Art students at McHenry High School’s Freshman Campus are hoping their art brings about some healing to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Ninth-grade Art and Design 1 students recently contributed to a global project to make art depicting support for Ukrainian citizens through the Online Art Teachers group that started as a collaboration organization for art teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students contributed their pieces to a slideshow that will be shared with art teachers in Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor accepting many refugees.
The slideshow includes more than 1,500 pieces of art by K-12 school students from 46 schools in four continents.
The slides include photos of the art pieces, but at McHenry High School, the physical pieces have been made into a quilt. Art Instructor Jessica Metropulos has the quilt displayed in her classroom, but she’s hoping to find a more public display place in downtown McHenry.
“We’re coming together to try to spread some love, care and support in any way possible,” Metropulos said. “It was a way to connect with art, and show support.”
The Online Art Teachers group grew out of a Facebook group created in 2020 to support art teachers looking to share ideas about teaching art in a virtual environment. McHenry High School students worked digitally for much of the 2020-21 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Art students, who made the choice to work on the art project for Ukraine, used watercolor, marker and/or colored pencil for their designs. The project included studying Ukraine and learning about the flag and the country’s history.
There are about 70 students in Metropulos’ the three sections of Art and Design 1 at the Freshman Campus, formerly known as East Campus.
The Online Art Teachers (K-12) group also encourages teachers to make contributions to support refugees to Baranova27. This organization was started by the family of Ukrainian-American dancers Maksim and Val Chmerkovskiy.
