Fresh Artists Blog 

from a tiny backyard birthday "Clothesline"...

to a huge community “Clothesline” at the Chestnut Hill “Fall for the Arts” street festival

we’re off and running with our new grassroots initiative in children’s philanthropy!

When Juliana turned 9, she asked for an “art” birthday party and wanted to help other children less fortunate than she. Fresh Artists provided a template for a small, simple art activity for 8 young girls to do at the sleep-over, and was such a success the girls went right back to making the bright paper mosaics as soon as they awoke the next morning. After pinning their artwork up on the clothesline, they invited their parents to view their show, and make donations for art supplies for children in severely under-resourced public schools in the inner city. Proud to send in their donation, the girls had fun and were thrilled to know they provided watercolor sets for a whole class of elementary school children through their generosity.

The First Annual Chestnut Hill Fresh Artists Clothesline Art Show and Sale was also a smash success. More than 400 children donated their artwork for the benefit of under resourced public schools and generated over $800 in donations.  26 private and public schools answered the “call for donations” as well as many home-schooled children throughout the area. Weavers Way Coop sponsored the event, and provided refreshments for the Sign Studio children who made the artwork decorating their new grocery store.

Sign Studio artists with their artwork installation in the produce department of Weavers Way Food Coop

Patrons from Rotary and Electrical Wizardry honor the generous children

young artist-philanthropist hanging her art

Our message to the world is clear and unequivocal!

Kids were our biggest customers for art!

Volunteers Sue Davis and Ken Johnson with Fresh Artists founder Barbara Chandler Allen

Thanks go to our generous patrons of Sign Studio: The Rotary Club of Chestnut Hill, Electrical Wizardry, Inc, and Carol Tyler for making this innovative pilot project possible.  Also thanks are due to the Terrific Clothesline Team, Merry Wiggins, Andrew Diemer, Evelyn and Hoagie Bock, Sue Davis, Ken Johnson, Anne Galbally, Lucretia Robbins, Roger Allen, Robyn Miller, Eileen Rudnick, Valerie van Pham, Dylan Spellman-Hall, and the Weavers Way team led by Glenn Bergman, Annette Aloe, Pat Evans, and Kim Spellman-Hall.

Any child, family, scout group or school interested in holding their own Clothesline Art Show and Sale, please call us at 215-920-3317 and we will provide all kinds of help to you.

Pablo's Clothesline Art Show Design Team: From rear left: Andrew Diemer, Class of '12 Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), Evelyn Bock, freshly retired art teacher from Henry Elementary, Hilary Merzbacher, Fresh Artist program assistant, painter and recent graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. Front left to right: Janet Carey, artist and junior at Montgomery Community College, Meredith Wiggins, family therapist, artist and Fresh Artists Clothesline Program Coordinator. (Not present at this meeting, but part of the team are Sue Davis, social worker and community activist, and Lucretia Robbins, painter, retired art teacher and private art instructor of plein aire painting for children)

Remember the idea we were cooking in the spring…a way for ALL kids to play an active role as philanthropists by hosting a Clothesline Art Show in their own community? Well…we have been working on this all summer! The first thing we did was to bring together a really smart and energetic group of people to brainstorm. See this bright group above.

THE TEAM

We met, made a plan and fanned out to contact schools, church groups, summer camps, a private art instructor, several retired and retiring art teachers, our local healthy food cooperative, and several families of Fresh Artists kids around the region to get their input.  A member of our Business Advisory Council, Rosemarie Fabien, introduced us to Liz Scott, the mother of Alex of Alex’s Lemonade Stand. We figured she could give us some advice on how to start a really successful grassroots initiative for young children. Alex’s Lemonade Stand is 10 years old, and has raised more than $35 million. Kids love to be involved with this wonderful organization and we sure could use their tips on how build this program…and do lots of good things for kids.  Liz told us about their history, gave us tons of ideas, and was very encouraging.

KIDS CAN START NOW AND HOLD A FRESH ARTISTS CLOTHESLINE ART SHOW

Click here to download complete instructions on how to organize a Clothesline Art Show.

freshartists-clotheslineartshow3

CLOTHESLINE KITS FREE TO THE CHILDREN!

By Thanksgiving, we plan to have an entire website page devoted to Clothesline. Then, when a youngster wants to do a Fresh Artists Clothesline Art Show, he or she, with the help of a trusted grownup, register on our website.  Registration will provide them with a kit of materials (name badges, art price tags, certificates of philanthropy, sample flyers, tips for making art projects and perhaps a coupon for a free clothesline!)  Also, a trained volunteer coach will call or email them to give some pointers on how to have a successful event.  We are harnessing the army of retiring art teachers and inviting them to help us as volunteer coaches!  Evelyn Bock, 37-year veteran elementary school art teacher has agreed to be the leader of the coaches, and she and Robyn Miller are helping Meredith Wiggins develop some easy, fun art projects that non-art people can do with their kids.

PABLO: THE SEQUEL (next the movie?)

