Fresh Artists Blog 

“Your best yet”

“This gets more fun each year!”

“We wouldn’t miss it!”

“Having the kids with their art was a real treat!”

“Watching the kids watching the sculptor replicate the 2nd grader’s artwork in  ice was magic.”

“The Memory Games are brilliant! I bought 4 of them!”

“We had loads of fun with the arty Photo Booth. The pictures were great. We’re hiring Seth for our next corporate retreat!”

And the best comment of the evening came from one of our youngest artist-philanthropists, who looked up at me and said,

“You mean these guys came all the way here to meet US and see OUR art?”

We had a blast. There were about 300 people who stopped by throughout the evening to meet the kids, see the new children’s art  installed at the World Cafe, have some refreshments provided by Hal Real, Founder of World Cafe Live, and schmooze with influential people from the legal, pharma, design and education communities. We were honored to have national product managers from HP’s large-format printing sectors visiting both our studio during the day and attending the evening event, Eric Grae, Tom Yungen, and Kerry Ignatovitch.

For the first time, we invited youngsters whose art was installed in WCL and their families.  We were delighted with the strong turnout. Our guests enjoyed meeting the kids and hearing about what inspired each piece.  The kids were such a hit, that we will invite them each year from now on.

Our guest speaker was Farah Jimenez, the CEO of the People’s Emergency Center in West Philadelphia. A core value of Fresh Artists is to also give a great deal of our signature artwork away to people who are serving children and families in need.  This year we chose the People’s Emergency Center to be the permanent home for 14 large works of art that have been enjoyed by staff and visitors to the World Cafe since last February. We will install the artwork in PEC within the next month. Farah’s remarks were exceptionally moving to everyone in the cafe. She talked about how much inspiration artwork is to people living in chaos and displacement.

Our youth-run entertainment was terrific!  The CAPA alumni jazz combo entertained before the program, and the famous Masterman School’s “Sweet 16″ a cappella group had us all singing along afterwards. We love to showcase musical youngsters at Salon and thank them for their enormous contribution to the evening.

Our “Merch” table offered 5 editions of our new venture into children’s educational games, The Memory Game. People were snapping them up for gifts as well as the new 2013 Fresh Artists calendar, published each year as a gift to Fresh Artists by our friends at Pearl Pressman Liberty Communications Group. The games are in all Anthropologie stores throughout the world, in Whole Foods, the AIA Bookstores, and in many other high quality children’s bookstores, boutiques and gift shops.

The gifts from our business partners were astonishing this year!  The Fresh Artists Business Advisory Council set a lofty goal of $30,000 in event sponsorships…a jump from last year. Not only did the group hit the target, they exceeded it!  These funds are dedicated to a fresh, new website…ours is heading into it’s 6th year. It was built on old (non-CMS) architecture…and is pretty hard to use. We are thrilled that we will be starting over from scratch to make a user (and owner!) friendly site with three dedicated portals for children, teachers and corporate clients.  Thank you to the BAC for yet again astonishing us with your generosity and dedication.

Here is the list of the 2013 Salon on the Schuylkill Sponsors – Angels every one!

PLATINUM   $5,000

Fabric Images

HP

Martin Banks

Pearl Pressman Liberty Communications Group

SAP Americas

 

GOLD  $2,500

Anonymous (W.L. Gore & Associates)

Independence Blue Cross

Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP

 

SILVER    $1,500

Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel University

Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott

FIrstrust Financial Resources

Hangley, Aronchick, Segal, Pudlin & Schiller

Health Partners

 

BRONZE     $1,000

The Addis Group

Elliott-Lewis Corporation

Steelcase

The Lighting Practice / In Posse

 

Friends of Salon    $500

Bookminders

Patriot Construction, Inc.

Shaw Carpet

Sherman Mills

 

 

This is a great time to also acknowledge the extraordinary generosity of our new category of donors, Print Studio Partners.  Starting last year with the buildout and furnishing of our new teaching workshop for large-format digital printing, this group has expanded exponentially to donate more specific studio equipment, furnishings, and now consumables for the printers such as paper, ink, adhesives, cutting tools, a fine-art quality scanner, framing, scanning services (for “lumpy children’s art!) and even coffee to keep us all awake!

