‘Full circle moment’
Darien High School alum uses art to help students recover from ‘trying year’
DARIEN — A Darien High School alumna is giving back to the community by donating a special piece of art, inspired by and painted with students.
Katie Southworth, who graduated from Darien High School in 2012, returned to share her message of mental wellness through art with students and her hometown after some difficult and tragic years.
The piece, like much of her work, is a tribute to Ellie Southworth, her mother and former Darien High School gymnastics coach who died by suicide in 2015.
“It really rocked the community when we lost her,” Southworth said. “A lot of what I do honors her legacy and advocates for a world that she would have liked to live in a little more. It’s an interesting full circle moment.”
Southworth is now a Boston-based fine artist whose work is rooted in mental health advocacy, using vivid colors and lines to invoke joy. A portion of every piece she sells is donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Darien High School has been touched by loss itself recently. Last school year, three DHS students died — two by suicide, and one from medical complications.
Southworth said she understands that the past few years have been difficult for the school and its students.
“I wanted to do what I could to give back to the high school and also provide a little moment of hope and healing and joy, for what I know has been a really trying year for the students after some losses they experienced last spring, and also just after the pandemic in general,” she said. “I mean, what these kids have gone through is not normal and really hard.”
In November, Southworth reached out to the district’s K-12 art coordinator and her former teacher Jaclyn Sammis about coming back and creating an art piece to reflect the hardship students have faced as well as a sense of hope in togetherness.
“It’s hard to be so strong, and they deserve moments to be vulnerable and to share, to express and to do something just for themselves,” Southworth said. “I don’t know if I would paint today if I wasn’t introduced to the thera
peutic quality of painting just by having access to it. You never know what’s going to speak to someone, or help them in their healing journey.”
Southworth started the piece before arriving, painting lines in shades of blue that she said represented “more of the stereotypical Darien high school experience.”
It was then up to 130 Darien students to bring in pops of color, each selecting three colors that represented their current feelings, memories and hopes for the future. The selections were then mixed, painted on beads and arranged by advanced placement art students.
“Coloring a bead is freaking hard,” AP art student Hannah Bang joked. “It’s not an object that I think likes paint. It’s rolling away from it all and all over my clothes.”
Bang chose maroon, chartreuse and orange. The maroon mirrored a growing sense of tension she felt, while the chartreuse represented her favorite memory at a track meet. Orange is her favorite color and she added it in the hopes she can do “something that’s (her) favorite thing” in the future.
Bang said she never really dwelled on or had to communicate her own mental health in her art before.
“Having that prompt to think about your feelings and then try and communicate them through color, it catches you off guard,” Bang said. “It definitely feels like something I would try and do more often.”
Bang’s classmate Ella Schneeberger said yellow, blue and purple color swatches spoke to her the most, a contrast that pleasantly surprised her.
“That was just really awesome because it was like you can have all these different emotions and whatnot, but they can always contrast one another,” she said.
Southworth, who has a master’s degree in teaching from Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Art, said it was great to teach students about color theory, something they don’t often get to work on in high school.
“It was nice to tap back into my teacher side because I knew it was in there somewhere,” Southworth said. “These kids are awesome. I think they were appropriately challenged, and I think it was something different from their usual day.”
Watching her former student teach her current kids was a special moment for Sammis.
“It’s really cool to know that she loved this place so much that she wanted to come back,” Sammis said. “It’s even cooler she loved what we did in the studio to the point that she wanted to pursue it herself as an artist and art teacher.”
Having watched so many students grow up in her classroom — she still keeps every AP art project chart on display — Sammis said she aims to always create a place where students can express themselves freely.
“Knowing that they feel comfortable to be themselves and to be their true selves in this space is my greatest joy and keeps me going, keeps me here because I love my kids,” she said.
After the successful experience with Darien students, Southworth said she hopes this is the beginning of many more events like it.
“I really do have a vision of bringing more mental health awareness and advocacy to more and more schools and communities,” she said. “This felt like exactly the right place to start, with a moment of getting back to my own school that gave me so much.”