Art with a passion

Gary Moskowitz

NORTHWEST DISTRICT -- Leslie Krueger’s concern with the environment

made one particular art assignment in her senior year a tough one to do.

She was given a wine box made of wood from a 1,000-year-old redwood

tree and asked to replicate an existing painting on the box as a way of

creating a new piece of art.

The fact that redwood trees had been cut down to make wine boxes upset

Krueger.

What Krueger, 18, came up with earned her an Arnold Directory Art

Scholarship fund of $500 that she will put toward fall semester tuition

at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

“I recreated a painting of a female Mexican saint, because the look on

her face in the original painting caught my eye,” Krueger said. “The

woman in the painting looks at peace, even though her father is

crucifying her for not marrying a wealthy suitor.”

Krueger said more than 1,000 wine boxes were donated to her high

school art class. But to her, the wine boxes represented a serious

tragedy, because they were made from old trees like the ones she has been

going to see since her childhood.

“The redwoods are beautiful, huge trees that can be about 10 feet wide

and 300 feet tall,” Krueger said. “I decided to create something that

draws connections between humans and nature to killing and wealth.”

The Arnold Directory is an independent yellow page directory company

based in Sun Valley that services Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and cities

within the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys.