WVCSD Artist of the Week: Olive Weaver

Warwick Valley High School freshman Olive Weaver has been creating art for as long as she can remember. Olive has grown up in a household where visual art is not only a creative outlet, but also a career, giving her a unique perspective on the many opportunities, benefits and pathways that pursuing artistic endeavors can afford. She jumped right into the Warwick Valley art curriculum as soon as she started school at Sanfordville Elementary.

“I’ve always loved art! My dad’s an artist; he does graphic design,” said Weaver. “So, we’ve always drawn together, which is just really fun. Yea, I’ve been doing it for a while.”

By the time Weaver got to middle school, she knew that art would remain a part of her class schedule. During her seventh and eighth-grade years she studied with Leah Mednick and Julie Cosco respectively, and her sketchbooks began to fill with all kinds of creative ideas. As Moving Up Day 2024 approached, Olive decided she would hit the ground running in the high school’s art program as a freshman and asked Ms. Cosco for the requisite teacher recommendation to enroll in Foundations of Art.

Foundations is a full year honors level art course for incoming freshmen students who have expressed a high interest in the arts. Weaver has been studying with Nicole Sisco.

“Olive has such a talent and a gift,” said Sisco. “She’s someone who’s genuinely communicating through her artwork. She’s a bit quiet and reserved in her personality, but her artwork really makes a point; she’s telling stories through her work, and she’s got a lot to say.”

Sisco has encouraged Weaver to enter her artwork in numerous competitions, including the 2025 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her piece, “Realistic Crayon Drawing,” earned an Honorable Mention in the Drawing & Illustration category.

Weaver enjoys learning about art history and things like technique and color combination, but it is the unique opportunities that art classes offer to be free creatively that she enjoys most.

“Like choosing subjects that interest me for my drawings,” she explained. “In every class, there are always certain rules you have to follow, but you don’t really have a lot of creativity in some regular classes. In art, there’s a lot of creativity!”

Weaver’s preferred medium is pencil and her preferred format is drawing, but she is the sort of adventurous and motivated art student who’s never met a challenge she wasn’t up for. Sisco remembers one project, during which she was particularly impressed by Weaver’s proactive approach.

“I told the students we were going to do a colored pencil project, and Olive was a little concerned because she’s got that great technique and skill already with pencil, so she was nervous to get into a new medium,” said Sisco. “She went out on her own and got colored pencils with her parents, then started practicing.”

Weaver said she is planning to continue working her way through the high school’s rich art curriculum and is specifically looking forward to the two Drawing & Painting classes.

“I just really see Olive going places,” said Sisco. “In art, as in everything, growth is huge! Not just skills and technique, but in becoming self-reflective, and asking yourself, ‘Where are my strong points? What can I tackle at home?’ Olive has a genuine interest in art, and she goes that extra mile to learn and grow!”