At their diner, art is the blue plate special
Bethany Balestieri gave elbow grease a whole new meaning last week.
One of about a dozen Dover-Sherborn High School students working on a full-size replica of a roadside diner's interior, Balestieri volunteered to put black paint on her elbows, then press them onto a giant piece of white paper. In coming weeks, students building the diner's countertop will, through the magic of graphic arts software, use her prints to create the illusion of worn Formica, as if decades of elbows had rested comfortably while chatting up a waitress, reading the paper, or drinking a mug of coffee.
Such devotion to detail is breathing life into the Arts Diner, an after-school project that has become a lesson in history, art, culture, and enterprise.
The Arts Diner is the brainchild of Darren Buck, a Dover-Sherborn art teacher who readily acknowledges his obsession with the roadside eateries. Students and faculty have labored all school year to not only build the structure, but also to imbue it with a story.
"I love that; that is wonderful," said diner expert Richard Gutman, when told about the elbow effort. "The worn-down ceramic tile or Formica, these are indestructible materials, and the fact they are worn speaks of generations of people that are partaking of the food and the atmosphere. It always disheartens me when people replace those countertops, because if only they could talk."
Gutman is director and curator of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, which includes a large diner exhibition. Buck took students there for a field trip and has invited Gutman to the unveiling of the Arts Diner on May 17.
Buck won a $2,000 grant from the Dover Sherborn Education Fund to cover the costs of building the diner interior, which includes vinyl-covered stools made of wood and foam insulation, a floor painted to look like the tiles that seem to be a mandated feature of every diner, and "consolettes," the mini-jukeboxes that allow patrons to select songs from their seat.
But the project is about much more than construction. Students and faculty have woven a history for the diner. As the faux account would have it, the diner has spawned characters and character, and is situated in the fictional town of Formicaville, which is home to businesses with personalities and a particularly colorful radio station, WAFL.
For example, history and government teacher Brian Kors helped students write a back story for the station's owner, Harlan "Snooks" Davenport. It turns out he got into the business after he was struck by lightning while golfing and started transmitting a radio station through one of his tooth fillings.
Kors, who describes himself as a "certified diner enthusiast," said he loves the way the project bridges so many subjects: historical research, creative writing, art, graphic design.
"The students have essentially created a universe," he said.
There's theater in the project, too. Students and faculty have created more than an hour's worth of radio programming for WAFL, to be played in the diner when it opens.
"These kids are coming of age when the diner as an American institution is starting to fade out a little bit," said Kors. "I've always seen them as a living piece of American history. If someone was frozen in the 1940s and woke up in 2008 and walked into one of these diners, they would feel at home. There's a timelessness about them."
After school last Thursday, students were working on several different diner projects. After finishing her elbow prints, Balestieri was carving initials onto paper with an X-acto knife, creating another detail for the countertop.
Senior Cady Smith was silk-screening the diner's logo onto waitress uniforms. Smith said she went to diners all the time growing up in New Jersey, because they were everywhere.
"I love diners," she said, "because you can go to a diner at two in the morning and get chocolate-chip pancakes."
When Buck started the project in the fall, he was shocked to find out some students had never set foot inside a diner, even though there's a landmark institution just one town away. Natick is home to Casey's Diner, a legendary hot-dog place built in 1922 and now managed by the founding family's fourth generation.
He said he envisions the Arts Diner, which will be set up inside the high school library, as an "artistic love letter to a classic New England icon."
Buck, who grew up in Sherborn and attended Dover-Sherborn High, said he saw the project as a way to tap into the wanderlust that comes from growing up in such a small town. After going to Syracuse University, Buck lived in New York and played in a soul band before settling down in his hometown. Diners represent to him road trips and discovering other parts of the country.
"Having gone to this school, I know in some ways it's a sheltered community," he said. "I had to go out into the world to come back."
Lisa Kocian can be reached at 508-820-4231 or lkocian@globe.com.
