Local students’ Hexagon Art brings joy and connection to new ODHS Seaside office

Visitors and staff have recently noticed a new visual spark as they enter the Child Welfare lobby of the Oregon Department of Human Services Seaside offices. As you walk into the Child Welfare main lobby, you can see on the wall to your right an array of hexagon-shaped art. There’s a painting of a soccer player, a sloth hanging upside down from a branch, a mountain with a lake at its feet, a rainbow, a gray and white dog and many more scenes. Some hexagons have inspiring words on them, such as “LOVE,”“You’re STRONG!,”“Kindness” and “Food Makes You Happy.”

The art was created by 60 students from Warrenton Middle School and Warrenton Grade School especially for the ODHS new Seaside office. The office recently opened at 1111 Roosevelt Drive near the Seaside Outlet Mall stores. The office houses Child Welfare, Oregon Eligibility Partnership and Self-Sufficiency Programs, which support people with food and health care benefits and other services.

“It’s been amazing. It’s the first thing everybody sees. A lot of people spend time admiring the art. Some of the words on the hexagons were created on the school’s 3-D printer. Everybody sees something different in the pieces,” Kaylin Hammond, Child Welfare Resource Developer, said.

Hammond said she “had this off-the-wall idea” for the new office space, so she met with Warrenton Schools Art Teacher Heidi Lent and her students. It was the students came up with the hexagon idea symbolizing the interdependence of bringing the school and community together. It is modeled after the Interdependence Hexagon Project. The themes typically are social justice, identity, peace and the environment.

“The hexagon is a compilation of interdependent lines, like human relationships. It shows, as an artist, how we are interconnected. Our focus was how are we interconnected in our community and our county and our school,” Lent said.

On the back of each hexagon, students were asked to explain the meaning of their creation. Here are some of what the students wrote:

• The softball players showing girls high-fiving each other: “Sports and kindness because usually at the end of games we give high-fives, thanking the other team. Being kind through your sports.”
• Sloth – “The sloth was what I was connected to because my mom bought it for me and I care about my mom deeply.”
• A body looking up at the words: ‘youth’ and ‘heart, 3-D printed: “Hey little one don’t waste your youth on a broken heart ’cause before you know it, it’ll be gone.” –Livingston, Atlas lyrics.
• The boy sitting next to dog with a tennis ball: “Representing never being alone. The dog is there to comfort him and keep him safe.”
• Dog and little girl, nose to nose: “My dog just passed away. Every time I was sad my dog was there to comfort me. How do you get comfort?”
• Newspaper collage with the word ‘LOVE’ in it: “Love is in the middle. as we love our community.”
• Mountain with trees” “Art is positive because it makes you feel closer to nature. It makes you feel joy to see.”
• A bunch of flowers: “Because when people are sad and if I am close to them, I buy them flowers. It represents happy and beauty.”