When walking around the high school, your eyes can be captured by any number of things: a student or teacher walking by, a new poster on the wall. As the new semester begins, Art Club members are ready to make future projects a not so distant reality. Since last year, the group has been planning new and bigger ways to display their passion for art and creativity for everyone to see.

Kristie Savino, the Junior High and Senior High art teacher and leader of the club, said the group has two main projects to complete this year, one of them being in the freshman hallway.

“They are painting the hallways the three primary colors,” Savino said. “So one wall is blue and red, and we still have to complete the yellow and do some touching up.”

Planning for the wall project has been ongoing for a year and a half. The club was originally planning on completing murals on the wall, but have turned to hanging art along the walls instead. The group plans to make the area stand out to indicate the presence of the art rooms in that hallway.

“The walls will just end up being solid,” Savino said. “Then we are going to get frames for artwork to make this kind of an art area.”

The second large project will involve artwork being placed in the bathrooms around the school with a positive message for students in the form of uplifting quotes or statements. The project is projected to take several years.

“The students will be doing paintings on canvas to put on the stall doors in the bathroom and then putting plexiglass over top so they don’t get ruined,” Savino said. “They are supposed to be inspirational quotes to make you feel a little bit better when you’re in there if you have run to the bathroom to hide or cry.”

This year’s members are very enthusiastic to see what sort of impact these projects could have on their group and the entirety of the school. Junior student and member Gabriella Stauffer believes the projects will have a desired message of showing Oakwood’s passion for art and the well-being of all students.

“I hope that these projects will instill in students a sort of peace,” Stauffer said. “With color and inspiration in the freshman hallway and positivity in the restrooms around school, I hope that at least one student is impacted positively.”

As a junior, Stauffer hopes she continue to make an impact on students in the school until she graduates. To her, the purpose of art is to reach out in a passionate and genuine way to elicit any type of emotion.

“Up until I am a senior, I just hope to make any sort of impact on students,” Stauffer said. “I think the point of art is to make someone feel something, whether they be feelings of confusion, wholeness or anything, so when the projects that we do focus on color and positivity, I think we can have a real positive impact on kids.”

Freshman Sasha Gurevich has been a member since seventh grade, participating in both junior high and high school art clubs. Gurevich is excited to see what sort of impact this year’s projects will have on the student body.

“I am excited for both of these projects because I think that these projects are unique to art club and they will be interesting for other people to see,” Gurevich said.

Gurevich hopes that the projects will provide an extra aspect of color and positive energy in the lives of students to contradict the possibly stressful aspect of classes.

“I think these projects will help spread positive energy and make the school colorful,” Gurevich said. “The wall art is to make the hallway look interesting and so that the school will have some color on the walls instead of beige, and the goal for the posters are to make your day feel better.”

Like Stauffer, Gurevich, having been a member for many years, has been involved in a multitude of previously successful projects around the school. This included the project completed last year in the senior hallway reflecting the hopes and aspirations of students.

“Art Club helped construct the hoops of hope,” Gurevich said. “For this project, everyone had to write down a dream that they had on a streamer and the art club members put the streamers onto the rings.”

The trend of completing larger scale projects is not just reserved to high school students. Junior high art club has completed a number of projects that will be given to the community.

“In Junior High art club we did ceramic ornaments and glazed them. They will be given to the Elf Shoppe in Oakwood next year to sell,” Savino said.

As well as sharing their art with Oakwood, junior high art club members have been creating projects that mimic artists they have been learning about.

“They did a plastic bottle sculpture that focuses on the artist Chihuly,” Savino said. “I still have yet to construct it but they each did their individual piece.”

For both groups, the goal of Art Club is the same: to have a positive, memorable impact on the students and families of Oakwood as well as reflecting the school’s appreciation for art.  The end results will reflect the club’s hours of meetings and effort to contribute to a better atmosphere in the community. 

Savino said, “We are doing bigger projects instead of smaller individual things that are either going to help the Oakwood community or help make our school have a better artistic atmosphere.”