Adoption event
The Humane Educational Society is hosting an adoption fair Sunday, April 24 featuring student-created portraits of available pets. The artwork will go home with the adoptees and their new families. Everyone is invited to stop by beginning at 2 p.m. HES is located at 212 N. Highland Park Ave. Call 624-5302 to learn more. More information about HES and adoptable pets can also be found at heschatt.org.To see more of Salter’s classes’ artwork, check out the exhibits at Northgate Mall and Reflections Gallery, both running until the end of the month.
Life lessons
This is not the first time Tam Salter’s art classes have helped others. Last year, her students created portraits of children in orphanages in Ghana. “They don’t have any personal possessions. They live in an orphanage, so they don’t even have pictures of themselves when they were little, or things like that,” said Salter.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and never has this been truer than in animals. Though they have no words to communicate joy, fear, unsureness or desires, animals still manage to get their point across. Ask any pet parent.
Tyner Academy art teacher Tam Salter knows it. She’s a parent to a 17-year-old rescue dog. So when the opportunity arose to combine two of her loves – art and animals – with one of her passions – helping others – she jumped.
“At the high school level, the focus is basically to learn art skills, but whenever there’s something going on I hear about that could benefit someone and I know my students have the skill level to do that, it gives it more meaning,” she said.
Her Art 2 class’s assignment? To capture the personalities and postures of pets in need of a home. The dogs and cats are currently in the care of the local Humane Educational Society, but come April 24, when HES holds an adoption event featuring the pets and their portraits, they’ll hopefully find the parents they’re looking for.
And hopefully the artwork will help.
“Their assignment was to do an artwork based on that cute little dog or cat – some of them weren’t so cute. They were supposed to make them stand out, try to get their personality, try to do something to show them off in an artistic way,” Salter explained.
The results are paintings, colored pencil drawings, prints, pen-and-ink sketches, watercolors – and a connection, both the kind that makes for a great artist and that makes for a great human. Not only did the students personally connect with their subject, Salter said, the assignment helped open their eyes to some of the many ways people can give back.
“It was pretty cool to have that personal connection,” she said. “Even though it was just a picture of a dog or cat, it’s not like giving them the assignment, ‘Today we’re doing dogs and cats.’ This gave them a whole purpose.”
It also opened the door to discussion on the needs of the approximately 7.6 million companion animals who, per the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, enter shelters every year nationwide.
“I think a lot of people always think ‘I want to get a puppy from somewhere,’ and don’t think about all these other dogs out there that need adopting,” Salter said.
But come April 24, that art lesson may turn into one of the greatest life lessons of all for her students: parenthood.
“A lot of [the students] were very interested and thought a lot of the animals were really cute, and they wanted to know when [HES] was going to be having the adoption fair and were interested themselves!” said Salter.