Press

NORTON — Students at Norton High School have created a work of art to honor Martin Luther King Jr. for the holiday in his name.

Juniors Shaun Seward and Cooper Smith created a large mosaic of the iconic civil rights leader with Rubik’s Cubes.

The work is in the school’s media center and will likely be there the rest of this week, media specialist Jennifer Young said.

Seward and Smith are part of an informal club of students who have been creating pieces out of Rubik’s Cubes since last spring.

“I had a few Rubik’s Cubes out for the kids to play with and they showed an interest,” Young said. “There is kind of a core group of about 10 students across all four grades that does most” of the creations.

“They hang out at the library and usually get together after school Thursdays,” Young said. “They get to work solving” the puzzles and making works of art.

Seward came up with the idea for the King project and does most of the designing for the creations the students make out of the cubes.

A grant from the local parent group, Norton Embracing Educational Development (NEED), allowed for the purchase of 600 Rubik’s Cubes.

Seward and four other students recently won a competition with Rubik’s Cubes — the first contest they entered.

They made an image of Boston Red Sox star Mookie Betts, using over 580 cubes.

The creation took first place in the “You Can Do the Cube” contest where participants had to create an original mosaic.

The other students involved in that project were Abbie Eng, Nick Denham, Myles Callina and James Wilson.

“The kids designed a map layout and put it together,” Young said. “It’s a pretty detailed thing.”

The prize for the contest, which the students learned about online, was a set of 12 Rubik’s Cubes and $50 to spend on more cubes.

“We got some fancy ones, triangular-shaped,” Young said.

Rubik’s Cubes are the colorful plastic 3D puzzle games where one tries to align the same colors on one side.

“We take them apart and make something knew,” Young said of the objects the students make.

Last Thursday, the students were talking about doing a series of historical figures.

Last spring, the students made images of Young, Superintendent Joseph Baeta, and a couple of teachers.

“Kids will come in and take a look to see what they did this week and try to figure out who it is,” Young said.

The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ern Rubik, and became a big craze in the 1980s.

Over 350 million cubes have been sold worldwide, making it the world’s top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world’s best-selling toy.

The librarian said she knows of no other student groups making such creations.

Stephen Peterson can be reached at 508-236-0377.