D.C. public-school students who’ve dealt with the schools’ infamous bureaucracy have plenty of experience with labyrinths. Now, artist Sandra Wasko-Flood is bringing a different kind of labyrinth to schools: the kind that looks like a giant maze when you paint it on the sidewalk. Outside Walker Jones Elementary School on a recent Tuesday, Wasko-Flood admired the handiwork of the 45 children she’d worked with over the past two weeks, as part of the Sports Education Arts Students (SEAS) summer day-camp program “Traveling to the center of a labyrinth,” said the artist, “helps achieve clarity.” The two mazes the group has made spice up the asphalt near the school parking lot with blues, yellows, and whites. One is a perfect circle; the other resembles a tortoiseshell. “I wasn’t sure that this was a project they would enjoy,” said Beatrice Hunter, who runs the Walker Jones branch of SEAS. “But they love it.” Ten-year-old Crystal Cox wrote in her journal that journeying to the center of the labyrinth “makes me feel like I can fly like a bird.” Still, getting kids to stay within the lines is a bit of a struggle. “There was some pushing at the beginning, because everyone wanted to get to the center first,” said Wasko-Flood. “But they’ve begun to understand.” —Dash Robinson

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