From Canon-McMillan High School to Sandy Hook Elementary School

The smiling faces on the quilt showcased at Canon-McMillan High School each memorialize a student or faculty member killed in the Newtown tragedy.

While it is now on display, it will soon be sent to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, C.T.

Here's the background:

At first, students in Ashley Van Auken’s Canon-McMillan High School art class were tasked with creating a unique portrait of themselves as a project for the concept of “Ordinary to Extraordinary.”

But because the assignment came immediately after the last month, the students decided instead to paint the portraits of the children and adults who lost their lives at the school.

Each of the students chose one of the victims and researched them—what their likes were, what experiences they had, what their lives were like, and what they looked like.

The research done by the 19 students in grades 10 through 12 was then incorporated into painted canvas squares.

Van Auken is sewing the patches into a quilt suitable for hanging—and plans to mail it to the school where the former students of the original Sandy Hook are now attending classes.