Westerville Central seniors Maeve O'Connell and Brady Leggett, along with two other friends, spent Wednesday after school sketching a jungle scene in chalk along the sidewalk in front of the building.
The piece, which featured different animals in an Aboriginal motif, was part of WCHS’ annual Arts Alive Festival — a week-long celebration of student art across the school community.
For O’Connell, being able to participate in the chalk walk this year offered a return to some normalcy.
“It’s nice the school has given us the opportunity to do it safely,” she said. “It’s a big part of Central’s art community. It’s a really unifying experience and I’m really happy that we can still come together and do this.”
Prior to the pandemic, the annual event featured a host of interactive activities including a multicultural fair, music and dance performances, games, live poetry and acoustic acts.
When the state shuttered schools last year because of the pandemic, art teachers Jennifer Kiko and Derrick Ehlen shifted to a virtual event, showcasing student art through a website.
This year, they scaled back festivities to a hallway gallery that celebrates more than 200 works of art by students and a chalk walk where artist teams created colorful designs. The Arts Alive student group met after school for weeks to create and decide design winners for this year's T-shirt, which were Nick Layne, DL Stewart and Nick Buehler. Limited edition stickers were designed by Brooke Middleton and Abby Conturo.
“Even though this year was a calmer, more focused Arts Alive, students and staff still enjoyed celebrating art and art students in this yearly tradition,” Kiko said.
For the chalk walk, students previously would take time during the school day to sketch their art on the sidewalks around the building.
Artist teams had the flexibility this year to create their chalk walk designs. From May 1 to 8, they could craft pieces at their home, in the park or on the school’s sidewalk either after school or on the weekends. Several artists, including O’Connell and Leggett, adjusted their plans because of last week’s rainy weather.
Leggett was inspired to create the jungle scene for his team’s chalk walk entry after learning about the various motifs associated with different cultures in his art class and wanted to draw animals using Aboriginal designs.
He noted that students have used their chalk walk pieces as a platform to advocate for social causes or a space to express their opinions.
“You see so much personality come out,” O’Connell said.