SALEM — A little art is going a long way at the Senior Center.
A group of Collins Middle School students walked over there after school on Monday and hung dozens of student-made drawings, paintings, prints, collages and other artwork in the bingo room to brighten it up.
"I think it's fun to help other people," said Marlena Udden, a seventh-grader.
"It will make them more excited about being here, so it's not so gloomy," seventh-grader Amanda Mazola said of the bingo room, which is a large, high-ceilinged room with blank white walls on the second floor of the red-brick building on Broad Street.
Dasha Corpuz likes creating surrealist art — like the clay mask she made of a human face with a unicorn horn jutting from the forehead. She said she was torn between bringing the mask to the Senior Center or keeping it.
"I was 50/50," said Corpuz, an eighth-grader, "but I just want the aged to be happy. We need to put some colors in here because it's plain and pretty boring."
Students in the Derby Wharf at Collins Middle School created all the artwork, and French teacher Kate McGonagle coordinated the effort to display it for seniors.
"The kids really wanted to do something for the seniors," McGonagle said as she helped students put masking tape on the back of artwork and press it to the walls. "It lets the seniors know that they're thought of by the younger generation."
"We thought it would be very nice to have something a little bright and cheery," said Carole Isaacson, volunteer coordinator at the Salem Senior Center. "It looks wonderful."
Sixth-grader Steven Moutsoulas was hanging prints the students made by sketching designs onto Styrofoam, etching them, rolling paint onto the Styrofoam and pressing it to paper.
Alexis MacTaylor's print was an axolotl, which is an amphibian also known as a Mexican walking fish.
"It's a strange water creature," she said.
Many of the students who participated in the project are student senators, and the art projects were made in Spiradoula Politis' art class, according to McGonagle.
Eighth-grader Gaelle Mondestin showed off heart-shaped boxes that the students decorated and filled with candy and placed on bingo room tables on Monday.
"I think it's fun to have special things around the holidays," Udden said. "I think they'll really enjoy them."
"It helps you see students in a different light," Petra Nicholson said of the project. She is an eighth-grade special education teacher at Collins who was helping the students on Monday. "Everyone has strengths that you don't always see in the classroom."
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