Great Barrington — For 75 years, local area students have taken part in an annual Halloween window-painting contest. The tradition carried on this year when students from Monument Mountain Regional High School, W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School, Berkshire Waldorf School, and Hillcrest Educational Center all painted posters placed on local area stores in the downtown area on Friday, October 25.
Students painted and created various spooky Halloween scenes, including zombies, wolfmen, ghosts, and black cats.
“This is a good way for our students to show their talents to the community,” middle school art teacher Katie Malone-Smith told The Berkshire Edge. “Who doesn’t love Halloween? This is a great tradition that has gone on for many years.”
“I think that these students really get a feeling of pride being able to share their work with the town and community at large,” Berkshire Hills Regional School District Health Educator Hannah Gaschott said. “Our students all learn how to start a project, bring it to fruition, and show it to the community. It brings a lot of joy in the downtown area.”
High school art teacher Neel Webber has been taking part in the event for 30 years. “This is a great event because the students all get to show the community what they can do,” Webber said. “It’s a beautiful community event, and I don’t know of any event like this where students can show off their works in a public place.”
The art will be on display in downtown storefronts until the first week of November.
This year’s winners
Grand prize winner: Ryan Baumgart from Monument Mountain Regional High School. Window location: Bernay.
Monument Mountain winners:
- First prize: Siddy Culbreth. Window location: Bear Butter.
- Second prize: Axel Bowser. Window location: Sett/Mercantile.
- Third Prize: Aiden Martin. Window location: Sett.
- Honorable mention: Ava Szymansky. Window location: Bon Dimance.
- Honorable mention: Luna Reynolds. Window location: Lee Bank.
- Special award: Solana Sharpe. Location: JWS.
Monument Valley Middle School winners — all windows located at Carr Hardware:
- First prize: Nora Kenny and Zoe Hoffman.
- Second prize: Violet Camarra and Tilly Hobart.
- Third prize: Kavia Culbreth.
