Students at Jasper Jr./Sr. High School are doing their part to help beautify Jasper.

In a joint initiative with the municipality, some student artists are creating banners to display around the community – an effort to showcase their art and add a little pizzaz to the town.

Ashley Morden, an art teacher at the high school, said the project is a partnership between the school and the municipality to replace the existing banners around town – all with a Jasper National Park theme in mind.

“The municipality’s Don Pickle approached us,” said Morden. “So many of the kids are so talented and it’s a nice project for them to be working on.”

The banners are hung along Patricia St. and near the activity centre. They are all hand-painted, and the only criteria Morden advocated was to represent Jasper in some way. The work has been ongoing throughout the school year.

Mik Young, a Grade 7 student, had been working on her piece for about five to 10 hours already and took a few spare moments to share her thoughts on the project before she was again hard at work on her creation.

“I was thinking about things that fit in with Jasper,” she said referring to her piece, which features an owl and two wolf images. Mik said she took her inspiration from the Medicine Lake area. She free-handed the owl and one wolf and used a photo of a wolf face for her closeup on the bottom of the banner – showcasing her already incredible talent as a painter.

“It’s nice that kids can actually put things up. I thought that was kind of cool,” she said of the students’ participation in the project. 

Mik said that art may be in her future, and that she might like to be a cartoonist one day.

The students’ banners can be seen around the community on various light poles.