Droplets of watercolor speckled the otherwise clean tables at the Dorothy Boswell School last week as National Art Honor Society members worked with the disabled students to create colorful self-portraits.
Over the past few weeks, art teacher Justin Frazier and his art club students have been continuously visiting the neighboring school, which provides special education for students ages 18-22 and teaches them functional skills such as independent living, social skills and vocational skills.
Art club’s goal for the project is to liven up their campus with pictures of the students.
“What we did is that we took pictures of them, inverted it so it was black and white, then projected it up onto the screen and we traced it,” said senior Annabelle Warren. “Where it was white we put rubber cement, and now we are going to go over there and we are going to have them watercolor over the entire thing, then we’ll rub the cement off and they’ll have a watercolored white silhouette.”
The program started very small, and has grown over the past few weeks.
“We only had a few students do it the first time because they are a little shy. Then [the portraits] turned out so amazing that we started getting more and now we’re doing like the entire school,” said Warren.
Frazier says the project started with a staff member at Dorothy Boswell contacting him asking for help.
“I got an email from one of the people who worked up there and they told me how sparse it was and how institutionalized it was and asked if we could do something to lighten it up,” said Frazier.
However, Frazier didn’t expect the volunteers would want to go to Dorothy Boswell repeatedly.
“Its turned into an ongoing thing and my students are giving up their lunch and a good part of their day for it, and I thought that they would just come up here once and be done but they want to come up every time,” he said.
The art club students themselves say that they enjoy working with the Dorothy Boswell students.
“It’s fun and these kids are so nice, and they couldn’t normally paint without our help so it’s really beneficial and that makes me happy to do it,” said junior Celeste Cole.
Senior Alexandra Grundler feels similarly.
“I look forward to these lunches. I just love these kids; they have so much life, and it just feels like they have this joy for life that a lot of us at Foothill overlook. And when you are with them, you just feed off their happiness. It’s great,” said Grundler.
Janice Satler, a teacher assistant at Dorothy Boswell, says that the project has had a positive impact on the Dorothy Boswell students.
“The impact that this has had on us is that the Foothill kids have been able to teach our kids more about art, but more importantly it helps with socializing skills, which is great for them because they do get a little shy,” said Satler.
Frazier says that he’s happy that the students are using art as a way to connect to other people.
“Art, as opposed to other subjects, is very active and instead of just learning passively, we are more proactive. And this is a really good demonstration of that and also the therapeutic side of art benefitting students from both of the schools,” said Frazier.
