as individual as those who create them, and the students participating in the Sculpted Scarecrow Contest at Newtown Middle School have lived up to that expectation each of the last four years. Thrifty farmers have created their scarecrows from giant sheets of corrugated iron, sheets of plastic, even old suits of armor. The Newtown students have followed in similar style.

Winning and favorite scarecrows in past contests have included everything from traditional to modern, whimsical to frightening. The first winner of the contest, in 1996, was a six-foot-tall headless horseman scarecrow, complete with a jack o’lantern head held in its right hand.

Another top vote-getter that first year was a bee-keeper style figure, complete with a smoker, a bee hive, a veil hat and a honey comb — the object of scarecrows, students have learned, is that something needs to move with the wind to scare away birds. A scarecrow does not necessarily have to look like a traditional scarecrow in order to work.

There have been Superman-style scarecrows hanging from trees, and imaginative works including one a few years ago with a male named Montague depicted on one side, a female Capulet on the opposite side. There has been an ode to Marie Antoinette, a dancing mobile based on the work of the American sculptor Alexander Calder, and a man-eating Venus flytrap sculpture (the 1998 winner).

Students find inspiration everywhere. Last year’s winner was “The Brama Bull,” a blue bull that looked like it was goring some poor unfortunate victim who had been caught walking across the school’s front lawn at the wrong time. Aaron Cooper, Charley Fulkerson and Mat Miller said they went with the idea of a professional wrestler who calls himself The Rock and who has as his personal symbol a bull.