LYNNFIELD — The Huckleberry Hill Elementary School unveiled a LEGO portrait of their new Huckleberry Heroes mascot that was put together by the students with help from Disney artist and renowned speed-painter Rob Surette.
It was revealed as part of the school’s Huckleberry Heroes assembly program that included a hand tree painted by the Kindergarten through second graders.
Instrumentalists from Lynnfield Middle School who recently graduated from Huckleberry made an appearance to perform a song that the third and fourth grade students learned the morning of the event.
“It’s so awesome to think that all of our hands are up there, that all of our students are up there, because together we make a masterpiece,” the school’s music teacher Kerrie Fraser said.
Every one of the 40,000 LEGO bricks was placed by a student or staff member at Huckleberry Hill to culminate in a design of the husky mascot created by Surette, who stayed with the school as a three-day residency to work with students and complete the project last week.
“I remember key teachers, key coaches growing up and they made a huge difference for me, so I thought to myself, ‘I want to be one of those people for kids,’” Surette said. “Anytime I do artwork, it’s not just about artwork, they could do LEGO at home. But the whole thing is I put a message to it, a message that ‘you can chase your dreams.’”
Even though he paints for Disney full time, Surette still makes time to visit five schools a week as a part of his “Amazing Hero Art” series, which combines the performance of speed-painting portraits of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. with inspirational messaging for students.
It’s a perfect fit for the Huckleberry Hill Heroes and their new principal, Lauren King, who organized a mascot election for the students on Election Day to teach students about voting and the electoral process.
The winner was a “Huck” the Husky, who is now immortalized in LEGO form. But King wants to ensure that the school doesn’t lose sight of the title “Huckleberry Heroes,” which has been an integral to cultivating culture so far in her time at Lynnfield.
“Hero is a tough concept for a child to picture, because they think of Superman or a hero that they don’t picture themself as,” King said. “We decided to have a mascot that was going to be our hero, so that when you thought of “hero”, you could see the image of a mascot, versus all of the other different images people have.”
Huck’s home in the school hasn’t been decided on yet, but King wants it to be somewhere central and where everyone can see it easily, inspiring students to become young heroes in their everyday lives.
