For Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School junior Savannah Warrick, the artistic bug hit when she was in Middle School. It was already perhaps ingrained in her soul – her grandfather after all did help start up Wolf Camera. Still, Savannah recalls her dream when in the middle grades.

“I was through playing instruments and my goal was to get into Mrs. [Maria-Louise] Coil’s Honors Art class,” she said. “I wanted to make something more productive out of all of my doodling. I did get in and I loved it!”

From there, Savannah was a blank, artistic slate – she tried media lit as a ninth-grader but it “wasn’t her thing.” As a sophomore, she was in painting class the first semester, drawing the second. Her first semester this school year, she took AP2 Design with Dorsey Sammataro, Upper School art teacher. 

Still, it was something she saw on Ms. Sammataro’s desk late last October that caught her eye.

“It was a flyer about Oxbow, which is an art-based school in Napa, California,” Savannah said. “I’d always wanted to study abroad or somewhere else in high school anyway. I talked to my mom and the school about it and it seemed a fit.

“Once I applied, I heard back the very next day that I was in.”

Savannah’s experience in Oxbow was all she was hoping for – save having to come home two weeks ago due to the Coronavirus. Her palates, now artistically drawn, painted and slashed, broadened even more.

“You work in four different test mediums – painting, sculpture, new media and print making,” she said. “Also, the curriculum is a little different there. In history, you talk more about current events rather than what’s already happened. In English, you write more personal essays. Also, in the last month, there are no academics. You simply work on your final project.”

Now Savannah, like all other students, is getting schooled online. (“It’s weird, but it’s going okay.”) Still, she plans to come out of this as an art bug and a shutterbug, with hopes of getting into the music industry.

“It may happen that I intern with Turner,” she said. “I’ve talked with a couple of people the last couple of days – one guy who toured with Taylor Swift and Journey. Hopefully, down the road, I’ll be shooting some concerts.”

For now, Savannah – like all of us – has extra time, blank spaces to fill in our schedules. Still, with things to draw, places to shoot, sculptures to be made and the like, she is taking each day and each challenge with creative anticipation.