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LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
A hall full of paper bats put students at Thomas Simpson School in a Halloween mood, and gave them a glimpse of an unlikely adventure the school's art teacher once had.

Paper bats dangle above the heads of the students in Thomas Simpson School's junior high art explorations class. The students who made the interactive installation, Bats in my Hair, include, front row from left, Rebekah Isaiah, Sylvia Pascua-Matte, Twyla Isaiah and Joshua Cazon, back row from left, Phoenix Martineau, teacher Barry McEvoy, Tia Hardisty and Juliane Isaiah-Tanche. Missing is Michelle Lafferty. - Roxanna Thompson/NNSL photo

Eight students in the junior high art explorations class created the interactive paper sculpture installation titled Bats in my Hair. The students spent two and a half classes making more than 150 bats using a template and black construction paper.

Thin string was used to hang the bats in the hallway for approximately five metres on either side of the art classroom's door on Oct. 26. The bats were dangled at just the right height to brush across the hair of the taller students as they walked through the hall.

The installation was inspired by a close encounter with bats that art teacher Barry McEvoy once had. One summer, while teaching at Samuel Hearne Secondary School in Inuvik, McEvoy travelled to northern Ontario for his vacation.

While sitting alone in a friend's cabin reading a book, McEvoy heard something scrabbling and scratching in the cabin's walls. Thinking mice were responsible for the sounds, McEvoy set some traps but they were still empty the next day.

When his friend returned, McEvoy told him about the sounds. The two men noticed that the tarpaper on one of the unfinished outside walls of the cabin was bulging.

"It was two grown men and we were absolutely frightened," said McEvoy

Armed with brooms, the friends were prepared for mice or snakes but not the legion of bats that took flight when they ripped the tarpaper open.

"There's all these bats and we're swinging the brooms," he said.

McEvoy and his friend both ended up with bats on their heads and clothing as the disoriented animals flew away in the daylight.

"It was just like a flurry right in your face," he said.

McEvoy has used the story to inspire a number of Bats in my Hair projects as a way to avoid the usual ghost and pumpkin themes around Halloween.

"It makes the kids feel proud to put something up that everyone is getting a kick out of," he said.

Phoenix Martineau, one of the students in the class, said he enjoyed making the bats and that it's unlike anything he's created before. The story about McEvoy and the bats was pretty funny, Martineau said.

Classmate Tia Hardisty said she liked the project because it was different.

Although she's seen a bat before, Hardisty said she's never had one fly into her hair. Hardisty, one of the few members of the class tall enough to have the paper bats brush against her hair, said the installation is as close as she wants to get to the real experience.

"It feels weird," she said.

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