Students from Newfane, Roy-Hart schools show off creations from after school program
May 17—An art program has given Eastern Niagara County students a new opportunity to pick up the paintbrush after school.
Jessica Tomaino founded the non-profit WAHI Art Studio and opened the space on Michigan Street in 2020 and first began hosting the After School Art Club for Newfane students the following year. This year, Royalton-Hartland students have also joined the group of 19 middle and high school students.
"I would have wanted this as a teen," Tomaino said. "I wasn't a sports kid, I was an art kid and we didn't really have a lot of options... to do stuff like that."
For Newfane High School freshman Bryson Davey, it gives him an opportunity to do something collaborative with his friends, while continuing to make new ones.
"I met a lot of friends that first year that was originally only Newfane students. Then they expanded it and now we're all here together. So it's a little more people that I get to meet," Davey said.
For several students, like Roy-Hart seventh-grader Mary Jane Rastelli, it gives them the opportunity to create different kinds of art outside of the traditional classroom or home setting.
"I like doing art and my aunt brought it up to me (to join the program last year) because I don't really have a lot of stuff to be able to do the things I do here at home," Rastelli said.
The theme for this year's projects was for students to "create conscious art that provides awareness and opportunities to educate and advocate for Niagara County's ecosystem" by creating a piece of art by repurposing existing things.
"Either they learned about ways to help the environment, reuse materials ... And we tried to do everything that we could to stay in Niagara County...if we had to buy anything every dollar stayed here too," Tomaino said.
Logan Malloy, a fifth-grader at Newfane Elementary School, said he used his interest in drawing to repurpose some old recipes for one of his projects.
"I created a little cookbook into something new. I had to color different things on the cookbook," he said.
During the weekly sessions this year, students have completed several projects including making milkweed seed bombs for monarch butterflies, building bat houses, making jewelry from plastic bottles, repurposing material sailboat sculptures and designing an insect.
Learning about nature was the main inspiration for Newfane sixth-grader Brooklyn Capitumino's painting of a blue jay using a technique known as spin art.
"I can be creative here and we're able to do what we want," Capitumino said.
This year, she was able to continue the free program through a grant from The Niagara Area Foundation. Tomaino is hoping to do the next installment of the club in the fall.
The students' pieces will be on display for the program's student art show at the Kenan Center's Taylor Theater, 433 Locust St., from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday.
