Life In Black

&
White
By: Catalina Wenk
My Project
For my project. I wanted to draw portraits of people from
Kalama heights. I wanted to impact the community somehow
and also impact people’s lives.
Driving Question
Can I connect with people on a deeper level with my art?
I chose this to be my driving question because I feel like these
days with social media it can be hard to really connect with
people. Though I’ve noticed people connect on such a deeper
level when you can relate to one another’s art. Whether that art
me cooking, drawing, painting, singing, music. So I wanted to
see if my project can make me able to connect with the
participants in this project better.
People Involved
When I first started this project I met with a person who
worked at Kalama heights named Karen. She is the director of
activities over there so she’s who I pitched my idea to. She
loved my idea from the minute I proposed it and from there I
started to work on making posters.
Persuasive Essay
My primary claim in my persuasive essay is that we as people;
teenagers especially, spend too much time on their phones. I
spoke about cell phone addiction and how the youth today have
trouble connecting with each other because of it.

I chose this topic because it related to my driving question.

Project Phase 1- Beginning of Everything
● The first thing I had to do was print my posters so I
immediately started on those.
● After a few days of my posters being up at Kalama heights I
actually got two inquiries about my project. One of them
didn’t participate but the other did and his name is John.
● I met with John and then I started to work on his portrait
afterwards.
My Poster
First Participant’s Portrait
Project Phase 2- Try to Get More People to Join
It’s the end of January at this point in my project. I started to
lose hope in my project because no one was joining. I did get an
inquiry from one more person and she didn’t even want to meet
up she just sent me a photo of herself and asked me to text her
when I was finished.
Second Participant’s Finished Portrait
Project Phase 3-Desperate for Participants
At this point in my project it was the beginning of February. I
was desperate for people to join my project so I started asking
people at my work if they wanted to be drawn. Two people said
yes so I’m working on those now.
Portrait I’ve Started On
Project Reflection
● I definitely had to go out of my comfort zone meeting and
talking with strangers.
● I learned that some people don’t want to connect
● A skill that was definitely challenged was my patience.
● I gained the experience of going out on my own to do
something I hadn’t tried before
● The complications that arose were not many people joined
and I couldn’t really connect or speak with them at all.
Takeaways From the Future
If I were to go back I would’ve chosen a project that relied on
me doing the work and finding people not people having to
come to me.

I should’ve also maybe opened it up to the school or gone to

another retirement home. Though after being at Kalama
Heights and meeting the people there I was kind of set off from
going to another retirement home.
Acknowledgements
I suppose I’d like to thank the person I first met with at the
beginning, Karen for helping me kick start my project.

I’d also thank my co-workers Ben and Dawn for helping me out
and agreeing to participate in my project

Also a thank you to Otis for supporting me and helping me

keep my head up when I was losing hope in this project.