 

We are delighted to announce that One Village Coffee, a local artisan coffee roaster in Souderton, PA, has partnered with Fresh Artists to place 24 works of art from our collection on bags of their best selling variety, Artist Blend. This means our images (and URL!) are now all over the country, in Whole Foods, co-ops, and gourmet shops from Boston down the Virginia. Steve Hackman, the CEO, has fallen in love with our mission.  Please go to the One Village Coffee website and read all about the work they are doing in Africa, and in the States to deliver the finest, most sustainable coffee possible.

 

After you read all about our fabulous donors, check out the wacky Silly Salon (JIHM BOOTH) photos at the end!

Seth Shimkonis, owner of JIHM Booth (Join In Hilarious Moments), is a loyal supporter of Fresh Artists. Seth donates a JIHM Booth for every Sprout Fest (annual celebration for the children) and Salon. Thank you, Seth! You are not only a talented photographer, you are a talented photographer with a huge heart.  That’s a winning combination in our book!  Your gifts make a lot, alot of people happy, connected and spreading silliness, a powerful and precious commodity in these days.

 

 

In Kind Gifts – Print Studio Partners

3A Composites, Statesville, SC

Alpha Imaging Technologies, Bayport, NY

Art Guild, W. Deptford, NJ

Centrum, Inc., Sharon Hill, PA

Epson, Long Beach, CA

Ergosoft Rip Solutions, Nashua, NH

Foster Keen Cut, Montgomeryville, PA

G & H Service Company, Norristown, PA

Graphic Art Supply, NYC

Image One Impact, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA

Lithotone, Inc., Elkhart IN

Markely Enterprises, Elkhart, IN

Merion Art & Repro, Ardmore, PA

One Village Coffee Roasters, Souderton, PA

Parthenon Framing, Bohemia, NY

Profiles, Chestnut Hill

Service Point USA, Woburn, MA

Shades of Paper, Mt. Laurel, NJ

Specialty Graphic Imaging Associate, Washington DC

Sun-light Corporation, Philadelphia, PA

Reed Photo, Denver

Silicon Gallery Fine Art Printing

Susan Beard Photography

Welch Packaging, Elkhart, IN

World Café Live, Philadelphia, PA

 Any omissions are simply mistakes on our part. Please forgive us, and send us a gentle note asking us to rectify the situation! We’re on it!

 

Fresh Artists Staff & Volunteers

Barbara Chandler Allen, President & CEO

Roger Allen, Creative and Operations Director

Antoinette Maciolek, Executive Assistant

Christine Kochevar, Advisor, Large-format digital printing

Marilyn Leuszler, Fresh Artists Western State Coordinator (Colorado)

Andrea Vizcarrando, Fresh Artists New York Area Coordinator

Robyn Miller, Evelyn Bock, Sonya Smith & Eileen Rudnick, Program Art teachers

Steve Trueman, Author, “Pablo, the Philly Philanthropist” and “Clothesline” storybooks

Meredith and Samantha Wiggins, Editing and photography

Nishiana Velazguez, Student Intern

Joshua James, Video, Studio and event assistance

Janine James, interviewing and Story Meister

Alpha Kanu, Alexis Bloom & Juania Velazguez, Artist-Philanthropists

 

Thanks to our Special Friends

Susan Beard, Photography

CAPA Jazz Trio

Ice Bars Luges and Logos – Rob Capone, Ice sculpture on the spot

JIHM Booth -Seth Shimkonis

Masterman School Sweet 16 A Cappella Group

One Village Coffee – Steve Hackman

 

Fresh Artists Board of Trustees

Heather Gibson, Sentry Art Advisory Services

Pastor Christine James, Careview Community Church

Valerie Lagauskas, Event Navigators

Jim Pinheiro, Pearl Pressman Liberty Communications Group

Nancy K. Wolff, School District of Philadelphia, Art educator, retired

John Pauciulo, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, pro bono counsel

 

 

Business Advisory Council (BAC)

