Connecting Artists to the Community with Education, Therapy and Fun

 
 
Art with Heart is changing faster than the time I have to sit and reflect on the ways. The minute I write what has been going on, something comes along- almost within the same day- to make the first observation obsolete! Wow, what a life~ I write when I can and, thankfully, people are forgiving of my inequities, forgetfulness and seemingly airheadedness. We’ve had shows, plenty of cancellations and some other wonderful and surprising news.

But before we go into that, we have to crow from the top of every rooftop that Art with Heart will have a home base in THE GALLERY of Ocean Springs! Mark Lafontaine has one of the most unique, unifying and harmonious visions for an art gallery that we have seen and we are honored to be invited to be part of his creation. The Gallery itself is GORGEOUS, right off Government St. in Ocean Springs, two doors down from Al Fresco’s (yes, the one on the corner with the mural!). Mark picked a bright yellow front trimmed with black with maroon awnings and white lettering over both windows and the door: one says ART WITH HEART. We are so proud for so many reasons.

Our room is in the back left~ we can have a few classes there and I’m now working on scheduling so I can be there Monday-day, Tuesday, Thursday-day and Wednesday evenings. Since we travel around so much to schools and centers, we have to leave room open for our movable art studio (ha ha) as our rolling stone gathers no moss, but many art students.

I’ll write more as I get it, but for now its been some painting the inside and planting out front, both of which I love to do.

Art with Heart has had something big just about every week: At the end of April, we put on an art show for Essie Chestang, which was a success. We had a small turn out, a wonderful variation of art and artists and plenty of food! We enjoyed ourselves, although I was torn between a skipping CD and chatting with guests. (I’d have much rather been chatting with guests.) What I loved about this art show is that we broke down boundaries between artists’ age and skill level and held everything with equal importance. As far as we know, everyone appreciated the new approach, too.

Between then and now, we have been “pseudo-rained out” for almost every festival. Weather forecasts are the closest thing we have to a crystal ball, and we stayed home on the days the forecasts said we’d have 60% chance of rain/thunderstorms. Guess what?? NO RAIN. We were supposed to bring art from Essie’s Art show to the Moss Point River Jamboree to show, but decided to keep it at home, safe and dry… but no rain. Guess what day we DID get rained out? Mayfest, the day that had only 30% chance. We figured, Whats the chance? We’ve missed out on the festivals and have been dry so far.  What a bummer!

We weren’t the only ones scrambling around with our prized creations stuffed under our shirts, Cindy Shafhirt (Makana Art) was right next to us. She opted to stay, however, due to the tough stuff her gorgeous clay works are made from. People to the left and right were soaked to the bone, but their artwork stayed safe, which was the artists’ main concern. Down a little from us was Romy Simpson and Mark LaFontaine with a few more artists, but Mark’s quick thinking kept them dry when he put up his “uber-tent”, ha ha.

In the middle of the chuckle, there is an amount of seriousness involved here: this is the main way we get our funding for our classes and, without the funds from art festivals and face painting, we are hit pretty hard in the knee caps. We still have Kids’ Day at Edgewater Mall and a few other events throughout the summer, so we’ll see.

Gabe McReary has graduated! Gabe is (or was- I should say) a student from Moss Point Highschool who has helped us so much at every festival we’ve been to, with great skill and patience. Besides contributing with his skills as a face painter, he is a gifted anime artist. We are glad that he is a graduate because he can now enjoy full Art with Heart membership benefits of a Membership page, email address, etc, and we are grateful to have his input and companionship. Oh, btw- he graduated as a Mississippi Scholar, what an honor!

New and Old Classes

We’d started an art class at Colorful Creations in Biloxi, through the wonderful support and gifts of Marie Atwood. Surprisingly, within three classes, we were growing in students and need of chairs! We had literally run out of chairs, wow.

Our class is a great deal of fun, with about ½ and ½ technical skill instruction verses creative experimentation~ and we were a success so much so that we had to find a larger building. Unfortunately, it’s taken a great deal of time (in Art with Heart terms) for the Community Center to get back with us about allowing us to use their building with waived fees… with an answer of “no”. So, we are now working on plan C and awaiting communication for our new class, still. This shouldn’t take as long (I pray!) Keep your fingers crossed for us. I’ve contacted Lou Finkle and will contact the community Center on Pass Rd. tomorrow. I’ve had to cancel this afternoon’s appointment with Gulfport Memorial to be on the phone and computer almost all day working out details and contact information so we can get our class’s show on the road.

Besides those things, the computer looked like it was “threatening” to crash today, so all of Art with Heart’s file have been organized and backed up- in between finding and USING the contact info for the class. The art of multitasking! But seriously, talk about my heart going into my throat and skipping beats. It was slow, so I restarted it, it restarts and then goes to “sleep”, like it had lost power. I poked the on button and it picked up where it left off and then blacked out again. The last time this happened, I had a fried hard drive! We lost everything on the computer then. This time, it booted back up after I’d poked the on button again and then I took the cue to back everything up onto external hard drive, just in case. Fool me once ;)

Its taken care of for now, thank God.

Until later,

Linda
 


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Art with Heart in Mississippi is a 501c3 Public Charity. Website created by Linda Hill