Columnist Susan Snyder: Fifth grader drawn to card design

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2002 | 8:14 a.m.

Yahaira Marquez.

Remember her name. She just might be a famous artist someday.

Right now, Marquez is 10 and in the fifth grade at Henderson's Robert Taylor Elementary School. International acclaim is a ways off, but she already has gained a little bit of fame.

Marquez's artwork was chosen to adorn this year's holiday card for the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas resort. The contest, sponsored by the St. Rose Dominican Health Foundation, was open to all 80 of Taylor's fifth graders.

All the entries were good, but the job was to find one that really stood out, said Bonnie Crail, public relations director for Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas.

Marquez's painting, done in watercolor and pencil, shows a pair of saguaro cactuses adorned with strings of lights and Santa Claus hats. Squatty beaver-tail cactuses and some sagebrush dot the foreground, and a deep blue night sky with gold stars provides the backdrop.

"Yahaira's almost was a unanimous winner. Everyone thought the colors were so bright and cheery," Crail said. "And it took her a while. She's quite a perfectionist -- a 10-year-old perfectionist."

Jamie Cortez, Marquez's teacher, took his students to the school's cactus garden for inspiration. The garden is a 10-year labor of love for teachers, students and local community leaders who have built it into one of the best examples of desert flora in the area.

This year they added a tortoise burrow and a desert tortoise named Daisy.

"I love it out there. It's one of the free field trips I can take the kids on," Cortez said. "It's a good tool. I use it every chance I get."

Students went out with sketchbooks and pencils about two months ago and spent part of an afternoon making their drawings. Marquez sat looking around for quite a while before picking up her pencil, Cortez recalled.

"She was one of the first ones out there and the last one done," he said.

Marquez said it wasn't easy settling on which cactus to draw and then decide which drawing to enter.

"I had other ones, but they weren't so good," she said. "I tried to draw the tortoise, but it didn't come out good."

The Santa hats were something she drew from her family's Christmas traditions.

"At home, we have Santa Claus hats on our tree, and they're the prettiest. So I thought I'd put them in there," Marquez said.

It doesn't hurt that Marquez not only loves to draw, but prefers to do it outside.

"At home I go outside and draw flowers and stuff in our yard," she said.

It's kind of ironic that the cactus Marquez chose to enter is the only type from the Taylor garden that isn't native to Southern Nevada but native to parts of Mexico, where she was born.

Marquez says she is the only child in her family born there. Her sister, a Taylor third grader; her brother, who is in first grade at the school and her baby sister who just turned 1 all were born in Las Vegas.

She and her brother are the only children in the family who speak Spanish, but Cortez said half the children in her class are bilingual. Two of the children don't speak any English, but Cortez said Marquez is the first to volunteer to help them understand lessons.

"Everything she does, she really puts her heart and soul into it," Cortez said. "She's always ready to help other students."

And he said she's good in math, even though she doesn't like it much. But Marquez loves to read, and counts "Charlotte's Web" among her favorites.

She hopes Santa will bring her drawing pens and a Rainbow Art set she saw on television.

To honor Marquez and her classmates, all of Taylor's fifth graders will attend a Feb. 6 party at the Ritz-Carlton, complete with a visit to the lake there and a dessert bar.

A lavish, sugar-laden dessert bar.

"They'll all be a little hyper that afternoon," Bonnie Crail, the resort's public relations director, said.

She was kidding. Kinda.

Still, Cortez said he is relieved the party won't start until 2 p.m. that day so they can get some work done before they head out.

He also was joking. I think.

But he was dead serious when he spoke of his students and the progress they have made so far this year.

"This is one of my best years teaching," Cortez said. "These kids have desire."

And that, is a teacher's greatest Christmas gift.