Fine art of caring

Fourth graders at South Whidbey Elementary School have found a creative way to combine producing artwork with helping the community.

Fittingly titled “Art from the Heart,” an upcoming gala will give students the opportunity to showcase their masterpieces, with all proceeds raised supporting the Whidbey Homeless Coalition and Esther’s Place, a nonprofit organization in Everett that assists homeless women.

The art sale takes place 3 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 5 in the community room at the South Whidbey Elementary School K-4 North Campus.

Fourth grade classes have recently been learning about service projects and were searching for a cause to support.

They voted on the winning idea of supporting the homeless community, which had been suggested by Jayda Coleman and Lucy Aburto Flores.

Other students shared their reasoning for choosing this particular cause.

“I think it’s really because we all go mostly everywhere and we see homeless people sitting in their tents and they have set up stuff and they don’t really have a place to go or they don’t really have a lot of food,” Ellie Linaberry said.

Ramona Gunn pointed out that homelessness directly affects some of their classmates.

“We also chose this project because we know that lots of the students that we’re in school with don’t have homes and they’re having to find places to live and not being so fortunate,” she said.

Ella McCarthy said it made her more aware of the real world and the reality that many people do not have homes.

“It’s really, really sad,” she said. “So doing this project one, opened my eyes and two, made me really feel good about what I’m doing because the art that we’re making, it truly is from our hearts.”

Artwork available for purchase at the show will vary. Students have created designs of flowers on circular sandpaper, city skylines on graph paper representing the digits of pi, mixed media pieces of birds, colorful mandala coasters and block prints of underwater creatures found in the Salish Sea. Some projects had been made in the classroom, others at home.

One class has even been making non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which is a form of digital currency that can be traded or sold. Nels Bergquist, the teacher behind the idea, said buyers are most likely not local and are instead from the “crypto community.”

Hudson Currier, a student in Bergquist’s class, said his class has made $82.20 from the sale of 11 NFT pieces online.

Framed physical pieces at the “Art from the Heart” show will be priced at a minimum donation of $10 each.

Kathy Stanley, one of the other fourth grade teachers, said there may be an opportunity for a local restaurant or cafe to display the leftover art on their walls.

The teachers have been inspired by their students’ dedication to the cause.

“We really had this understanding of, wow, this is not just a faraway problem,” fourth grade teacher Lindsey DeMots said. “It happens right here in our school.”

“I’m just really so proud of these students because we need the voice of our young people to help lead the way on the issues that are facing our society,” South Whidbey Elementary School Principal Susie Richards said. “They care, and they have compassion and they have the ability to take action. I’m just really proud of them. They’re the future for us, for sure.”

Photo by David Welton Front row, left to right: Ellie Linaberry, Ramona Gunn, Andrew Braaten, Jayda Coleman and Quinn Ferguson. Back row, left to right: Hudson Currier, Ella McCarthy and Lucy Aburto Flores.

Photo by David Welton Fourth graders have spent recent art classes creating block prints, which require painting over a stencil and pressing it to a clean sheet of paper to produce an image of marine life.