Sara Anderson, First Niagara Bank

Scott Binder, Health Partners

Alex Brame, Service Point USA

Nicole Carville, Haworth

April Colby, Martin Banks

Rick DeCoyte, Silicon Valley Fine Art Prints

Helen Diemer, The Lighting Practice

Rob Diemer, In Posse

Rosemarie Fabien, Fabien Communications

Lauren Fantini, Caroselli, Beachler McTierney & Conboy

Peter Hahn, Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania

Jennifer Heller, Comcast

Ken Johnson, Glaxo Smith Kline

Kristine Lamley, The Addis Group

Susan Mock, Academy of Vocal Arts

Lori Morrissey, SAP Americas

Robert Reid, AIA, Elevate Architects & Collaborators

Janine Sesso, Independence Blue Cross

Seth Shimkonis, JIHM Booth

John Siemiarowski, Electrical Wizardry

Jeffrey Totaro, Jeffrey Totaro Photography

Suzanne Turk, Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel University

Amanda Weko, AGW Communications

Jerria Williams, SEPTA

Susan Yeager, ReSourcePro Insurance Services

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                    THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED MAKE THIS YEAR’S                               SALON ON THE SCHUYLKILL SUCH A ROUSING SUCCESS!

See you all next year!

Our first venture into the design of children’s educational games has appeared on the shelves of the trendiest retailer in the country…Anthropologie!  We were contacted by this iconic design store about 9 months ago when they heard about our unusual remix of the venerable family matching game, featuring the stunning artwork of 3rd – 5th graders in Philadelphia public schools. Two of our first themes, Fresh Food and Fresh Architecture, were chosen for Anthropologie’s holiday line, and are in 170 stores around the world, and on line. Another edition, Mini-Masterpieces from the Barnes Foundation, is carried in the Barnes Gift Shop.   The complete line of all five games is carried by SITE-NYC in Astoria, Queens and the Philadelphia AIA Bookstore.  We are eagerly seeking more stores to carry this line of heirloom, intergenerational games, proudly made in the USA! All proceeds from the games benefit art programs and supplies delivered to severely under-resourced public schools.

Fresh Artists Memory Games_press release

 

 

 

Our games were chosen by Anthropologie’s head gift buyer for their holiday line and thousands of games were shipped to 170 of their stores around the world!  We took a few of the kids who made artwork in the games down to the Rittenhouse Square store to see the games as soon as they hit the shelves (see photo below).  We were all thrilled and danced around the store, giggling and being silly…checking out the rest of their products, critiquing their packaging, graphics and price points. We thought our products were pretty wonderful and so did several people who came over to see what the ruckus was all about.  Reports are that the games are flying off the shelves!

We hear the Fresh Artists Memory Games are being featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Holiday Gift Guide, which will be published on Thanksgiving Day.  Thank you, Caroline Tiger, for this wonderful coverage!

Thank you all for being generous and brave to get behind this entrepreneurial endeavor. The kids had an idea, and we did it!  But we couldn’t have “did it” without each of you. Your support meant success for this project.  We think this may develop into a sustainable funding stream for Fresh Artists, or as bankers would say, “reoccuring revenue”. As Martha would say, “A good thing”. As the head of a small but mighty, ambitious nonprofit…I would say, “Hallelujah!”

We have several more themes in the design pipeline, and we will keep you all in the loop about what’s next for the kids.

We want to take this opportunity of thanking Tim Markley of Markley Enterprises in Elkart IN. We were determined to fabricate the games in America, and we were so fortunate to meet Tim through SGIA (Specialty Graphic Imaging Association). Tim jumped in as soon as he heard about our dreams, and volunteered to be our fabricator. He patiently held our hands throughout the entire process. He taught us a lot and donated a great deal of the cost of the games.  Several of Tim’s colleagues also donated product or labor when they learned about Fresh Artists and our mission. We are grateful to Bob Pinkowski of Lithotone who donated a lot of the cost of the printed box labels and inserts as well as Jeff Pawlak of Welch Packaging, who donated the cartons and labor. Their support meant a stronger bottom line for the kids.

