February 20, 2008
For Immediate Release
For an Interview:
Jim Godfrey
(801) 863-6190
UVSC Art and Visual communications student Josh Mendenhall, a Saratoga Springs, Utah native, will present his senior project March 3-7. The project will take place at Olympus High School, located in Salt Lake City at 4055 S 2300 E, and will focus on the dangers of drug use.
Mendenhall will construct five portraits of teenagers, each portrait measuring eight feet tall and eight feet wide. The portraits will be made by pushing colored plastic cups through the openings in a chain-link fence. At the end of the five-day drug-awareness week, two of the portraits will change into skulls. Accompanying text will explain that there are two drug related deaths every hour.
The project will, Mendenhall hopes, make students consider the reality and gravity of drug use. “I never knew drugs were so common in our high schools. There have been ‘just say no’ programs out there, but I think now the message needs to be a little stronger,” Mendenhall said. “Death is the reality of it. Death is where drug use will lead them.”
The Olympus High School student body will assist in the project, getting them involved in the message Mendenhall has in mind. Mendenhall will plot out where each cup goes in the design and students will assist him in constructing the images.
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College Marketing Contact:
Megan Laurie
(801) 863-7149
Written by:
Brenda Johnson
(801) 863-7011