(Image courtesy of the Art2Hearts foundation.)
As per tradition, Costa Mesa High School has this graduation requirement in the form of the “Senior Exit Project.” This entails things such as a resume, job applications, and the topic of this reflection, community activism.
As I’ve made it clear in some of my other articles (see “Art Club From the Perspective of a Member” for more) that I am an artist. I take art, media (especially media preservation as per my lost media articles) and the importance of creating very seriously.
So, of course, when the Senior Exit Project was assigned to me, I wanted something to do in the arts. The only thing though, was what exactly should I do.
The key with this project was to make it tangible, something that can be easily done in the community, and focus on a key issue. The thing with art though, I’ve noticed (through my research), is that art isn’t taken seriously.
It’s a subject that is notoriously underfunded across schools– which is a common place for children to be introduced to art. Like, I remembered when I was in elementary school, and we had presentations for the program “Meet The Masters,” where you would get the basic overview of a famous artist or painter, and then an activity would be put together based on that artist’s most famous works.
I remembered at the time, I had my own qualms with the program, but looking back in retrospect, I feel like it was the best way to go about teaching children the arts. I remembered that was the first time I was exposed to oil pastels as an art medium, but admittedly, I don’t remember much else.
Looking towards the future though, things are dire. In the age of corporate minimalism in architecture and design, and the rise of AI generated “art,” I feel introducing the world of art to children is more important now than ever.
The way I went about this was by getting in contact with a charity, known as “Art2Hearts.” Their goal is to collect donations in the form of artwork and submit them to hospitals to provide a more welcoming, calming environment for children staying overnight at hospital locations.
Funnily enough, I found them through an advertisement on Instagram of all things. There was a link embedded into the advertisement that took me to “contact them.” There were options to contact them, either as a collaborator, an artist, or an educator. So, I put “artist,” and emailed them.
In my research, art has been continuously proven to improve signs of depression, stress, and anxiety, not just in the children staying there, but even the staff and visitors as well.
So, I decided to paint a few canvases during ski week (or President’s week, if you’re the school board) and send them over to their home base in New York. Yes. New York.
As of the writing of this article, I have yet to receive a message back from the charity, seeing if they got my packages. To be fair, I did send them last week. It’s a matter of time they would get them eventually.
From this project, it made me realize a few things. For one, there is a charity for anything. I wouldn’t have found out about the Art2Hearts foundation had it not been for the varied, weird targeted algorithms of Instagram.
Second, art really can make a difference. It’s something I already knew, having been an artist since I was brought onto this planet and learned how to use a pencil properly, but I feel through my research into their project, it really cemented how important artistic expression is.
And third, people really, really, need to support the arts more. If there’s anything to be taken away from this article; Support the arts.
