Picturing the disaster: Tsunami relief project involves students’ artwork

Article and photos reprinted with permission from the Finger Lakes Times, Geneva, New York.

By Sujata Gupta, Times Staff Writer 

GENEVA—Richard Matos points to a picture on his desk. The paper is covered with brightly colored wavy lines interspersed with polka dots. Matos, a sixth-grader and Builders Club member at Geneva Middle School, struggles to explain what his image means.

“The wave came so I wanted to do different colors,” Matos said, referring to the tsunami that leveled coastal areas across Asia December 26.

In Matos’ eyes, the colors represent chaos, a world that suddenly went berserk. It shows, he said, “how the land got hit. The wavy lines are for different places that got hit.”

The tiny dots, he added, are all the people who were affected by the tsunami.

Matos, like many of his peers, finds it easier to express his reaction to the natural disaster through images and pictures.

In response to this need, Finger Lakes Arts Grants Services (FLAGS) executive director Marybeth Springmeier joined forces with the Geneva Kiwanis club to create a tsunami relief project focused on children.

The result: Children Helping Children, an art/fund-raising project aimed at teaching kids about the natural disaster and providing them with a nonverbal avenue to express their feelings.

Children in every Geneva school designed labels depicting the tsunami, the need for help, and their own personal anguish.

On Thursday, Kiwanians, FLAGS representatives, and community participants selected the best of those labels, making sure every school group involved in the project was represented.

Labels were judged on color, composition, and how well they reflected the theme. Winning labels were photocopied and glued to coffee cans and placed around area businesses and restaurants.

All the other submitted artworks were displayed on the FLAGS office’s front window to help kick off the fund-raiser.

Springmeier said the label project kept the tsunami in people’s minds.

“There is a need for ongoing support,” she said. “Monsoon seasons and other things are starting to move in.”

Matos, like his peers in the Builders Club, said he’s just happy to be helping kids like himself.

Builders Club President Elizabeth “Liz” Pieniazek said she was really sad when she heard about the tsunami, but she wasn’t sure what she could to do to help.

“At one of our previous meetings, we were thinking of different ways to raise money,” she said, noting that the group agreed to donate $50 from a holiday bake sale to the relief effort.

But this project, she said, lets her show how she relates to the children affected by the disaster.

“It’s really good for other kids to help,” she said, adding that in her picture she “just showed a girl helping other kids.”

For her illustration, sixth-grader Mackenzie Bailey used a before and after motif.

“Before the houses were good, and then everything just fell,” Bailey said, adding that she wants people to feel good about themselves when they deposit money in the coffee cans.

“I wanted everybody just to smile when they put money in because they know they did good,” she said.