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Paralyzed Teen Uses Art To Create A New Future

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A local high school student paralyzed in a terrible accident at the beach last summer is using his artwork to design a new future for himself.

"They had me doing art therapy," said 17-year-old Archer Senft.

Senft remembers the day he could draw again, just a few months after the McDonogh student suffered a severe spinal cord injury diving into the ocean in Cape May, New Jersey.

"I started...I drew like a kind of swirl on the paper," Senft said.

The gifted young artist was frustrated at first with his ability but, for someone who wasn't supposed to live, breathe on his own or talk again---this was major progress.

Senft is a perfectionist so he took his initial design of a snail and refined it with graphic design elements.

"We just started working with it and messing around and eventually what it came to was I created a logo with the snail," he said.

He wasn't stopping there. He easily convinced his family to start a t-shirt business called Slimeyard Slimes, a fun parody of Vineyard Vines. His original snail design is on four colorful t-shirts.

"From his creativity that he's had all his life and it just kind of bubbled up and continues to flow through him, even though you know it's in a different way than it was before," said Archer's dad, Bill Senft.

The t-shirts are sold online. Proceeds benefit a special needs trust that helps Archer with expenses related to his rehabilitation. So far, he's sold more than 1,000 shirts. The family did check with an attorney about using the likeness of a design and name and they were given the greenlight.

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