Huntington High School Art Honor Society members recently completed a community service project that involved creating more than a dozen stunning portraits of children and teenagers living in discouraging conditions in Sierra Leone.
The Art Honor Society members teamed up with the Memory Project, a charitable non-profit organization that encourages art teachers and their students to develop and donate portraits to youth around the world “who have faced substantial challenges, such as violence, disasters, extreme poverty, neglect and loss of parents,” states the group’s website.
“We want the portraits to help the children feel valued and important, to know that many people care about their well-being and to act as meaningful pieces of personal history in the future,” according to the organization. “For the art students, we want this to be an opportunity to creatively practice kindness and global awareness.”
The Huntington High School student-artists who created the portraits include
Cecilia Kye, Jazlyn Chapas-Oliva, Erik Flores Reyes, Lauren Landolfi, Koi Crowder, Katherine Bruno, Danielle Mendikyan, Katerina Damiano, Talia Addeo, Grace Colavecchio, Emily Plachta, Naysa Escobar Rizo, Charlotte Cheshire and Idalis La Paz Nunez
“Our members focused on various media such as digital art, printmaking, charcoal and graphite drawings and more, said teacher Jenna Rinaldi, the Art Honor Society’s faculty advisor. “We fundraised $180 for the charity.”
“We have been fortunate to have 300,000 youth in 55 countries involved in our school-based programs since 2004,” states the Memory Project on the organization’s website. .
“The Memory Project provided the Huntington art students with color prints of each child to work from. They also provided information about each child’s favorite color, in case student artists wanted to include the color somewhere in the clothing or background.
