Though deaf without her hearing aids, Kolar finds success through her art

 

 
KEARNEY — After graduation, Abbi Kolar has her eyes set on a future in graphic design.
But it’s her ears that make life different for this Kearney High School senior. Kolar is deaf.
However, thanks to a cochlear implant at about age 2 and the use of hearing aids, Kolar can hear.
“I am fully deaf. Once I take my hearing aids off, I cannot hear,” she explained.
The cochlear implant — a small, electronic medical device that replicates inner ear function — stimulates the auditory nerve. This allows her to hear. The hearing aids help her to catch the details.
Kolar, the daughter of Chris and Jen Kolar, said her family learned of her condition when she was 15 months old and that she had the cochlear implant at 18 months, a critical time for language development.
Because of her condition, Kolar has had to make adjustments to classroom learning.
“It was a little hard to be in a classroom,” Kolar said of her years in elementary school.
Kolar has had an interpreter in the classroom to help her overcome learning obstacles. She also reads lips.
“I usually watch the teacher, but if I miss something I’ll look back at the interpreter and have her repeat it,” she said.

Kolar said that in discussion-based classes, it can be hard to follow along when the “conversation is bouncing everywhere.”
But Kolar hasn’t let her disability get in the way of her success. As an artist, her work was exhibited at a student art show at the Museum of Nebraska Art earlier in April.
She said that more than 20 pieces were on display, and that KHS faculty members teased that the show was an “Abbi Kolar Art Exhibition.”
Kolar said that she enjoys creating art in a variety of ways, whether it’s by painting or drawing by hand or creating graphics in a computer.
“I love graphic design, I love art,” she said.
Kolar plans to pursue that passion at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., where she’ll enroll in RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
According to the RIT website, RIT has more than 1,400 deaf or hard-of-hearing students enrolled and more than 8,000 alumni.
In all, RIT has more than 17,000 students on campus, and Kolar said that she was impressed by the size and the energy she saw on her visit to Rochester.
“I just fell in love with it,” Kolar said. “I loved how big the campus was and how everyone was so full of energy, and there’s so many activities.”
josh.moody@kearneyhub.com
@JoshMoodyKHUB
 
 

 

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