IRMO, S.C. — Three students at Lexington Richland School District Five's Center for Advanced Technical Studies worked together to create a light display for Saluda Shoals' Holiday Lights on the River.
Lauren VanMiddlesworth and Tabitha Lo, seniors in district five, undertook this project and decided on a volcano out of a list of options given to them from Saluda Shoals.
“I just felt like the volcano was more free flowing," Lo, who headed the project, told Street Squad. "We could do so much more to the design than just having a bunch of restrictions.”
“It took a while to kind of figure out how we wanted this volcano to look," VanMiddlesworth shares. “it was kind of just a lot of really simple stuff at the beginning that as we went through it we realized ‘oh this needs to be better.’ And we had to keep making it better.”
Once the girls were done with the design, they handed the reigns off to senior welding student Titus Lee who put the actual build together.
“Taking it from a computer drawing, it was pretty challenging at first in my mind," Lee told Street Squad. "I wasn’t sure exactly sure what and how I was going to do it but it came along as I started bending the metal. It started coming together and I could see the picture and it made me feel a whole lot better about the project when it started coming to life.”
These students took the lessons they’ve learned at the Center and applied it a real world job.
“The skills I’ve learned here have helped me a lot outside of the school and in school and for the future," Lee said. "We’re really lucky to have something like this for all of us to be able to use and just grow in what we are interested in.”
You can go see the display at the Saluda Shoals Holiday Lights on the River from 6-10 p.m. every night until New Year’s Eve.
If you have any story ideas or information on things happening around town, contact us at StreetSquad@wltx.com or tweet us using the hashtag #StreetSquad19.