There is a giant, green hand in the front office of the K-8 School in Mendocino. “It was made a dozen or so years ago by a group of students,” says Mark Oatney, the art teacher at the K-8. It is called the “Open-Handed Tree”, and it was made as an art project part of a 3-D art unit. 

Teams of students had the choice to make what they wanted, then make clay models and paper mache pieces. The hand was one of these pieces. According to Mark, the students spent a lot of time making and designing it. It apparently took weeks of time to just make the piece.

It was originally supposed to be more of a tree that was also a hand, and it was painted in muted rainbow colors. Mark put a protective cover over the sculpture, and with time, it browned. A few years ago, a group of students repainted it, and it’s now the color you can see in the office today.