Wearing oversized sweatpants tucked into boots with a paint-streaked denim shirt, Cora Schau’s dark brown hair spills from a bun as she tosses her head back, captured candidly laughing on camera.
In the photograph, the 17-year-old is surrounded by splashes of color, a sea of flowers and greenery on a sea-blue background. This 23-by-10-foot mural, found on the side of Redbud Fitness Center, was created by the teenager.
“It’s really cool and chaotic,” Schau says, describing the work while she was still in the process of painting it.
Schau was enlisted by the new fitness center to create the painting after the owner saw pictures of her art circulated on Facebook.
“My family on my dad’s side is really big with art. I really love it,” she said. “I have been painting and drawing my whole life. Within the last three years, I’ve grown so much as an artist, and my stuff has been getting known by people.”
Schau describes art as a way of coping with life’s stresses, an outlet she has practiced nearly her whole life.
“When I was 10 my parents went through a bad divorce,” she said. “When that happened, I used it as an escape. I’m a very anxious person, and I use it as a way to calm me down.”
To the average onlooker witnessing Schau participate in any of her many extra-curricular activities, it would be difficult to see that the teenager is nervous as all.
In early December, Schau gracefully walked across the stage at Buchanan High School, her painting clothes traded for a champagne-colored evening gown. The sparkly embellishments glittered under the stage lights as a rhinestone crown was placed on top of her head.
With a smile spreading across her face, Schau looked across the stage at her twin, Madison, who had just been crowned second runner-up, the tearful smile matched on her sister’s face.
“I did not expect what happened at all, and was full of all these thoughts,” Cora recalls, a month after earning the title of Miss Buchanan 2018. “Was I going to represent my community well enough? Or am I good enough to be Miss Buchanan?”
Cora said she has since been reassured that she was deserving of her title.
“I’m so glad I got this opportunity, though, and this experience has been amazing,” she said.
When she is not sketching in her drawing pad or making appearances with her court throughout the region, Cora can be found on the soccer field, on the volleyball court, or at Miss Kim’s School of Dance in Niles, where she has danced for more than 15 years.
After high school, Cora plans to attend Michigan State University, where she will begin training to be a veterinarian, a career she has chosen after years spent on her family’s farm.
While a scientific degree may seem an odd match for an artist, Cora says she is up for the challenge, and actually excels at science.
“I’ve always been told I’m lucky because I can use both sides of my brain,” she said.
While many scientists focus on formulas and codes, Cora uses her right-brained art skills to navigate through her left-brained science skills in her advanced math and anatomy classes.
“I use my art in a way that helps me through science, using a bunch of figures and drawings to help me,” she said. “I never found it challenging. I kind of use it to help each other.”
As Cora leaves the Redbud City for East Lansing next fall, she said she will miss the community she grew up in. Until then, though, she intends to spend the year representing what she sees as a growing, thriving city.
“It means so much that I know my community stands behind me and it gives me so much pride that this is the community I am able to represent,” she said. “By being Miss Buchanan, it gives me a drive to do better in my community, and to better myself and represent Buchanan to its fullest.”

Photo provided