We would like to thank Art Teacher Extraordinaire, Robyn Miller, of Hancock Elementary School in Philadelphia, for her tremendous support, hours of making art with the kids, and generally being a guiding light throughout the process. She hauled kids around, snitched paint sample chips from Home Depot, taught kids about color and design, allowed Fresh Artists to take over her classroom with emergency artmaking sessions, got (what seemed like thousands of) licenses signed and returned to us and did everything with playful good humor. See her in the photo above, off to the left, beaming with pride at her students’ accomplishment.

And a special shout-out to Laura Kellner of Kikkerland. We talked with Laura three years ago about this crazy idea we had. Laura was our main design guru, helping us fine tune our graphics, packaging and helping us with a marketing plan. Her enthusiasm for a Fresh Artists line of children’s games was immediate and has never faltered. She has been our champion, opening doors for us, and giving us invaluable feedback on product improvement.  Thank you, Laura, for your unwavering support.

We hope you have fun playing with the games…and that they become a treasured family heirloom. This Thanksgiving we will be playing with the games, putting several together for a humongous family contest on the studio worktable.  I will raise my glass of wine and give a thank-filled toast to everyone who helped bring these games to life, especially to the 135 youngsters who unselfishly donated their artwork to help thousands of other children.

Peace to you all and thank you!

 

 

 

 

Robert and Nick launched the Fresh Artists Teen Internship Program this week!  These two young men are students at YES Philly, an in-school GED program in North Philadelphia. Internships are an integral part of their school’s initiative to help kids who left traditional high schools finish their degrees and get valuable real-life experience in local businesses.  A YES Philly board member approached Fresh Artists more than a year ago, inviting us to partner with them.  He saw a powerful synergy between our organizations, since we are both serious about giving inner city youth access to skills and experiences in the convergence between art and technology.

YES Philly uses media arts in their school to engage their students so all interns come to Fresh Artists with a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut.  Our new Print Studio is a large format digital printing teaching workshop with incredible equipment donated by HP, Neschen, Service Point, Ergosoft and Neschen. The idea is to introduce the YES Philly kids to the fun and future in this burgeoning new technology, give them some hands-on experience running the equipment while they print small jobs for local nonprofits at greatly reduced rates. The young interns will learn marketable job skills while working with people providing valuable service in their community.   Several of our Business Advisory Council members have invited the teens to visit their printing operations like Service Point USA, Pearl Pressman Liberty Communications Group, Silicon Gallery Fine Arts Prints and Profiles Fine Art Printing.

A WONDERFUL SURPRISE

We met another terrific young person from YES Philly! We chose Christina Battle’s 4th grade artwork back in 2005 when we decorated the Education Center, headquarters of the School District of Philadelphia.  When we started Fresh Artists a couple of years later, we tried to find Christina to ask her to donate her beautiful self-portrait to us, but could’t find her. We kept the license in a folder called “Find These Kids!”, and seven years later…we met up with Christina through YES Philly!  We invited her to spend the morning in our Print Studio printing her exquisite portrait, and getting to know her. She donated her artwork to Fresh Artists and made plans for her to intern with us after the first of the year.

 

We just got back from installing 21 pieces of art at the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic. They met Fresh Artists at the National Children’s Alliance (NCA) Leadership Conference in Washington DC, and eagerly signed us up to decorate their new facility in New Haven.

180 DEGREE TURNS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS

When we started Fresh Artists back in 2007, we mainly envisioned filling the blank, white walls of corporate America with this vibrant artwork and using the money from the donations to fill empty art room shelves in poor public schools.  Then, in the fall of 2008, the world came to a crashing halt. The donations faucet was turned off. As any good business must, we brainstormed, retooled and began serving small nonprofits as a way of staying alive during the downturn.  This allowed us to continue to collect and exhibit children’s art and move forward, albeit at a different pace.  We began to place art, mostly just covering our expenses and often for free, in places that served the same children we do – homeless shelters, soup kitchens, child abuse centers, and minuscule community development centers.  We had faith that the economy would turn around (it did) and we would move forward to grow and innovate during the interim.

