Culture
Fed Hock Senior Donates Funds Toward Art Supplies
By: Sarah Guinn | Athens Messenger
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Pretend you’re locked in a room for seven days with your favorite food and your favorite music, Coolville Elementary art teacher Sharon Phillips told her fourth graders. You have all the time in the world and all you’re going to do is “zentagle,” she said, invoking a relaxing, meditative, “zen” attitude.
The art project for the day was made possible by National Art Society students from Federal Hocking High School and funds raised by Tess Kamody’s senior project.
Kamody, who is also this year’s valedictorian, donated $122 of the money she raised from silversmithing jewelry.
“I wanted the money to go toward something I knew was being used in this cool way, and it’s cooler that I get to help contribute,” she said.
The project also gave her the chance to give back, having been a Talented and Gifted student of Phillips’ from second grade up through sixth, she said.
Kamody bought lots of brand-new permanent markers for the fourth graders to use and also put together “artist packets” filled with a pencil, a special artists’ pen, artist trading cards, as well as blank trading cards students can make and decorate themselves.
Senior Colleen Byron and sophomore Gracie Beha, National Art Society members, joined Kamody to teach Phillips’ fourth graders how to zentangle for the day, talk to them about Art Club and help promote future artists in the Federal Hocking district.
“I know I loved elementary art and that’s what inspired me to continue taking art classes and join Art Club, so if I can give that to other kids, that’d be super awesome,” Byron said.
Kamody and Byron are among the founding members of the National Art Society chapter at Federal Hocking High School.
The kids started with tracing a simple mask, and then went wild from there and drew intricate lines and patterns that make up the zentangle art.
Draw a circle, then put squiggles around the circle, then put squiggles the other direction, and then put squares in the middle, Phillips said to her students to give them an example of how to zentangle.
“Ideas are free,” she said to the class. “If you want to borrow any of these shapes, do them.”
Keara Stout started on her project tracing a mask with double lines over the eyes. From there, she drew lines upward and out, filling in the space with squiggles, big wavy lines here, a line of circles there, and lots of criss-crossing shapes.
“I love it,” she said of the zentangle art. “Where I’m able to do anything expressing my drawing or stuff like that, I just love it.”
Kamody sat next to Tiffany Allen at the art table and showed her the different zentangle designs and ideas she could use for her drawing.
“I like all the designs and all the details,” Tiffany said of her art.
Byron emphasized the need for kids to de-stress and said she believed the time they get in art class can help with that.
“I think that creativity is such an important thing,” she said. “Kids need time to just be themselves and be creative and art class is just the perfect opportunity to let kids express themselves.”