Hagerty High School Students Display Chicken-Themed Art at Oviedo City Hall

Thirty paintings of chickens now hang inside Oviedo's seat of local government, and every one was made by a high school student.

Hagerty High School art classes unveiled roughly 30 chicken-themed paintings in the Oviedo City Council Chambers on Monday, April 6, opening the city's first Art in the Chambers exhibition of 2026. The works are on view at City Hall, 400 Alexandria Boulevard, where anyone stopping in during regular hours will encounter them lining the chambers. Art teacher Omar Otero, who led the project with his classes, also contributed at least one large-scale painted-door piece to the show.

For anyone familiar with Oviedo, the subject matter needs little explanation. The city's famous free-roaming chickens have wandered its streets and parking lots for decades, becoming an unofficial emblem of the community. Turning them into a themed student art collection and hanging it inside City Hall is a distinctly local gesture, one that gives the show an identity that no other school in Seminole County could quite replicate.

The Art in the Chambers program rotates artwork through City Hall, placing student and community-made work in a space residents more often visit for permitting appointments or public hearings. For Hagerty students, the shift from classroom walls to a civic building offers early portfolio experience and an audience well outside their school on Lockwood Boulevard.

Otero's painted-door piece adds a separate scale to the collection. At larger dimensions than a standard canvas, it stands alongside the student paintings rather than framing them from a distance, placing the teacher's own artistic practice in direct conversation with his students' work.

The exhibition remains on view inside the council chambers at 400 Alexandria Boulevard during regular City Hall hours.