For many years, I have used multicolored stripes and recycled materials in my work. For the Longfellow series, I used recycled materials from Longfellow Elementary School that I gathered while I was using space in the school as my studio (in my capacity as a Morningside University art faculty member). The work has special significance because I attended Longfellow as a child, and the studio I was using was, in fact, my old Kindergarten classroom.