Students create artwork to cheer area seniors

As she worked intently on pen and ink sketches of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Chukker Creek Elementary School fifth-grader Coline Bremond offered a simple explanation for her choice of subject matter.

"I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch, and it made me happy," she said.

Her artwork and the artwork of other Chukker Creek students soon will cheer up a lot of older Aiken residents. Art teacher Michael Kimmerly invited his gifted and talented students and his third-graders to create peaceful and happy drawings and paintings for the Shoeboxes for Seniors drive in conjunction with Area Churches Together Serving (ACTS).

The drive will be held at Walmart on Whiskey Road on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The public is asked to donate a variety of personal care and household items needed by low-income seniors.

Donated items also may be taken to ACTS at 340 Park Ave. S.W. ACTS will distribute the shoeboxes in the Aiken area, and the student artwork will decorate the boxes.

The project is sponsored by WJBF News Channel 6, Georgia Bank & Trust, Solvay Advanced Polymers and Walton Rehabilitation Health System.

Carolyn Beeler, an ACTS volunteer, said the agency "jumped at the chance to partner with them. We've got 450 people in our senior food program, and we hope we'll be able to get enough donations to provide one shoebox for each of them. We're so excited about the Chukker Creek kids helping out. The idea was to give it a little something extra, to brighten a senior's day."

Kimmerly said the artwork will be attached to the shoeboxes so they can be removed and placed on a wall or elsewhere as a decoration. Student Coti Kennedy, working on a candy montage, said she learned how ACTS helps people who have had bad luck and don't have enough money to buy things.

"We're only doing happy things, no stabbing bananas like one boy wanted to do," Coti said.

The supplies needed for the shoeboxes include African-American hair products, flashlights and batteries, Q-Tips, dental care products, hand and bath soap, shampoo and conditioner, hair care products, body spray and perfume, Depends, nail care products, eye drops, washcloths and towels, toilet paper and other paper products, foil and plastic wrap, arthritis cream, smoke detectors, hand/foot/body lotion, light bulbs and household cleaning supplies.

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.