Courtesy of Cecilia Martyna
Cecilia Martyna, a 17-year-old junior at Dublin Jerome High School, has been doing chalk art since the seventh grade. Martyna began chalking after she saw an advertisement for a chalk event and decided to give it a try.
“I ended up falling in love with the chalk,” she says. “I love the art, but the part that I really loved was the interactive portion of the chalk. It’s really almost a performance art. So I love interacting with people, seeing their reactions, making people smile with the art.”
Chalk was the art medium that first truly piqued Martyna’s interest. Her seventh-grade art teacher at Karrer Middle School, Marlo Brown, provided inspiration as Martyna found herself succeeding and finding passion in chalk.
“The first event I went to, I actually won first place for the youth category, which was what got me started into more of that because I am very competitive,” Martyna says. “It’s fun to win.”
While winning is great, for Martyna, who makes art under the name CC the Sketchy Artist, it’s not everything. She soon began to use her talent for something more broadly impactful. Martyna volunteers with A Kid Again, the Dublin branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library System and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio, hoping to bring smiles to the faces of everyone she encounters.
“It’s been really amazing to be able to use (chalk) to give back to the community,” she says. “That’s where I’ve seen the greatest benefit.”
Martyna gave particular focus to working with the Ronald McDonald House during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was looking for a way to do something for the people housed by the charity who were not only in an unfamiliar place as their loved ones received care, but also limited by the pandemic in their ability to go out.
After creating a piece depicting Ronald McDonald wearing a face mask that attracted interest
from the community, Martyna began selling chalk artwork with part of the proceeds benefiting the charity.
Want to help Give Back?
Martyna has continued partnering with the Ronald McDonald House. She is currently running a fundraiser through her website to donate 50 percent of proceeds from her chalk art to help support the charity.
Find more information at www.ccthesketchyartist.com.
Volunteering with A Kid Again, where she also contributes chalk works, Martyna has been able to add a joyful spirit to events through her art, says the nonprofit’s president and CEO, Oyauma Garrison.
“She tends to bring … one of her best gifts she can give outside of her time, which is her talent,” Garrison says. “She usually has a crowd of people around because they absolutely just love her because she’s engaging. She’s fun. She’s always smiling.”
In one instance, Garrison says, a business decided not to repave a part of the parking lot where Martyna had created a piece in order to preserve the artwork just a little longer.
For Martyna, the art projects have been an opportunity connect and provide positive messages through the pandemic, something she’s seen others doing as well.
“It’s really been a great outlet in such a stressful and isolating time,” she says. “I would see all of these different drawings on the sidewalks, ‘You’ve got this,’ ‘We’re all in this together.’ That was really, really amazing.”
Martyna is an active community member at Dublin Jerome as well. In addition to serving as vice president on the student council, she is president of the Dublin Climbing Club and participates in drama club, track and cross country.
This summer, Martyna will further contribute to the broader Dublin community when she teaches a summer program on chalk art through the Dublin library, where she’s volunteered for the last few years.
Youth services manager Loren Scully says Martyna will bring not only artistic skills but an engaging and contagiously playful personality to classes.
“One of the unique things about Cecilia is that she likes to give back,” Scully says. “She’s not just creating a masterpiece or mural or cyber art. She likes to talk to people about how she learned to do it.”
Courtesy of Cecilia Martyna
Kate Anderson is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
