CHESTER and MIDLOTHIAN, Va. – When you are a student artist, you learn many skills, such as how to use light and shadow; master proper technique and form; blend and create colors; and work in different mediums. With each class project, students focus on refining these skills, and they anxiously await guidance from their professor and comments from their peers. But, not all projects are about the final grade. Some are special. That’s how students in Professor Colin Ferguson’s Painting III/IV class feel about the Memory Project, an initiative that gives children, from all over the world, who have been abandoned, orphaned, abused or neglected, a personal keepsake. This semester, students spent weeks focusing on the details of portraits, each of which is a gift for a child living a half a world away in Madagascar. This is the tenth time John Tyler Community College has participated in the Memory Project. In past semesters, Ferguson and his students have painted portraits of children from Ghana, Nepal, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Peru, Uganda, Myanmar, Haiti and Ecuador.
Each student who participates in the project is given the photograph of a child or teen. Then, using techniques they learned in Ferguson’s class, they put brush to canvas and create a portrait of their child.
This year, 18 portraits were painted by Ferguson and his students. “Every year the students never cease to amaze me with their dedication and precision in the execution of these portraits, and I’m sure that this act of true giving isn’t lost on them as we enter the holiday season,” says Ferguson.
The paintings are displayed on the second floor of Eliades Hall at the College’s Midlothian Campus, and members of the community who are on campus to sign up for spring semester classes or to visit the college are invited to see the exhibit. After January 8, the portraits will be taken down, carefully wrapped and shipped to the Memory Project, which will deliver the paintings to the children who are featured in them. The College’s participation in this project is supported by the John Tyler Community College Foundation.
For more information about The Memory Project, visit www.memoryproject.org.
John Tyler Community College is the fifth largest of the 23 community colleges in Virginia. With campuses in Chester and Midlothian and off-campus classrooms throughout the area, John Tyler offers quality and economical opportunities for students who want to earn a degree or certificate, transfer to a four-year college or university, train for the workforce, or switch careers. The College, which served nearly 13,800 students during the 2014-15 academic year, offers 20 associate degrees, six certificates, and 38 career studies certificates. The institution also serves more than 13,000 non-credit trainees and over 1,000 companies and government agencies annually through the Community College Workforce Alliance.