Students in the advanced art classes will participate in the Art Memory Project in early November. This year the portraits will be of children from Columbia. This will be the school’s sixth year to participate.
“The real mission behind the work is to send love, send time, send appreciation, and send acknowledgement to these kids that are living in these situations that most of us don’t ever understand and won’t ever understand,” art teacher Rebecca Harrison said. “Just connecting with them, even though we’re not ever actually meeting them, but connecting with them through art in a way that helps them feel seen.”
The Art Memory Project sends portraits and identity pieces, art representing the child, to children in less fortunate situations around the world. These include victims of poverty, war, and orphaned children.
“The memory project is this awesome opportunity that we have to reach people outside of our community, outside of our circumstance through our talents and through our skills in art,” Harrison said. “And that is something that is hard to do in normal circumstances, and then this to be a situation for a child in the circumstances that they live in, it makes it even more meaningful.”
A total of 21 artists are participating and 25 pieces were delivered for students and staff for this year’s first round. Advanced art students typically participate in two rounds per year.
“We continue to do this project year after year because I really do see a benefit in it,” Harrison said. “I see artists that might not have done a portrait before, but they feel so strongly about this cause that they’re willing to put themselves out there and they’re willing to try– they’re willing to make it happen.”
Despite the typical $15 delivery fee, the project will not cost student artists anything. All of this year’s participants will be paid for by donation sponsors from among the staff and community members.
“So our staff comes together and says ‘we could not do what you’re doing, we don’t have the skills to do what you’re doing but this is a way we can contribute and be a part of this process,’” Harrison said. “And that is really special because I don’t know of any other school that does that for this project, where we have individual sponsors that sponsor our students so that no student artist ever has to pay to participate in the memory project.”
