BY SHANNON HICKS

Once again, the public was asked to visit the front lawn of Newtown Middle School during the final week of October, and for the fourth year in a row the residents of Newtown and area towns responded in large numbers.

Eighth grade students in the middle school’s Discovery and Gifted Art classes have been creating sculpted scarecrows for an annual October contest for four years now. The projects are group efforts, with students collaborating on everything from which demon their sculpture will banish, to what materials will be used to create their sculpture (with each group limited to a $10 budget), and even what the sculpture will be called. After all that work is done, each group’s final objective is to decide which charity their hard work is going to benefit.

Over 20 separate sculptures adorned the front lawn of Newtown Middle School last week and weekend. Creativity had obviously been running rampant among the students working on these projects this year, as sculptures of all shapes and sizes took up residence at 11 Queen Street and showed off to the world how talented and imaginative Newtown’s students can be.

Multitudes of demons were no doubt scared away (although some human pranksters once again decided to mar a few of the sculptures during their stay on the front lawn, stealing parts of one sculpture and destroying another). One group had come up with a Wizard of Oz compilation sculpture, with hints of Dorothy, The Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow and The Tin Man combining into one fearsome creature that kept The Wicked Witch at bay. Another group had created a large sneaker, to no doubt boot away any demons that had decided to pay Newtown a visit any time soon.

A large spider kept other demons away, and a large trench-coated, sunglasses-wearing dog kept the dog catchers away. A large black cat, which fit perfectly in with the season of Halloween, was created by one group; and another sculpture was part of a frightening scene that depicted a room that had “been painted with the blood of a vampire slayer,” according to a hand-written sign with the sculpture.

Votes came in to the office of the middle school and the offices of Bee Publishing Co. beginning Saturday, October 23 — the morning the scarecrows debuted — through late Sunday and even into Monday, November 1. Voters are challenged with the task each year of choosing their favorite sculpture, and then adding $1 to each vote. The money collected is then used by the top three vote-receiving groups as a donation to a charity of their choice.

There were ballots this year with singles, fives and twenties attached to them, and one group of ballots that came in with a personal check attached. There were even ballots in envelopes with the spare change that was probably dug out from someone’s piggy bank or car seats, right down to pennies, nickels and dimes.

Some of the ballots were received not only with their monetary donations, but also with notes from voters. One ballot had the notation “They were all great!” written across the top. On another, someone had written in, “They were all wonderful. Thank you!”

It doesn’t matter how people put together money with ballots for the annual Sculpted Scarecrow Contest. What matters most, and always has, is the public recognition of the talents of students at Newtown Middle School.

On Monday, November 1, after all the votes were counted, this year’s winning sculpture turned out to be that of a larger-than-human-size pink and purple dragon named Oscer. The sculpture stood at just over six feet tall, but was quite friendly in its appearance. Eileen Connor, Annie Reinhardt, Alyssa Scalorce and Betsy Stefanko found the inspiration for their winning sculpture in a stuffed animal of Eileen’s and the main character the girls read about in a book called The Glitter Dragon.

“We started out making a lizard that was going to look like Eileen’s, but then we put wings on our sculpture and decided to turn it into a dragon,” Annie Reinhardt said this week. She and her fellow dragon sculptors, along with the students who won second and third place this year, gathered in the middle school’s Discovery room to discuss their creations, the results and what they learned while working as teams.

Now that the contest has been up and running for a few years, Newtown’s younger students are beginning to see the Sculpted Scarecrow Contest as something that happens each fall. Aaron Cooper, who was a member of one of the two teams sharing second place, even went so far as to call the contest “a tradition.”

“We look forward to this,” Aaron expressed. “It’s now a town tradition, so working hard and then showing everyone the results made us all feel good.”

Voting was so close this year that less than five votes separated the teams that came in second, third and what would have been fourth place. Because there was such a small division between the top vote-receiving scarecrows, it was decided by teachers Claudia Clancy, Sally Harris, Arlene Spoonfeather, John Vouros and Sue Ward that second place would be shared by two teams, and a fourth team would then receive third place honors.

Aaron Cooper was on the second place team that created The Brama Bull, a blue bull that looked like it was goring some poor unfortunate victim who was walking across the school’s front lawn at the wrong time. Along with Aaron, the bull’s creators were Charley Fulkerson and Mat Miller. The boys’ inspiration came from a professional wrestler who calls himself The Rock and who has as his personal symbol a bull. While the boys’ sculpture was not aimed at scaring away one particular wrestler, the consensus of the team was that it was designed to keep “Stone Cold” Steve Austin at bay.

Sharing second place honors this year is the team of Dan Letson, Edmond Breitling, Tyler Wood, Matt Barackman and Adam Konneker. The boys also had one of the larger sculptures seen this year, a tall thing they called Raggaesus. A lot of planning goes into the final project each group turns in, and these guys learned the importance of being flexible.

“We had a general idea of what we were going to do,” Dan said Wednesday morning, “but then when the materials started gathering, the project really took on its own form.” Mat Miller’s group agreed, saying there were a number of ideas kicked around by each group member before the team came to an agreement over which one they would pursue.

The team that won third place this year did not have a tough time coming up with what it would be sculpting. Their trouble came when it was time to, um, execute their sculpture, an ode to Marie Antoinette. Steven Truitt, Tyler Hull and Sean Rawson were able to create an intimidating-looking guillotine and knew they wanted to depict Ms Antoinette leaning in to the chamber, but their troubles came when they were trying to make their sculpture look like she was leaning forward while down on her knees.

After a number of attempts with stuffing the sculpture in different ways and positioning the sculpture’s arms so that it appeared the doomed Antoinette had her hands clasped behind her back, the boys finally decided to simply nail the sculpture’s legs to the base of the guillotine, firmly positioning it in place.

The boys’ second biggest concern was what material they would use to create the guillotine’s blade.

“We were originally going to make it out of metal,” explained Steven, “but then we started thinking about the little kids that were going to be playing around these things. We figured they would be playing with the blade, putting their hands and heads inside the guillotine, and we didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” The team settled for a thick posterboard material that was covered with a silver paper. The decisions on both the guillotine and the sculpture’s positioning were obviously good ones to go with, too, considering the group won one of this year’s honors.

In fact, decision-making and flexibility were lessons most of those who participated in the contest this year are quick to suggest to future contestants.

“You don’t want to try to plan too much in advance,” Mat Miller said. “Because you have to remember that you’re going to use whatever you can find, and then you can only spend $10.”

“That worked for us,” Tyler Wood echoed. “We didn’t spend anything at first. We started putting things together, and then we used our money for last-minute fixes and adjustments.”

Betsy Stefanko summed up what her teachers were probably hoping the students would learn from an experience like this when she said, “You need to at least listen to everyone’s opinions. Remember, this is a group project.”