Puppets on parade

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

You’ve heard of art history.
Rocky Gap High School, though, is trying out something new: history art.
For Saturday’s annual Holiday Parade, a group of Amy McPherson’s Art 2 students have built four oversized papier-mâché puppets representing historical characters relevant to Bland County.
“They’re seven or eight feet tall,” said McPherson, who teaches K-12 art in Rocky Gap. “They’re big.”
Members of John Dodson’s history and technology classes will march with the likenesses in the parade before welcoming the community to the school’s Mountain Home Center for an open house about their work documenting local history.
The four puppets represent two women and two men: Molly Tynes, a Civil War heroine who according to tradition rode over Big Walker Mountain to warn Wytheville of a pending Yankee attack; Jenny Wiley, a pioneer woman from Walker’s Creek taken captive by Native Americans; a generic Civil War soldier; and a generic World War II soldier.
Also in the parade will be a puppet representing the “spirit of the mountains” provided by Dodson’s son.
Dodson said he got the idea for including historical puppets in the Holiday Parade after his son told him about a community in Kentucky similarly using them for its own celebration.
He then approached McPherson about getting the Rocky Gap art students involved in the project.
McPherson said she assigned two or three students to each puppet and had them research each of their historical character’s features and dress before the students began their craftsmanship.
The puppets’ heads are made out of papier-mâché, with long poles and wires giving them their impressive size. Plastic cloths serve as clothing and hide the underlying structure.
“It took three weeks to make them,” McPherson said. “They did a great job.”
The Holiday Parade, which starts at noon Saturday, will begin at Laurel Fork Baptist Church and travel along U.S. 52 to RGHS.
Along with the open house at the Mountain Home Center, post-parade activities this year will also for the first time include a car show in the school parking lot.
The car show will be a fundraiser for the school’s Senior Beta Club, which McPherson advises. No tickets are required to view the cars, but owners must pay a $10 entry fee to have their vehicles included.
“The Senior Beta is just trying to find a unique way to do fundraising,” McPherson said.
The club has set up judging committees that will award prizes in eight categories such as loudest, dirtiest, most unique paint job and oldest. McPherson said she anticipates most of the cars in the show will have also participated in the parade.
Funds raised, McPherson said, will help the club go on a trip to Richmond and Washington, D.C., in March 2010.
If the event is successful this year, the club hopes to turn the car display into an annual fundraiser.
Saturday’s show is scheduled to last until 3 p.m.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 1-800-655-1406 or .