Along with the thousands of hours that went into the construction of the new high school building, almost 300 hours were put into the artwork hanging in Thunderbolt Way.

“I love how it makes our school more unique and personal,” said sophomore Courtney Craft.

The art project was a joint effort between art teacher Ms. Bethany Allen and local artist Bing Davis. Davis is a Dayton-born artist, and has an area studio where Allen worked for five years while she was in college. Davis is known worldwide, and both Bill Cosby and George Bush both have some of Davis’ artwork in their personal collections.

“I loved it, it felt important contributing to the new school,” said sophomore Haley Jones, who spent time working on the piece.

The finished project is a collection of tiles which shows the individual personalities of the 90 students who worked on it.

“My favorite part was seeing the students work so hard on their individual tiles and learning about the beautiful meanings and symbols behind their work,” said Allen.

Working on this piece allowed students to express their creativity and growth, in a way that will be remembered permanently.

“My favorite part about the project is that we learned a lot about different art styles and different cultures,” said senior Anna Fox, who mentioned the different symbols students learned which are used for peace around the world.

Some would like to see more artwork incorporated into the building in the future.

“I think maybe [we should] add onto [it] yearly,” said junior Cole Peyton, who believes adding onto the artwork each year can show the changes in the dynamics of the high school.

The project was a collaboration not only between Davis and the students, but other staff members as well.

“Our very own Mr. Pfeffer volunteered his time to build the beautiful frames,” said Allen. Pfeffer built a frame to go around the display that measures 16 feet by 8 feet.

Representing the work of nearly 100 students, and almost 300 hours, Thunderbolt Way now proudly showcases Northmont’s first piece of permanent art in the new building.