Chris Richards / Staff
The Catalina High senior is in demand as a muralist.
Rick J. Siego to attend Pima on scholarship
By Angela Soto
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Rick J. Siego has a creative spirit and imagination that drive him to turn everyday things into art.
His mother, however, didn't appreciate his talent at first.
"When I was 5, I would draw stick figures on the wall," Siego, who is hearing-impaired, said through an interpreter. "My mom would yell at me not to."
These days people want the Catalina High Magnet School senior to paint walls.
Judyth Lessee, Catalina's library manager, asked Siego to renovate an old card catalog. On a pad of paper, he sketched out a jungle. Three weeks later the leaves, lizards, butterflies, snakes, insects, frogs, plants, monkey and rhinoceros came to life on the piece of furniture.
"He is so outstanding, and his art comes from his heart," said Karen Pate, a teacher with Tucson Unified School District's hearing impairment program.
Insight.com Bowl football officials commissioned Siego, 20, to paint a large mural for last year's game. TUSD hired him to design some murals around Catalina. One hangs outside the school's wellness center. The large wood panel has a picture of a man in the middle with a bright red heart; the border has stars. Siego explains that it's from out of this universe.
In one of the center's rooms, he drew a mural of two characters from the animated TV series "Rugrats."
Siego, who moved to the United States from the Philippines when he was in seventh grade, has come a long way in six years. When he first came to Tucson, he spoke only his native tongue, Tagalog. He didn't know a word of English or American Sign Language. Now he's not only fluent in sign language, but he's on the honor roll.
Siego, who attends classes with interpreter Tamara Flanagan at his side, also works as a busboy at El Corral Restaurant. He hopes to always have art in his life.
"I want to draw, working with lamps or furniture," he said through Flanagan.
Next year he will attend Pima
Community College on an art scholarship.
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