West High School has many extremely talented students, and featuring today is Ty Garcia, a West High senior with an extreme passion for art. Recently she has created a booklet of drawings inspired by 99 coping mechanisms based off of the Boys Town organization founded in 1941 in Omaha, Nebraska. She stated that, “I found it boring and uninteresting when it’s just a list of words. I’m more focused on when there’s images and that’s what I decided to do.”
According to Healthline.com, coping skills are the tools people use to get through situations. Some coping skills can help people avoid these situations entirely. Others work to lessen the pain or emotions. Ty captured all 99 of these skills perfectly with just the flick of her pencil. Garcia hopes that her drawing will help anyone who crosses paths with her art work.
Garcia is currently in Deena Reeds Art II class and will be moving up to Reed’s AP Art class next semester. This project is actually a part of her portfolio in AP 2D Art.
This project is not just a momentary thing, but according to Garcia, “ it will be a 33 week series of the school’s social media until the last week before graduation.” Garcia hopes that her style will grow with her development of this project. She elaborated on that hope by stating, “I went from a packet with drawings on it to a digital weeking post. I do hope my style even continues to grow alongside it.”
Garcia's art teacher has been very supportive throughout the process of creating this project. It was originally her idea for Garcia to pursue this project farther. “Ty is highly motivated,” Reed exclaimed. “I am excited to see what she accomplishes with her artwork by May. Hopefully she will be able to sell her work in book form!” She added.
This project, originally created for fun, has spiraled into an amazing source for kids who struggle to cope with the things that they are going through. If you are interested in viewing this artwork, stay tuned weekly @Morristown-HamblenHighSchoolWest @facebook and @mowesttrojannation @instagram