Arts Student of the Week Sarah Depestele

When she was five years old, Sarah Depestele loved to watch her father sketch cars. "That's when I started drawing seriously," Depestele said. "And that's because my dad loved drawing cars. He drew a lot of Porches and Bugattis. So, I drew. They didn't look like anything, but...they looked kind of like cars."

That early interest has endured as part of Depestele's studies at Niwot High School, where she has taken both Beginning and Intermediate Drawing. Beth Collier, who teaches art at NHS, chose NHS junior Depestele as Arts Student of the Week.

"Though Sarah is a visiting foreign exchange student from France," Collier said, "it has been great to have her in class this year. She is very skilled, with a heap of natural talent. Even so she has been willing and hard working to learn and absorb information in both classes she has taken this year."

In her early school years Depestele did not study art, but she was always drawing at home. She loves video games and cartoons, and those also inspired her interest. When she was older, she took painting lessons for six years, and recently she has been inspired by Tim Burton, and "anyone who works at DreamWorks," Depestele said. "And Leonardo da Vinci. He is really amazing. He was both an artist and an engineer, and a scientist."

"I like drawing hands a lot. Sometimes, as an exercise, I take an object and draw it 15 times in different angles. I am also trying to do 3-D on the computer, but it's really hard."

Depestele, who lives in Salon-de-Provence in the south of France, arranged to become a foreign exchange student and study in Colorado through the Rotary Club. She waited four years before her application was approved.

"I sent them an email first, saying what I wanted to do, how old I was," she said. "And they called me for a meeting. I met them. They made interviews with me alone, with my family, with just my sister, with just my mother, to really be sure it was my choice. It took a long time and I was too young at first, so I had to wait a few years before doing it. But since I did that just after Covid, there were only two students in my whole district in France who wanted to go to the United States. Most kids my age who want to do an exchange, they want to go to New York or California. But I chose Colorado."

"Colorado is really a beautiful state," she said. "The only thing that I really miss about France is being able to walk everywhere. Like, here, I always depend on someone driving me there and back. In France, if I want to go to the movies, I just walk there. It's like eight minutes away from my house. Here it's eight minutes, but by car."

Penny and Sean McBride and their two children, Jamie and Charlie, are her host family. "They're really nice," Depestele said. "They're really incredible. And they are also artists. My host dad makes really nice sculptures, and my host mom makes jewelry and she loves puzzles."

This year Depestele is taking Algebra, American History, Physics, Drawing, Production Theater, Introduction to Game Design, Physical Education and English. "Classes I would never even think about in France," she admitted. But American high school isn't exactly what Depestele imagined, especially her teacher's approach to art. "I did take an art class when I was in France. But it was like... 'What is anger?' You have three hours.' And now we have a specific medium. She tells us what type of things we have to use. Ink or graphite or colored pencils. So it's hard sometimes, but it's a new challenge and that's really nice. And I really feel like I've improved since I came here."

"She is a funny and open person who is always willing to help a classmate improve their work," Collier said.

School in Salon-de-Provence is very different. "It's longer. Here, on the weekends and after school a lot of people do things. In my school we finish at 6 p.m. almost every day and on the weekends we have a lot of homework, and on Saturday mornings we still have school sometimes. So, yes, the life of a student here is way more fun. It's still stressful because it's still school. But I feel like I have way much more time to do what I like here."

Although she is a junior, when Depestele returns to France she will have to complete two more years of school before she can graduate. France doesn't count her year at NHS toward her degree in France. "In France, we all have the same classes until junior year. And then junior year, we have still the same classes except for three that we specialize in. And I'm going to specialize in Math, Physics, and Computer Science. And I will still have English, French, German class, History, Geography. I wanted to take an art class, but I couldn't take Art, Computer Science, and Math. I had to take History, Art, and Philosophy or something. And I really did not want to do that."

After finishing high school, Depestele is not sure she wants to be a graphic designer, but she is still on that track for the moment. There are two schools she has in mind, but she is also thinking of becoming a pilot for the Air Force. "A helicopter pilot," she said. "But I'm really not sure. I didn't even talk to my parents yet. Graphic designers ... If you're not the best of the best, you live at the bare minimum of everything, and I don't want that life. So that's why I'm taking Math, Physics, and Computer Science. So if Graphic Design doesn't work for me, I can always go back to school and be an engineer."

Depestele has advice for those people who have seen her art and think, "I could never draw like that!"

"I was extremely bad at first," Depestele said. "Some people may have an easier way of drawing than others, but it's work. Like other things. You're not born being good at drawing. You have to work hard."