Newton North senior turns tragedy into beauty with Boston Strong mosaic

Newton North senior Irina Rojas has looked around her community over the past year and seen too much sadness. She resolved to help replace it with beauty. And she wanted to do it with something to which everyone she knew could contribute.
Those principles guided the planning, creation and construction of the Boston Strong mosaic conceived and built at North High, and now on display at Newton City Hall through the beginning of next week.
Rojas enlisted the help of several teachers, department heads and more than 60 students to help complete her vision. The North High swim captain also applied for a grant this fall to fund the project with consultation from accomplished mural and mosaic artist Joshua Winer.
The result is a 4-foot-by-6 canvas with tiles arranged to depict the Boston skyline, the Charles River featuring the city's reflection, and a sailboat with the word "Strong" in the foreground.
"I wanted it to be something where a lot of people could get involved," she said. "A mosaic being a bunch of pieces is a metaphor for something broken you can piece back together. I wanted to bring a bunch of people together to make something beautiful that the community can enjoy together."
Rojas said she came up with idea of doing something special shortly after last year's Boston Marathon bombings when she and her classmates were directed to stay inside their houses for an entire day as police in Newton and surrounding cities and towns searched for the two suspects.
"When we got past the lockdown we thought the schools could use something positive," Rojas said. "We talked about sticky notes with positive quotes around the school, or maybe a mural, but as I thought more about it I decided I wanted to do something permanent."
Rojas went to her ceramics teacher, Cindy Massoff, with her ideas, and Massoff said she was happy to give Rojas advice as her student explored the logistics behind her ambitious plan.
"She came to me and said she wanted to lift up the spirit of the school," Masoff said. "I told her that anything she wanted, I would be behind her. I tried to be positive and told her to 'go, go, go,' and she just runs with every idea."
Rojas applied for, and received, a $2,500 grant to fund the project and then set up a Facebook group to invite North students to participate in it. The carpentry department built the 4x6 canvas and the photography department, under the guidance of Thomas MacIntyre, came up with the design. Rojas was able to secure a workshop with the help of Fine & Performing Arts Department director Todd Young.
"It was open to everyone to help whenever they could," Rojas said. "Everyone had a busy schedule so it was there for everyone to work on when they had 20 minutes or an hour."
For Rojas, the time commitment was much more substantial. And she did all this while captaining the North swim team to a second-place finish in the Bay State Conference and third-place finish at Sectionals.
"It was a little crazy at the beginning of the year," she said. "I was applying to college early decision and doing the grant proposal. I had a lot to do at once, but I kept it all manageable. I have to thank everyone who helped me."
Over the winter, she and her classmates traced out where the tiles would go on the mosaic using square-inch plastic tabs, and then spent two days grouting and gluing the actual tiles last month.
"There were a lot of unplanned things that happened with it because there were so many people working on it with different ideas and styles," she said. "There was a little bit of silliness involved in it too."
She said there were small things -- like the No. 13 on the sail of the boat that also looks like a "B" for Boston -- that she didn't notice until it was all done.
"I was kind of upset to be finished with it," she said. "It was so much fun to do it with everyone."
Rojas credited classmates Brewster Taylor and Julia Moss for helping her the most with the project that she said North principal Jennifer Price has proudly shown to visitors, and which will have a permanent home at North High when it is hung in one of the school's main hallways on May 16.
"She wants it to touch as many kids as possible," Massoff said. "I am so excited for her because the school has been pretty depressed, at times, in the past year and this is something super positive that she's done that involved so many kids at the school. It's going to bring a lot of smiles to the faces of a lot of people and it's her baby."
Rojas said she is happy it will remain at North High when she graduates this spring and heads to Hamilton College next fall as a recruited swimmer. As someone who relocated to Newton from New Orleans amid the destruction of Hurricane Katrina -- where her house sustained wind damage and she and her family were trapped in a charity hospital for more than a week - she is heartened with the notion of building something that lifts spirits where they had been nearly broken.
"After Katrina I am always looking for something that helps a community," she said. "It will be nice to know it is hanging here for everyone to see."
Scott Souza can be reached at 781-398-8006 or ssouza@wickedlocal.com.