Zach Viramontes carefully picked through a pile of buttons next to June Wasko at the Belmont Village Senior Living in Rancho Palos Verdes.
“I found another bedazzled one for you,” the 17-year-old said. “Do you want that one?”
The elderly woman nodded thoughtfully, so Viramontes helped her carefully paint some glue onto the sparkly button and stick it on a cardboard tree.
He is part of a small group of students from the Principal’s Advisory Committee at Rancho del Mar Continuation High School in Rolling Hills that has recently started monthly art lessons with residents of the senior facility. The sessions deliver on one of the committee’s goals to help the students become active members of the community.
This month’s lesson: button trees.
Participants use paint brushes dipped in glue to stick the small buttons onto a printed silhouette of a tree.
Resident Natalie Pukszta joked that the hand-eye coordination required for the project made it a good exercise for the older residents.
“It’s very mentally challenging, I gotta figure out where the buttons go!” said Pukszta, a retired special education teacher from Michigan.
The group comes to the retirement home once a month to work with the residents on projects their art teacher plans with them.
But that’s not what the program is really all about, said Principal Micah Farrell. It’s about the relationships the students get to build with an older generation.
“It’s not about the art project, it’s about the process,” Farrell said. “Carrying on a conversation is important.”
Quite simply, the art project is a vehicle for the students to learn about the residents’ lives and vice versa.
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