Photos Courtesy of Gianna Bishop

Click image to watch the creation process!

George Washington became known as the “Father of Our Country” in 1776. It has been 200 years since then, but his memory still lives on thanks to visual senior Gianna Bishop. She has managed to bring him back to life in an eight foot long by six foot wide rendition made entirely of Post-it notes. And that is just his head. Bishop was given the opportunity this past week to travel to New York City as part of the Armory Teen Art Council (ATAC) to create the masterpiece for the Fox and Friends morning show. She was accompanied by Talya Lerman, the director of education at the Armory Art Center.

“I went to New York because the Armory was contacted by Fox and Friends,” said Bishop. “They wanted us to reproduce The George Washington post it note project that we did at the public library for [West Palm Beach’s] 25th anniversary of the community. Fox and Friends got hold of that image and the press we received, and decided just to keep George Washington since it was fitting the day before Independence Day.”

The idea to use Post-its came from the name of the city’s campaign called, “Stick with West Palm Beach”. The project was developed by the city’s community events division and their graphic artist, Kellan Marcum. The Armory Art Center was then contacted to complete the project which became titled, “Big George.”

“We partnered to create the 28 foot tall George Washington mural that appears in the Clematis Street Library’s window,” said Ms. Lerman. “The armory and the City of West Palm beach were featured, albeit briefly, on a national program. The exposure and the expected social media coverage are huge for us. We’re excited to showcase a community project and our ATAC group.”

Creating the project was an accomplishment in itself, but the hard work of the ATAC was recognized on national television the morning of July 3 after Bishop and Lerman finished the project for the second time. Around 1000 Post-it notes were used to complete it.

“We were unable to get into the Fox and Friends studio during the day because they were filming a segment,” Bishop said. “So we arrived at the studio [on] July 2nd around 10 o’clock to start working. We worked during the night trying to get most of him done, and ended up leaving the studio around 12:30. July 3rd, we were up and at the studio around 6 a.m. to resume work.”

The Teen Council is full of dedicated members, like Bishop, that want to express their creativity through art in their community. The Post-it project was one way they accomplished this.

“It was a really great experience overall, and kind of cool to see the behind-the-scenes action that goes on at a news center,” Bishop said. “This was also really good press for ATAC and West Palm Beach, and through this I am hoping that we piqued the interest of more teens in our community and hopefully those teens will want to get involved with ATAC and our projects.”