May 20, 2005
Nipper project a family affair
Newsweekly

By Diane Fuhrer

"It's somewhere in the genes," the seventh-grader at William Allen Middle School said. And so it is appropriate that her entry in Nipper 2005 will showcase her artistic ability and family connections.

Ally, 12, designed and completed Families are Forever, a 5-foot tall Nipper dog covered with more than 100 pictures of families, most of them local. All of them with local ties. Ally had given her idea a lot of thought before submitting it.

"I knew the Historical Society was part of it," she said. "And families are a part of the past, present and future."

Nipper 2005 is a public arts project partnered by five local non-profits - the Lutheran Home, the Evergreens, the Perkins Center for the Arts, the Community House and the Moorestown Historical Society. Ally is decorating one of 30 Nipper dogs that will be displayed throughout Moorestown beginning in June. The dogs will remain on display until September when they are moved to the Moorestown Mall. The dogs will be auctioned Oct. 9. Ally's Nipper begins with black and white historical photographs of families she received from the Historical Society. The bottom of Nipper is also painted black. From there Nipper begins to take on color, as do the photographs covering his body. "I had to be really careful. This is very detailed work," Ally said. "It had to be perfect." Ally collected the photographs from family, friends and neighbors. She then cropped them and sized them to fit in the different spaces on Nipper. Small ones fit nicely on the paws and ears. She even received one that fit perfectly on the dog's snout. "It was kind of a puzzle," she said. "I didn't want too many big ones around the face because that would make it too bumpy. I moved a lot around." Where a picture went was based on its shape, not who it was, and where it would fit. The finished design also includes quotes about family. "We wanted to come up with something that the sponsors would like," said Ally's mother Susan. "We know people love to see their pictures. And we always talk about family being important." Ally worked on the project when she wasn't at school, finishing it up days before it was due back to the Nipper 2005 committee. And although it took a lot of time, her mother never doubted that she could do it. "She's a straight-A student," Susan said. "She loves art. She's such a natural. "I want her to develop her natural ability." Ally, who enjoys working with clay, has entered other art competitions. She won a poster contest about school safety, her poster was chosen for the Upper Elementary School time capsule and in fifth grade she won an Arbor Day poster contest. But this project has been the biggest. "It was exciting at first, but now there's a lot of pressure," said Ally, who is in the gifted and talented art program at the middle school. "I like this idea of being out there. I'm nervous, but I would do it again."

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