The boys and girls at Echo Glen Children’s Center, a juvenile detention center in Snoqualmie, have done bad things. Often born with addictions and raised with abuse, many battle mental and emotional problems and have learned only how to lash out at the world.

At Echo Glen, rules and walls may have replaced chaos, but those who work with the kids know they have much to learn about life. One of these workers, King County Housing Authority AmeriCorps member Jill Beppu sought to use clay and paintbrushes to teach them a little.

A collection of beautiful mosaics, featuring shards of colored clay and mirrors, is proof that she and volunteer artist Rachael Bigham, succeeded.

The mosaics, in frames and built into towers, are outsider art at its best – garish, raw and fascinating. Beppu and Bigham assembled the mosaics, but Echo Glen inmates created many of the pieces.

For KCHA, Beppu teaches English as a Second Language to immigrants in Kirkland and Bellevue. Unlike the residents she works with at Casa Juanita and Spiritwood, most of her Echo Glen students speak English, but she wondered if communicating with them would prove harder.

Beppu, who has a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Washington, began teaching art at Echo Glen as a volunteer in 2002. When she joined the KCHA AmeriCorps team in 2003, her Echo Glen efforts became part of the job duties.

In 2004, Beppu decided to return to the AmeriCorps team for a second year. KCHA AmeriCorps Coordinator Pat Porter asked her to consider involving her students in the AmeriCorps art competition, held at the annual Northwest National Service Symposium.

“Jill picked up the idea and ran with it,” Porter said. “Then it took on a life of its own. It’s a marvelous project, full of so much energy.”

She said she was happy to see strong involvement in the project.

“The kids actively participated, which is something these kids just don’t do,” she noted. “They’re non-verbal and closed-up, but they willingly followed the rules so they could be in the class.”

Beppu said she hardly expected this transformation when she started at Echo Glen. The youths weren’t hostile and, closely supervised by security staff, they were quiet and respectful. However, they betrayed little interest in art.

One youth caused a change in the others approached the project when he applied himself to a piece, laboring for 10 minutes to sketch a cartoon scene in the Japanese “animé” style.

“That this young man could focus on one thing for 10 minutes was a great accomplishment,” Porter said. “The other kids were then willing to follow along.”

The students at Echo Glen embraced the mosaic project, not only carving designs into shards of clay, but also learning how to grout, paint and glaze. For some, they discovered the pride of creation and were anxious to show their work to Beppu and the staff.

“The kids now are able to focus, to decide to continue,” Beppu explained. “They can visualize. They learned patience, how to cope with disappointment and how to take care of things.”

As Porter noted, “They learned they don’t have to react to everything with anger.”

Despite the mosaics’ eye-popping grandeur, a technicality kept the project from winning the May symposium at Portland State University. It turned out that all entries had to be crafted by AmeriCorps members alone.

The disappointment was short-lived. Beppu and Bigham soon won a $6,000 Kateri Brow Big Idea Grant from the Issaquah Schools Foundation. Beppu plans to continue the Echo Glen art program with that and other funding from charitable groups.