A NEW PURPOSE FOR US

Since being discovered by the national leadership of the NCA in 2008, we have placed our children’s artwork in more than 30 child advocacy centers throughout the country. Sometimes just one piece, usually about 20-30 pieces…and once 172 pieces at Safe Shores’ new 40,000 sf facility in Washington DC. We have heard again and again how our artwork transforms these places where the most battered, ravaged and terrified children come to be tended, protected and healed. We heard “When I am pushed to the limits of my endurance seeing the brutalized, broken children come in day after day, I lift my eyes to gaze on this hopeful, harmonious art. It is a balm that saves me every day. It gives me strength to persevere…to stay the course in this hard work I have chosen to do in the world.”

A WACKY IDEA

We have wanted to try something new…to use the children’s art to distract little ones while on the examination tables. So we proposed to Victoria Isaacson, Child Life Specialist at Yale’s clinic, that we replace some of the ceiling tiles above the exam tables, giving a strong visual blast of color and interesting, cheerful shapes to look at while undergoing scary procedures. Vickie was eager to try this…and we are eager to hear how they are received in the weeks to come.

 

So what started out as a 180-degree turn in our business model resulting from the world’s financial woes…has turned into one of the most meaningful, gratifying things we do. We weathered the fiscal storm, continuing to do good and to innovate, and discovered a truly powerful purpose for Fresh Artists – providing comforting, healing, inspirational, transformational artwork to children battered by the worst storms of life, and to the extraordinary people who care for these angels.

We are always moved to tears when we finish one of these installations.

END NOTE:
This was  Quinn and Carly’s last installation. The girls have been our volunteer interns this year working tirelessly, donating their time working on collections databases, doing art historical research for our Mini-Masterpieces program, creating program materials, traveling all over the east coast assisting with art installations, putting up with our dogs slobbering all over them, and being forced to listen to Bon Iver until they went batty. We kept them in decaf chai & diet Pepsi, they gave gifts of homemade French macarons & mango shrimp ceviche. Carly is off to Syracuse University this week & Quinn to Oberlin. We will miss them terribly. They have enriched our lives and moved Fresh Artists forward by leaps and bounds. Watch out, world….these girls can use serious tools, whiz around in Photoshop and are wired to do good in the world!

Overheard in the audience minutes before the 5th Annual Sprout Fest was to begin, a mother hushed her impatient youngster, “Please sit still, philanthropists don’t squirm!”

Well, there were a lot of very excited youngsters present for the 5th running of the Sprouts…AKA Sprout Fest, the annual celebration where we honor the children who have donated the use of a digital image of their artwork to help thousands of kids in schools suffering from massive cutbacks in arts funding. This year Fresh Artists inducted 181 K-12 young people in the collection. This year was a giant leap forward: 126 pieces of art were donated by Philadelphia children, 11 from Norristown kids and……DRUMROLL…..8 pieces from Denver schools and 36 from New York City kids. We invited 6 youngsters from the HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy, to donated their outrageously beautiful and exhuberant artwork. Here is young Xzaria with a large reproduction of her artwork.

Second grader Rovic Merginio was pretty excited about his second visit to Sprout Fest. Last year, Rovic’s abstract study of dots and dashes took him to Sprout Fest, and this year’s musical theme caught the attention of the curators. Well done, Rovic and your art teacher,

Fresh Artist Teens were well represented like Esther, Fresh Artists ’07, now a junior at Girl’s High, came back to visit and support the new kids. She is joined here by Elaine ’14 of NE High.

Fresh Artists student interns, Quinn (Masterman ’12, Fresh Artists ’07 and ’11) and Carly (Springside ’12)  provided invaluable help for the curation process and the preparation of all the Sprout Fest gifts to children.

 As soon as the program began, the squirmy young philanthropist settled down, and listened with rapt attention to all the stories of how children are making a big difference in the world, raising money to fill empty art room shelves and bring fun art programs to his school.

He heard Ludy Soderman, head of the Philadelphia Multi-Cultural Family Support Center talk about how she has committed to translating and publishing Fresh Artists little storybook, Pablo, the Philly Philanthropist, into Arabic, Nepalese, Chinese and French this year and dispursing thousands of copies into ESL Schools throughout the District, like she did with the Spanish/English version she made possible this last year.

