Kayla Hooper: Connecting Us to Our Five Great Lakes

Meet Kayla. Kayla Hooper, who attends Pius XI High School, is an artist who painted several benches at Green Tech Station for her internship with ArtWorks for Milwaukee.

For her bench design, she created swirling cloud-like forms of white on a background of pale blue. Look closely, though, and you may notice that hidden among those watery forms are the shapes of the five Laurentian Great Lakes. You may remember them from schoolwork by the mnemonic “HOMES”—standing for Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Collectively, the Great Lakes contain about 20% of Earth’s surface freshwater.

Kayla hid her Great Lakes in plain sight in order to support the educational mission of Green Tech Station. She hopes visiting students will spy the familiar shapes and recognize where they belong on maps. Kayla also hopes this increases young people’s connection to the nearest Great Lake—Lake Michigan. After all, Milwaukee exists right on its coast!

“The most interesting thing I learned [about Lake Michigan] is just how big it is,” Kayla says. “I knew it was big. I didn't know it was one of the bigger Lakes… Of course, Lake Superior is bigger.”

She hopes people show they care for themselves and the world by not putting trash into the Lakes and working to clean them up.

Kayla says her favorite part of her ArtWorks internship was painting the benches. She got done with her own so quickly that she also helped others finish theirs. Each was rendered in a completely different style Kayla emulated to serve each artist’s vision.

Pointing to a comic-like bright pink-and-green design featuring grapefruit-like lily pads on the seat and the eyes of a watchful frog on the back, Kayla says, “This is the one I feel most proudest about helping with because I think I made it to what it could fully be.”

She also helped lead artist Jenni Reinke complete her darker bench depicting a scene from a water well and a seemingly Seuss-inspired blue bench featuring tiny cartoon fish.