“Art is all around us”: End-of-year art show at Eden Lake immersed visitors in student creativity

Karen Mcginley’s third-grade Mosaic class excitedly made their way through the Eden Lake gymnasium doors. It was late morning on the last Friday of the 2024-25 school year, and throughout the day, classes across Eden Lake would take turns visiting the gym. But it wasn’t physical activity waiting for them on the other side of those doors — it was a very different kind of immersive experience.

As the students entered the gym, they found themselves in a darkened makeshift hallway lined with paper fireflies that glowed with bright neon blacklight paint. Upbeat music pumped into the room through a stereo. At the end of the hallway was a curtain. Students brushed it aside and immediately found themselves inside the colorful world of “Flight,” Eden Lake’s student art installation that had taken over the gym at the end of the school year. Cloudy paper skies filled with butterflies covered the walls. Paper mache airplanes and hot air balloons hung from mobiles spread across the gym. Kites twisted on dangling strings. A section in the back corner led visitors through a maze of paper birds. “My sister told me, ‘Your heart exploded in here,’” laughed Eden Lake art teacher Sarah Menth, who had organized the show. “It’s so fulfilling and it’s so rewarding.”

Since January, each student at Eden Lake had been working on an art project that would appear in “Flight”: kindergartners made the fireflies, first grade the butterflies, second the birds, third the kites, fourth the hot air balloons and fifth the airplanes. Menth designed the show as a rigorous and fulfilling hands-on way to approach curriculum, where students worked on skills like cutting, sculpture and painting, all as part of a schoolwide effort to create the immersive show. “It shows kids that together, all the way from kindergarten to fifth grade… you come together and you can create this huge impact,” said then-principal of Eden Lake Tim Beekmann. Beekmann was taking visitors through the art show that day, too, as part of his “goodbye” to Eden Lake and to his 33 years of service at Eden Prairie Schools. “It’s so beautiful,” he beamed.

“Flight” served as an end-of-year celebration of months of work by students and staff, plus all of the community members who pitched in. “An incredible amount of PTO members, friends, colleagues” helped Menth, she said. “My cup was just overflowing.” Some students brought home their projects to get help from family, and Menth’s daughter and husband built the mobiles. The support brought out the possibilities of what students could accomplish. “I want people to see how talented our students are. They can do just about anything if you give them the tools,” Menth said. 

The show itself — though incredible — wasn’t the only thing to come from all those months of work. The process of learning, and the confidence that students built along the way, was just as important. “What I was doing with my students with colleagues’ support was… just letting them know how valued and important they are when we all come together,” said Menth. “It just brings so much joy to my heart.”