Art. Psychology. Advisory mentoring. These are the things that surround Olivia Nass’s life. Olivia Nass, a senior at West Leyden, is a member of the National Art Honors Society.
She shares that her interest for art began at an early age: “I’ve always been into art since I was a little girl. I guess I always had an inspiration for it. I always liked looking at different types of art, and so my family would always, for Christmas, buy me the art supply boxes and stuff,” she explains, “Art means to me, like a way to express yourself for sure. It’s for me a calming way to escape the actual reality by making your own. You can literally make your own reality through art, and just get lost into that.”
Olivia Nass describes her experience as an advisory mentor and NAHS member: “I mentor for the advisory. I enjoy doing that. It’s really cool. It’s fun. Most of the advisors are in the classrooms with the other students, but I’m actually in the advisory leaders room. So the advisory office. We help with projects for the advisory classrooms, like the gratitude tree or hand out candy to the people who come in and stuff like that. For NAHS, we do community and school based projects, based on art. Like, right now we’re working on the Nutcracker, and if there’s any art related community events, like there’s face painting coming up, my club sponsor will reach out to us and see if we want to get service hours for that. So we just do projects to get service hours so that at the end of the year, if we get a certain amount, we’ll get a rainbow cord, when we graduate.”
As much as art is an escape for Olivia, it comes with its challenges. She shares an obstacle she had to cross: “Last year I took AP art, so we had to create a whole portfolio based on this one topic that you make up. And mine was actually about how your childhood experiences make you who you are. I had to do this one watercolor piece that was me looking at myself through a puddle, and the inspo picture that I used for the puddle was one that I had found online, just to do an outline of it, and I took another picture of myself to draw me inside the puddle. My art teacher told me that it might’ve not been enough of a change for me to submit it to the College Board, because they might think it was plagiarism. So it was a challenge for me to figure out how to change it enough for the College Board to not suspect anything like that. So what I did is I talked to Ms. Felix, my art teacher, a lot, and she told me to add 3d layers to it, because I used Polaroid photos. She was just telling me different ideas to make it more me. So, I added different shapes, different types of colors that didn’t match the other picture, and on top of that the Polaroid photos. The Polaroid photos were ones that I took when I was a kid, or with my family. I incorporated those to bring a nostalgic feeling and a picture perfect life kind of vibe. And then I would use different mediums, including acrylic paint, charcoal, color pencil, and just create the moments that made me who I am the most. It was maybe 12 photos. And so we did that throughout the whole entire year.”
Not only is art a big part of Olivia’s life, but she aspires to one day pursue: “Children’s psychology. I want to be a children’s therapist. I’m going to Loyola to study that. My own childhood inspired me to pursue this, because from a kid who just didn’t have that bright childhood I realized that the person you are all comes from your childhood. And it really sets you up for the future. Over time, I feel like I’ve just grown to help kids who were like me. Who don’t have the chance to have the proper role models in their life and to help them become better people in the world. Because the kids are the future. So if I could help any one of them become a better person for when they’re older, or just help them get through the things that they don’t know how to because they’re children. I would definitely.”
For now Olivia Nass will continue to advance in her art, but next year she will begin her new journey in pursuing children’s psychology.
