“…Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1871
Those who recall Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland may remember the words spoken above as those of Alice herself. And yet, they are actually the words of the grown-up, the White Queen, who teaches a skeptical seven-year-old Alice an important lesson: in her imagination, the impossible is everywhere around her.
One doesn’t have to drop down a rabbit hole to see that same invaluable lesson unfold, for it’s at the very heart of a school’s art program. Here on the Seacoast, Portsmouth High School art teacher Sarah Mundy and her colleagues are dedicated to celebrating and preserving the imagination. Through drawing, ceramics, and composition, they inspire students to collaborate across ages to bring monsters out of their minds and into the real world.
The project begins in the second-grade classroom of Adam Bastille, art teacher at the Mary C. Dondero Elementary School in Portsmouth. “When [Mundy] asked me to do this with her,” he says, “I was super excited to collaborate. I knew my students would love it.” In the Fall, he invites each 2nd-grader to draw a monster, guiding them through brainstorming as they integrate texture and color, considering thoughtfully their monsters’ unique physical features and powers. “When they get talking about it,” he says, “their creativity flows.” The delight of originality does not stop with the children, for Bastille also creates his own monster alongside them.
Once the drawings are finalized, Bastille transports them to Mundy. Protecting the original drawings, Mundy makes copies and her high school ceramics students get to choose which monster they want to bring off of the page and into the form of a 3-dimensional sculpture. In so doing, they must closely consider the integrity of the child’s drawing as they negotiate the technical aspects of the clay, paint, glaze, and other media they decide to use. Many of them contemplate what the 2nd-grade artist might find to be especially funny, and then add their own humorous twist to each creation.
As an independent artist and advocate for arts education, Mundy aims to increase student engagement and celebrate student achievements through social media. She has thousands of online followers, and she often creates posts of her own and her students’ artwork. “Sometimes I have a video that will blow up,” she says. In 2024, after she posted about the monster project, it went viral. “I was sitting in my studio over April break, and I got a phone call from the Kelly Clarkson Show. First, I hung up. They called back and invited us to New York City. Three or four days later, we were on an airplane.” The show, which aired in May of 2024 as part of Teacher Appreciation Week, featured Mundy, Bastille, and 2 of their student artists.
In the spirit of creative evolution, the collaboration has grown to become more efficient, more celebratory, and more interdisciplinary. For example, each monster project now incorporates the art of writing. Audrey McBride, English teacher at Portsmouth High School, especially loves interdisciplinary work, so when Mundy told her about the project, she was eager to join. She prompted her creative writing students to compose short fiction stories for each monster. “I’m a big believer in having fun,” she says, “and in encouraging students to develop writing skills through creative means.” This year, McBride’s students will breathe new life into the monsters through poetry.
In the Spring, as the snow is melting and the days are lengthening, the monsters finally come out to play. In 2024, Portsmouth High School started hosting an annual showcase in the library, and they are planning for this year’s showcase to be in April 2026. At the event, drawings, sculptures, and writing are on full display. The 2nd-graders and high school students have the chance to meet one another, the children can hold the sculptures of their monsters in their own hands, and the high school students can read their stories to them. In the end, the 2nd-grade creator of each monster takes home the sculpture and composition that was created for it.
The energetic exchange between ages is fun, generous, and respectful. For the teachers themselves, it’s a pleasure to watch it all happen. Mundy expresses a special appreciation for the way it allows high schoolers, who experience lots of adolescent pressures, to be “innocent and cute.” Some of the high school students are Bastille’s former 2nd-graders, now burgeoning artists. And McBride appreciates the memory of positivity and engagement that such an experience can bestow. “We need more of this in the world,” she says. She’s right.
"In the Spring, as the snow is melting... the monsters finally come out to play"
"Through drawing, ceramics, and composition, they inspire students to collaborate across ages to bring monsters out of their minds and into the real world."