A great way to get kids involved in your community is to have them do
art for a hospital. We have contributed TONS to Texas Children's
Hospital. Look in my archive website to see what all we have given
them. I'm SO proud of all of the hard work and wonderful pieces that
are permanently hung in their hospital. They are in frames wiht the
kid's names and our school name on them. I have seen kids do their best
masterpiece to date and then give it away. I photographed most of what
we gave and have kept it on our website for years. We've painted
wheelchair spokes covers with lizards chasing their tails, racecars,
airplanes, kids holding hands in a garden around the wheel, lizards
chasing their tails, etc. We have a floor to ceiling mural that fills
up a whole wall in their blood donation center. There are numerous
other murals around the hospital. There are posters of extremely
strange aerial views of dinners and bizarre diners in the cafeterias,
all framed shadowbox style. On the 9th floor of their new building,
there are 125 tempera painted birds all individually framed in their
"Blue Bird Clinic." We have also given murals to Ronald McDonald House.
Every kid participates, no one is left out, and they feel really great
about it. Contests can come later for my kids. I want them to share
their art with the community, and this way, it even gets to stay up for
years! Check it out in your local hospitals....you could most likely
always find a home for a wonderful mural when you take it down.
