This past summer, Sara Gómez Woolley piloted our Resident Artist program on campus. She spent much of her time in the Art Coop working on her forthcoming graphic novel. Sara often sketched while listening in on fireside chats:

Sara’s contribution to our community has us thinking about how we can develop a Resident Artist program for future years. We asked her to share what she found @HighlightsFound:

Hi! My name is Sara Gomez Woolley and I am an illustrator, an artist and an author, as well as an educator. I had the privilege of being the Resident Artist this past summer at the Highlights Foundation. I was here working on a book that’s a collaborative graphic novel and while here my goal was to finish storyboarding my entire graphic novel, which is about 225 pages. What I achieved was about 175 pages of storyboards. I’m very proud of that, but much more importantly, I found the story that I was trying to write. Having the space at the Highlights Foundation allowed me to really explore my main character’s journey in a way that I had not had the space to do.

Before being here I had not been surrounded by the caliber of writers and craftspeople who look at children’s literature in a way that we do here at Highlights and so through the community here I was able to really explore my own book and my main character’s journey–and it really shaped it into being a much stronger narrative.

What I found here was community, craft and life-long friends, as well as my main character!