“I like helping other people”, said this adorable, generous kindergartner from a Norristown elementary school. “Its the best thing to do!” she said with conviction well beyond her 5 years.

The kids get it.

We are thrilled.

Happy 5th Birthday, Fresh Artists. 

Fresh Artists just installed some “mini-masterpieces” at Weavers Way Co-op in Chestnut Hill this week in honor of the blockbuster van Gogh exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  These two young men, Traye Debrito, grade 6, and Elijah Smith, Grade 1 (below), have fresh interpretations of iconic works from the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation.

The next 18 months’ installation of “Art in the Market” has been underwritten by a generous gift from Electrical Wizardry, Inc., John Siemiarowski, President.  John discovered Fresh Artists at a Rotary Club meeting, and has become an awesome angel to us.  An avid cyclist, John attends every Fresh Artists event, often arriving on his bicycle!  Both of John’s and Elaine’s children attended Philadelphia public schools and he speaks fervently about the need for art education to be a part of every child’s eduction.

“The arts directly help kids acquire critical thinking and problem-solving skills. I could see this in my own children, and I feel we should all make sure that all children are exposed to artmaking throughout their school years. Supporting Fresh Artists is something I can do to insure this.”

John has stepped forward to give an extraordinary gift to Fresh Artists – the gift of his expertise as a master electrician.  John has donated his services to completely rewire our new 1,200 sf Print Studio space in preparation for moving in. The space was a welding studio, with two ceiling lights and 1 outlet!  He has given up his weekends for the past 8 weeks to do this for Fresh Artists, an enormous, complicated and essential task.  When asked why he has donated this huge job, John says, “If I can give something that I can do, Fresh Artists will be able to use the money they would have had to spend on electrical work to impact a lot of kids in this city.”

Fresh Art-vocates like John Siemiarowski, Proprietor of Electrical Wizardry, Inc. mean the world to us.  Thank you, John!

 

 

Marcus Wright was thrilled to see his artwork installed in the World Cafe Live. Two of his teachers, Rebecca Dampf and Mike Kapusta from Norristown Area High School asked us to take Marcus to see his artwork on the walls of one of the hottest music venues in Philadelphia. We were eager to meet this talented and generous young man and his mentors. It is always a rewarding experience to watch a youngster see their artwork for the first time, blown up huge, mounted on the wall of a famous place like World Cafe Live in West Philadelphia.

Marcus is serious about studying art and needed supplies to work on his college portfolio in earnest. So Fresh Artists surprised him with an Angel Art Grant, a shopping spree at Merion Art & Repro (Fresh Artists favorite art supplies vendor) in Ardmore!

Fresh Artists is honored to support Marcus on his path in life.

Fresh Artists pizzazy art images will soon be appearing on a range of family box games.  The Sign Studio graphic design kids were eager to make things out of their art, and we remembered an old family classic called The Memory Game. We went down into the basement and found our original adored game and began to experiment with the design using all the fresh food images made by a group of 3rd – 5th graders from Hancock School.

Now how to raise the capital to get the first batch designed and manufactured! We know it will be a huge hit in museum shops, bookstores, specialty catalogs and up-scale gift stores. We have a great friend we met through the Specialty Graphics Imaging Association (SGIA), Tim Markley, President of Markley Enterprises, a first-class large-format digital printing firm in Elkhart, IN. Tim has volunteered to help us design, engineer and print our first run of Memory Games.  Being a wonderful human being and a big backer of Fresh Artists, Tim has offered to do all this work at cost, charging us only for materials. Our goal is to do a first run in order to sell it on our website and also to find retail or wholesale customers for the games. All of the proceeds support our mission of delivering art supplies and innovative programs (how’s this Kickstarter project for an “innovative” teaching tool?!) to severely under-resourced public school kids.

Being an entrepreneurial social business, Fresh Artists chose Kickstarter as a way of raising the funds to manufacture the first run of games!  Kickstarter is an internet-based fundraising platform place where crazy designers, inventors, entrepreneurs and general folks gather to pitch their ideas to the masses and have people make $1 to $1000+ investments in their vision and newly invented products.  People who invest in new ideas have the option of receiving one (or more) of the products they backed ONLY if the entire project cost is funded by the deadline of February 4th.  We thought it was the perfect place to enable hundreds of Fresh Artists kids to watch a product they helped produce raise toward the finish line of being fully funded.

