Lynchburg Living

Art

By Donna Dunn

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. -Jacques Yves Cousteau

Once there was a little starfish named Sandy. He found that the ocean is big. Creatures many and varied–anemone, clam, whale, octopus, eel and shark–call it home. Yet, Sandy had never seen another starfish, and thus he began a journey in search of another. Along the way, Sandy discovered something wonderful.

Mark Lindamood, an editor for a Washington, D.C. think-tank, imagined Sandy more than 30 years ago during a college class on children’s literature. Jon Roark, an art teacher at Heritage High School in Lynchburg, and Mark’s brother-in-law, became well acquainted with the lonely starfish story when he began to illustrate it for a teaching recertification class. Roark, a graduate of Lynchburg College and Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, was a professional art director before coming to Heritage six years ago. Yet, Sandy the Starfish would take him to new waters, navigating budgets and finding undiscovered treasure. And his journey would lead him to an ending greater than he had imagined.

In fact, through Roark’s tutelage, the “real stars” in Sandy the Starfish, are a group of advanced art students at Heritage, according to Lindamood.

Setting Sail

One of those students, Megan Einhorn, became interested in some illustrations Roark brought with him to class. Roark was working on a project to complete an art class toward recertification of his teacher’s license. After seeing Roark’s work, Einhorn became intrigued. She asked if she might try creating some illustrations for the story.

“Her interest, and the quality of the illustration she produced, led me to believe that my advanced students could produce the entire book,” Roark explained.

While he continued his work to complete the class, Roark asked Lindamood if he could challenge his advanced art students with the book as a special project. Lindamood, who wrote the book while a Virginia Tech student, was happy to see it come to life.

“I always liked the story,” he said. “It’s one of the few things I held onto when I left college. I discarded textbooks and notebooks, but I never threw that away.”

Lindamood wrote the story in 1977 after going scuba diving for the first time in 1976.

“If you dive on the corral reefs, it’s just explosively colorful and interesting,” he said.

Lindamood said the students’ drawings captured the beauty of the ocean.

“I thought they did a great job. Jon was able to do PDFs of some of the artwork as it came in. The more I saw, the more I liked it. The idea that the book would be a pastiche of many different styles, was alright with me,” he said.

Testing the Waters

Indeed, the book was a bit of a hodge-podge of styles and media. Roark said he only insisted that Sandy have essentially the same look and coloring from page to page. That way, children would be able to recognize Sandy throughout the story. Sandy should have no eyes, no mouth. Essentially Roark didn’t want any imitations of Patrick from “Sponge Bob.” Otherwise, the students had artistic license.

Though Roark is a watercolorist, his students used colored pencils, gouache, aqua crayons, acrylics, pen and ink, along with watercolors. The intro to the book lists each student, the page on which his or her artwork appears and what media was used.

“My favorite part was, we all had different media,” said Heritage student, Colin Huband. “You can look at each piece individually, but you put it together and it makes a book.”

Roark emphasizes the fact that the 18 students he chose from 170 art students were a diverse group–demographically, personally and artistically. Yet, the book flows because, “they’re all united by a love of art,” Roark said. “They all did a brilliant job, beginning to end. … I didn’t feel like I had to jump in and say, ‘This has to be this way.’ Some were real surprises.”

Diving Deeper

Throughout the process, the students said they learned about the importance of research in doing children’s book illustrations. They had to figure out not only how to bring the author’s words to life, but also how to make sure the drawings were accurate. What color should the octopus be? What animals might live in a corral reef? What would be the right proportions of a starfish to a whale?

“It is a really interesting process that illustrators go through and the research they have to do,” Einhorn said.

“It was a very interesting experience because I’ve never done anything like this before,” Heritage student Ronson Barnwell added. “I did a lot of research, but a lot of it comes just out of my own imagination. I thought about it and brought it all together.”

When all of the artwork was completed, Roark decided it was worthy of publication. Yet, finding the $1,000 to print the book seemed impossible, especially given current economic and budgetary challenges. That’s when he happened to ask English teacher Lanaux Hailey if she knew where he might get the money. Without missing a beat, Hailey said that she would hold a talent show, even though she hadn’t planned on doing one this year. She raised the funds and the book was printed.

At the same time, Gail Laurant’s gallery, Light Wings, held an opening for the students’ Sandy artwork. Lindamood came to the opening and met some of the students and even brought a taped-up copy of his original Sandy story, along with some starfish keychains from the Smithsonian for each student.

Copies of the book are for sale at Heritage for $20. Each of the Lynchburg elementary schools also received a copy for their libraries.

Roark says that being able to see what it’s like to have their work displayed and published provided a tremendous experience for his students. For Roark, it was a teachable moment.

“It’s really fun to see the light go on,” he said.

Roark hopes to continue the project next school year, and possibly broaden it by getting English students to write the story.

“It causes us to rethink how we do this for the future,” he said.

A Happy Ending

In the end, Sandy finally finds the home of hundreds of starfish in the shallow waters of a coral reef. But even greater, Sandy’s new friends show the little starfish the beauty, shimmering just above the water, of the stars for which they are named.

“Sandy settled in with his new friends, filled with a joy that was bigger than the ocean,” concludes the book.

For Roark and his students, the completion of the book also provided a glimpse of something beautiful. Not just a class project, but a chance to dream of the future.

“I hope that the high school will continue this as a project,” Lindamood said. “The students could walk away from their high school art class with something in their hand. I still have my copy, 34 years later. If any of these students still has their copy 34 years later, that would really be something.”