Ler Wah is a freshman at Bishop Maginn High School; her art teacher Sue Silverstein says she has no idea how talented she is.

Today’s art project in Sue’s class was for several of the students to model Santa in different poses and for the remaining students to sketch them. They all worked with standard school issue No. 2 pencil.

Sue sent me several of Ler’s two-minute sketches, and she is right, they are impressive.

(If anyone wants to purchase them as touching records of our 2021 Christmas, I’ll be happy to arrange it. Just let me know, [email protected].)If nobody wants to buy them, I will, and the money will be donated to the school or to Leh Way if she chooses.

Sue is right. Ler Wah is very gifted; she is a Myanmar refugee whose family was forced to flee their country. She spent the early years of her life in a refugee camp in Thailand. She is also a grade-A student.

 

I find these sketches touching and revealing. They tell the story of Christmas, each in their way, and they bring the idea of Santa to life in a powerful and even poignant tone.  This is a different idea of Santa in our time, always masked. I think I’ll offer them for sale for $50 proceeds going to Bishop Maginn High School (unless she chooses to keep it.)

The class loved this project, and five or six different students modeled their own interpretations of Santa.

 

Hser Nay is the model here. She was beaten and hospitalized by students in the public school she attended a year ago. She is happy and successful and thriving at Bishop Maginn.

Every one of Ler Wah’s sketches was done in two minutes. She was stunned at the idea someone might buy them.

 

Oleo, another of the sketch models, is actually named Oluwasegun, his family is from Nigeria. I wrote about him last week. He has a dry but sharp sense of humor and his sister is a junior at Bishop Maginn. “That child,” says Sue Silverstein of Ler Wah,”has no idea how talented she is. Two-minute sketches!”