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Classes Produce Holiday Cards for SMARTS Program
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Holiday cards featuring artwork produced by two classes of students in Youngstown State University’s Students Motivated by the Arts -- or SMARTS program – go on sale this week.
SMARTS has been doing the holiday card fund raiser since the opening of the SMARTS Store about five years ago, said Becky Keck, program director. A program of YSU’s colleges of Fine and Performing Arts and Education, SMARTS is a community arts school open to disadvantaged students in grades K-12 that provides free lessons in visual arts, music, dance, theater and creative writing. “The goal is to give kids an opportunity to learn through the arts in an afterschool and Saturday setting,” Keck said.
Cards featuring the two designs, one with a photograph of a penguin on the cover with the inside reading “Happy Holidays” and the other with a drawing of a hand giving the peace sign and blank inside, can be purchased for six for $5 and 100 for $50. “There were two local artists who were teachers at SMARTS this semester and we took full advantage of them,” Keck said. The cards were created by three Smarts students in two different classes taught by photographer Tony Nicholas and writer-illustrator Chris Yambar.
The students in Yambar's class were asked to think about the topic of world piece and each submitted a drawing, he recalled.
“The kids are geniuses, every one of them,” he remarked.
Yambar's only regret is that “we couldn’t put out a box of all 15 because they were all great,” he added. “The kids were really just fantastic. They had no problem with that assignment at all.”
Proceeds from the sale of the cards will benefit SMARTS programming. The cards are available for purchase starting today at the SMARTS Store, 258 Federal Plaza West, or by contacting Keck via email. Store hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. A holiday open house will be held 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Dec. 4.
More information is available by calling 330 941 ARTS or through the program’s website.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.