Rocky the weathervane adds to local family’s legacy at Highland Park’s Ravinia Elementary

Faculty, staff and students filing into the freshly renovated Ravinia Elementary School this fall shouldn’t be startled by a critter perched above the front entrance.

That would be Rocky, the school’s raccoon mascot, in the form of a steel weathervane North Shore School District 112 commissioned local Highland Park artist Mary Seyfarth to create. 

Seyfarth said she was particularly excited to design the weathervane because the building’s facade already boasts another feature from her family — a clock dedicated to her grandmother in 1929, a once highly involved member of the district’s board of education more than 100 years ago.

“I am totally pleased, satisfied, because the people I worked with were first-class professionals,” 78-year-old Seyfarth said, “Being on the same building as my grandmother’s clock is a wonderful Highland Park story — generational story; it has a sense of completion.”

D112 first inquired whether Seyfarth could create a weathervane for Ravinia Elementary School in November 2024, she recalled. School officials specifically asked if she could fabricate a raccoon in the cockpit of a propeller plane.   

The third-generation Highland Park resident has studied in Switzerland, taught ceramics for more than 30 years at Columbia College, served on the board of the Evanston Art Center, and fashioned countless artworks, including a number of statues across the North Shore and downtown Chicago. 

But Seyfarth had never designed a weathervane before.

Taking inspiration from images online of raccoons and the Peanuts’ comic-character Snoopy in a biplane, she quickly sketched a “joyful” draft of Rocky piloting a propeller-plane with his ringed-tail flying out behind him. 

What followed were seven to eight months of revisions. As the weathervane was to fly 60 feet up in the air for the indefinite future, its weight had to be properly distributed and balanced, she said. 

Seyfarth attended Lincoln Elementary School as a child and took pride in a certain clock that was designed by the well-known architect John S. Van Bergen and mounted on one corner of the school’s exterior. 

Titled “The Flight of Time,” the clock was dedicated to Seyfarth’s grandmother Nell Martin Seyfarth on Nov. 6, 1929, for the late-Seyfarth’s work with the District 108 Board of Education. After the Lincoln School was torn down last year, the historic clock was moved to Ravinia Elementary School. 

With that in mind, Seyfarth felt a special connection to the weathervane project, now that two generations of her family have been involved with contributing to artwork not just to the city but to Ravinia Elementary School. 

“They could have bought a premade weathervane for $50, $60 to $160,” Seyfarth said of D112. “They probably have one of a raccoon of some kind, cheap-o things. If you Google weathervane, you never stop looking. There are zillions. So I compliment the school district for looking for a unique expression.”

Seyfarth also highlighted that woodland creatures have appeared in much of her past artwork, namely sculptures of birds. Two owls she created out of scrap metal are perched in a tree three blocks from Highland Park City Hall. Animals are important muses on which artists for ages have focused, she said.

After the design was finalized, the Rocky weathervane was eventually fabricated by Gallas Metalworks from Milwaukee and installed at Ravinia Elementary School on a brand new cupola on July 15. 

Though Seyfarth no longer teaches art, the completed project exemplified her belief that an artist is never retired. You’re only as good as your last performance, she said. 

“As ceramics comes easily to me, I’ve always got my hand in the pot, so to speak,” Seyfarth said. “I’ve got ideas for new projects. I’d like to do more weathervanes.”

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