Go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freshartists/fresh-artists-memory-game?ref=live and make an investment in these talent kids and their first foray into capitalism!

The game is 54 2″ heavy cardboard tiles, each with a vibrant original healthy food image on one side and a small overall “sprout” design (our logo) on the reverse. The game is played by kids from 3 to 103, with as few as two players up to 10 or more. There are two identical tiles of each art image. To start, all tiles are laid art-side down on the table. People take turns turning over two tiles at a time, hoping for a match. If they match, the player keeps the pair.  If no match is made, the tiles are returned to exactly where they were, face down.  The deal is to pay rapt attention to where each design is at all times! Watch your competitor’s revealed tiles as well as your own.  This is a terrific game to play with mixed ages, and a great game for the elderly.

Please support the kids and go to Kickstarter to back our project.  You will feel great about helping us get full funding by February 4th, and will get some of the premiere editions of what is destined to be an enormous retail success.

 

 

We fell in love with a vibrant abstract piece of art made by a young girl named Anyah this spring.  It would be a wonderful addition to our collection, but we couldn’t find Anyah and her mother, Sherrea, to obtain their permission.  Her Harrington Elementary art teacher, Leila Falcon, told us there had been a terrible fire in their house, and the family of 7 had sought temporary shelter from friends and family around Philadelphia.

Then we heard the family had been taken in by the Red Cross House Family Shelter in West Philadelphia, where, several months earlier, we had installed 15 large reproductions of children’s art that were re-gifted from the World Cafe Live on the Penn campus!  We were finally able to reach Anyah and her mother and they happily signed the license giving Fresh Artists permission to include her work in our collection!

As a way of honoring Anyah’s talent and generosity, we thought it would be really neat to install a large reproduction of her artwork in the Red Cross House for children to enjoy in the coming years. Chad Lassiter, Director of the Red Cross House planned a little reception for Anyah and her family with bouquets of flowers and presents galore!  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

An ordinary day turned extraordinary this week.

We got a call from a wonderful art teacher who had just been transferred to an inner city school, and the art room shelves were totally empty! The principal had no money to give her for supplies. She was desperate, calling to see if we could help. I told her to come over at 4:30. I would scrounge around in our storage space to see if there was anything we could find to help her. Our yearly distributions take place in late winter, but I would see what we could do. I wasn’t feeling very optimistic.

Exactly two hours later, the phone rang again. It was a young suburban mother whose 7-year-old daughter had a bunch of art supplies to donate to a needy school. Turns out this young philanthropist, Annabelle, had a birthday party and instead of bringing her expensive toys that she really didn’t need, she asked all her pals to bring art supplies for kids who had none.  The guests all complied and Annabelle had a ton of  neat loot to pass along to some really lucky kids. They had heard about Fresh Artists, and figured we might be able to help.

I told Annabelle’s mom to bring her over at 4:00 with all her art supplies, that I had a surprise for her.

They arrived, little Annabelle struggling with shopping bags full to the brim with sets of juicy colored markers, glue, tempera paint, scissors, reams of paper, and tons of glitter! Journals to write in, kits to tie-dye t-shirts, stamps and block printing kits. It was a true bonanza! I asked her to unpack everything, laying it all out on the floor in the late afternoon sun.We chatted about art, life, and why she chose this unusual way to celebrate her special day.

Then Miss Jane arrived, the art teacher with empty shelves.

   

There wasn’t a dry eye in the joint. Jane told Annabelle all about her school with 400 children and no art supplies. Annabelle heard how much her gifts would mean to so many children. She realized the power of her generosity and the circle of her philanthropy was complete.

Miss Jane met her little Art Angel, and was thrilled with the wonderful supplies that would delight her children the next day and days to come.

We were honored to play a small part in this happy serendipity.

Thank you, Annabelle, for making a difference in so many children’s lives, and helping a wonderful art teacher.