RINER -- A recent visit to Auburn Elementary School raised Terry Caldwell's eyebrows.

Caldwell, who's the aquatic director for Montgomery County Parks and Recreation, felt there was news happening.

"There's something going on with that teacher out there," Caldwell reported. "I've never seen anything like it anywhere."

The teacher Caldwell felt the need to tattle on is Diana Mazor, the only teacher in school who wears sweats, sneakers and a paint-spattered carpenter's apron to class.

What Mazor is doing out there in Montgomery County Schools' Riner district astounded Caldwell.

"Auburn Elementary has some artwork displayed that is amazing," she said. "Set up in the hallway are banquet tables full of food made out of clay. It looks so real, you just want to eat it."

Indeed, newspaper investigations verified Caldwell's assertion. Inside the spacious school, displayed atop lace tablecloths on long folding tables, are all sorts of deceptively delectable clay confections: frosted cupcakes with cherries on top, doughnuts with multicolored sprinkles and slices of chocolate and lemon pie topped with frothy meringue.

"The fifth-graders did all of the cakes and pies," explained Mazor, a veteran teacher who spent the first 18 years of her career in special education and only the past six in art. The 3-D "food art," she added, came from her love of pop artist Wayne Thiebaud, who's known for his paintings of sweet, creamy cakes and pastries.

"I thought, 'If he can paint 'em, why can't we make 'em?' " Mazor said.

The 96 fifth-graders in Mazor's art classes each got to make two items from kiln clay.

"They got to experiment a little bit," Mazor said. "We actually whipped the clay for the frosting with an electric mixer and we put it in pastry bags to decorate [the finished product]. I showed them how to do rosettes and garlands."

Mazor paused and laughed as she surveyed the petrified patisseries.

"I don't even bake," she acknowledged. "It's all I can do to get dinner on the table."

Art was Mazor's first love, prompting her to pursue it as an undergraduate at Ohio's Miami University. Later, she went to graduate school at Radford University to study special education. When she made the switch from special ed to art teacher, she felt as if she had come full circle.

"Art teaching is one of the best jobs," she said. "The pressures you just don't have as compared to regular classrooms. Art teachers have it made."

Mazor said the very nature of her subject inspires her students to behave in class.

"They want to be there. They all are able in art. If they struggle with reading, with math, they can still turn out these lovely art projects and get praise."

Fifth-grader Hannah Coble said she hated missing school because of snow last winter, mainly because it made her miss art.

"We would get mad because we didn't get to finish our projects," she said. "I'll be home and I'll be bored and the first thing that will pop in my head is to draw."

Hannah and her friends agree that their appreciation for art comes from Mazor's teaching style.

"She's creative. We might be learning something in class and she'll think of ways to do artwork with it," Hannah said.

"There are so many different things you can do," added Sarah Frame. The fifth-grader said Mazor has taught them about various styles in art, as well as various artists.

"Pablo Picasso -- he's like this freaky artist who does all these funky things," she explained. "We also learned about Andy Warhol this year. He's known for pop art."

In addition to their 3-D projects, students in Mazor's fifth-grade level also created poster paintings of Victorian epergnes (pronounced ep-er-nays), ornamental centerpieces that would be used to grace the pastry-laden banquet tables.

"They're just beautiful," Mazor enthused. "They immediately identified it with Lumiere from 'Beauty and the Beast.' "

In all, Mazor teaches art to 420 of the school's 600 children. Her kindergartners make snails in the style of Henri Matisse and bugs reminiscent of Eric Carle's crawling creatures.

The first-graders create Van Gogh irises and sunflowers. Mazor believes it's never too early to introduce them to the masters. She believes they may be masters themselves one day.

"The younger ones in kindergarten through second grade are wonderful because they're wide open. Their art is primitive and imaginative," she noted. "In grades three, four and five, they can do more, but they're more critical. You have the advantage of both ends."

Mazor said she always does an example of a piece of artwork before she asks her students to do it. Often, her students' work surpasses her own.

"It's usually awful because it's so formal," she said of her own work. "The children are much more free."

They're free thinkers, too. Mazor said fifth-grader Calob Cox proved that with his question on their recent project. Calob, who says he wants to be an artist when he grows up, wasn't content to make a doughnut like everyone else's doughnut.

"What if I made a jelly-filled Bismarck with teeth marks?" he asked.

Mazor was thrilled with the idea.

That "freaky artist" would have been thrilled, too. After all, it was Picasso who said "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."