As is our habit, we have written a second children’s story, Pablo’s Big Idea!, to explain the purpose and process of Clothesline Art Shows to young children. We asked Steve Trueman, author of our first story, Pablo the Philly Philanthropist, to help us tell the story and Gardner Allen, illustrator of Pablo, eagerly agreed to make drawings to accompany the story.  We asked two terrific young ladies to help us with the story, Molly (3rd grade) and Hope (4th grade). Both girls are extremely creative young artist-philanthropists who have together given eleven works of art to Fresh Artists!  They jumped right in and created Pablo’s dog’s personality and the perfect name, “Luna”.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY!  Pablo Story #2

We thought it would be fun to ask kids how the Clothesline story should develop…so we are inviting anyone to give us suggestions about the plot, the characters and the illustrations.  Here is what we have so far with about 12 people weighing in on all aspects!  The drawings are in a preliminary state, so kids can see how an illustrator works.  Very sketch sketches first, then solid line drawings, then color is applied.  In this case, the illustrator is using Photoshop to apply the colors.  Many more drawings are needed, and are being worked upon as I write.  We will post the finished product here and it will be part of the Kit that all children receive when they register to hold a Clothesline Art Show.

We welcome any child or groups of children to hold a Clothesline Art Show to benefit schools in need. Please contact Barbara Chandler Allen, at 215-920-3317 for more information.

We are proud of what we all have achieved in just two years:

• Placed 250 works of art in high-profile businesses throughout our region, Michigan, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts
• Received the gift of artwork from 395 generous and creative children
• Delivered the retail value of more than $100,300 in art supplies to 265 severely under-resourced inner-city art teachers

• Writing a children’s book called Pablo the Philly Philanthropist. Pablo loved to draw and paint, and sometimes got in trouble for drawing when he should have been doing something else. A talented boy, Pablo was invited by Fresh Artists to donate the use of his artwork to their program to help other kids in his city. Pablo agreed, and is told he is now a “philanthropist”.  He doesn’t understand the impact of his giving until he actually sees large-scale reproductions of his artwork hung in a large office building, and watches boxes of art supplies pour into his school.

Pablo is eight and three-quarters

He gets in trouble all the time for drawing.

I am profoundly grateful to three creative young men who have helped me:  Stephen Trueman, an aspiring children’s book writer jumped in and wrote a really charming narrative.  My son, Gardner Allen, volunteered to do the fabulous illustrations. Roger, my younger son and co-founder of Fresh Artists, has been doing a terrific job coordinating the artwork, graphic design, layout and pre-press work.

The book is now on our webpage (button on the homepage) in beta format and we will be printing it this month for use in our program. Love to have input, so please write us and give us your thoughts.  We hope to see it on Amazon in the future!

"Pablo" collaborators Gardner Allen (illustrator) and Steve Trueman (author)

• Designing a children’s box game based on the classic “memory” or concentration game, using the brilliant images from the Fresh Artists collection. We hope to have this inter-generational game widely distributed through the network of art and children’s museum shops, highlighting Fresh Artists’ mission of empowering the philanthropy of children through their artwork.

Prototype box game

• Creating “Sign Studio”, a real-life social entrepreneurial business where kids make and donate their art, see it used in a real-life application they can understand (a grocery store), and actively participate in delivering the art supplies to children in need within their community.

Please read the previous post to hear and see about Sign Studio!

As part of our program of “Conversations with Children” about social activism, Fresh Artists has designed an innovative way for a creative group of kids to be philanthropic: a miniature graphic design business for 3rd-5th graders! Twelve kids at Hancock Elementary School are piloting the new Fresh Artists “Sign Studio” in their after-school Art Club and producing in-store signage for the new Weaver’s Way Food Cooperative opening in Chestnut Hill in June.

The young designers work with their “client”, Josh Giblin, graphic designer and Merchandising Manager for the 35-year-old food co-op, and make paper-mosaic signs that will be used to identify products within the new store.  Apples, bananas, tomatoes, peaches, peppers, garlic, collards, blueberries and toilet paper are some of the first pictographs to come out of Sign Studio.  The kids make art on cut up cardboard boxes pulled from the recycling dumpster at the Co-op. Each piece of art will be photographed at high resolution and the digital images will be available to co-ops, restaurants and cafes for a donation to Fresh Artists. A full line of more than 50 images will be available within the year.

The kids learn about graphic design as a profession, working with a client to achieve objectives, and have a weekly “crit”, just like in art school, where they show their on-going work to Josh, and get feedback from him on technique and design.

Hancock Elementary’s amazing art teacher, Robyn Miller, has perfected the art of teaching mosaics using cut-up hardware store paint sample chips to make brilliant artwork. She eagerly agreed to trial this pilot program in her after-school Art Club. Although Weaver’s Way is our first client, we have discovered hundreds of small, community-owned food cooperatives across the country providing a potentially lucrative niche market for the children’s artwork. We feel that the values of small member-owned grocery stores featuring healthy, locally-sourced food is an excellent fit with Fresh Artists’ values.  Conversations about healthy food are heard while the kids work and fresh fruit samples from the Co-op fuel the Studio’s work sessions. We, too, are “locally-grown” providing a vibrant alternative to traditional “corporate” artwork to businesses needing decoration for their facilities!

The young artist-philanthropists are donating their time, and the funds raised in placing their artwork in Weaver’s Way will be used to deliver many boxes full of much-needed art supplies to a severely under-resourced public school in Philadelphia.  The children will be honored guests at the opening of the new store, and will physically make the delivery of art supplies to the children in the selected school.            We welcome inquiries about using this unique artwork in your business.

Sign Studio with finished artwork