the Painting Activist

The content of this website has consisted of very work-in-progress orientated postings for the past several months. There is a very straight-forward explanation for this: I’ve been exclusively working on a series of portraits titled, “Women of Mass Construction.”

Starting in January of this year, I began interviewing 15 women and girls who are current or former clients of a Kentucky nonprofit that has helped them make a positive transformation in their lives. After collecting their stories and photos, I started on creating the 12 portraits (3 paintings include 2 people). The organizations tied to these phenomenal women include:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kentuckiana
• Center for Women and Families
• Court Appointed Special Advocates of Jefferson Co.
• Family & Children First
• Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana
• Kentucky Refugee Ministries
• Kids Acting Against Cancer
• Louisville Visual Art Association
• Project Women
• Women 4 Women
• Women in Transition
• Youth Alive! Louisville

I left every interview believing anything was possible. My own personal woes immediately became proverbial drops in the bucket; not worth another thought. How can car maintenance and family drama compare to trying to find employment when you hardly speak English, and have spent the last 2 years of your life in a refugee camp, displaced from you home country? Or getting back on your feet after leaving a relationship, spanning the length of your adult life, with a man who nearly killed you multiple times during regular bouts of domestic violence? Talk about putting things into perspective.

What I’m really excited about is introducing the portrait subjects to each other at the exhibit opening at Gallery NuLu on Friday, August 1st, 5-9pm. Since the portraits won’t fill the gallery space, I invited local photographer Sarah Lyon to exhibit with me. In combination with Sarah’s supporters, this opening is going to be amazing!

In the spirit of honoring women in this community who are turning corners, donations from gallery guests, and a portion of my gallery sales, will be given to the Women’s Second Chance College Scholarship Fund.

I hope to see you at the opening to celebrate these 15 women’s success stories. It’s been an honor meeting each of them, and I hope you can do the same on August 1st. If you’re not in this area (or otherwise cannot make it to the gallery) and you would like to contribute to the donation made at the end of the exhibit, shoot me an email at ashley.cecil(at)gmail.com.

Last week’s press conference of the Open Doors mural unveiling at the Center for Women and Families was a phenomenal success. The Courier-Journal published a wonderful article in addition to several other newspapers, magazines and blogs.  There were more cameras at the event than Louisville has TV stations (?). The CWF’s PR director later emailed me a “Television Media Monitoring Summary for 7-1-08: 10 stories reaching 388,747 with a value of $3,519.00″ (wow!  I need to know how to get that kind of information myself).  Clearly, we did something right!  It was truly an honor to give the women who participated in the art project the attention they deserve.

I am incredibly excited to invite you to a public event to celebrate the completion of my first community based art project since joining the Louisville Visual Art Association as the program coordinator of “Open Doors.”

July 1, 2008 at 10:30 AM
The Center for Women and Families (CWF)
Joan E. Thomas, M.D. Campus
927 South Second Street
Louisville, Kentucky
(across from the downtown Kroger)

After over 2 months of weekly sessions with clients of the CWF, we have a beautiful mural to unveil. The artwork will be dedicated to the Center by the women involved in the project. Several local media outlets will cover the event and help us inform the community about Open Doors and CWF.

This will be a wonderful opportunity to support the project participants by showing your interest. The painting will serve as a visual message of encouragement for future CWF clients for years to come. Please join us on the 1st to celebrate their accomplishment!

I could hardly believe my eyes as I turned 360 degrees on Saturday to witness the behemoth project I had spent so many months coordinating unfold onto the pavement in vivid color.  This street painting festival was part of the first annual Champions 4 Her walk/run festival benefiting 10 Kentucky charities serving women and girls.

The goal was to raise $100,000.  1,680 runners, 75+ community street art participants, 9 local artists, and 1 international renowned street painter later we raised more than $150,000.  Not too shabby for a first go, eh?  To see more event photos, go to my flickr account.

Not even a week has past and I’m already hearing a buzz about being tasked with breaking a street painting Guinness World Record next year (hopefully donations raised are proportional).

Click here for a direct link to the Champions 4 Her video.

I have spent at least the past six months coordinating the street art festival for an upcoming umbrella fundraiser for 10 Louisville nonprofits. One week from today (Saturday, June 21), ‘Champions 4 Her‘ walk/run will launch its first year at Waterfront Park.

Initially, I was asked to scout and hire an internationally renowned madonnaro (street painter) to set the festival apart from the plethora of other walk/runs in the city. I loved the idea, but immediately thought of the truly unique opportunity the concept of a street painting festival afforded clients of the 10 organizations we were raising money for. I agreed to find a feature artist for the event to draw in the media, but pitched the additional idea of having each of the beneficiary partner organizations create their own amateur street paintings depicting how their respective nonprofit assisted women and girls in our community.

The idea was not hard to sell, and soon I was also hiring a team of local artists to guide the novice nonprofit participants through the process of a creating a roughly 8′ x 12′ chalk pastel painting in one day.

I saw a lot of wide eyes as I sat in on the introductory meetings between the art teams and the artist they were paired with. This is the first time many of the participants have been to exposed to the visual arts on this level. Working with a full-time professional artist has really expanded their perception of the abilities of the arts to impact a community.

Within a few weeks I was getting concept sketches of each group’s final design. It has been such a treat to get photos in my email inbox and snail-mailbox of the art they’re designing.

You can support these wonderful organizations by registering yourself or a team to do the walk/run, or just come by and see the art in action.

I did of course hire a feature professional artist for the main street painting. Her name is Tracy Lee Stum and she will start on her piece the Wednesday before the event. Feel free to stop by Waterfront Park during the day to see her at work. She (and the other street paintings) will be in the parking lot in front of Joe’s Crab Shack.  See you June 21!

7″ x 9″ watercolor, NFS
See all artwork available for sale.

Ok, so I admit that when a painting comes before the idea for a new post, I have to dig a little deeper to find a contextual match. This painting above of a scene in New York had me a bit stumped. I think my dad may have told me a time or two, “ask and you shall receive.” So, I asked fellow blogger, Anna Hackman of ‘Green Talk’, if she had any ideas. Oh, did she. How perfect is this:

New York City based nonprofit “Rocking the Boat uses traditional wooden boatbuilding and on-water education to allow high school age youth to develop into empowered and responsible adults. Through these mediums, Rocking the Boat empowers South Bronx students to deal with everyday realities that are often not addressed at home or in school…programs directly serve over 2,000 students and community members drawn from a range of New York City public high schools and neighborhoods…Rocking the Boat teaches, challenges, nurtures, and motivates, providing the tools to transition into the next phase of life. Kids don’t just build boats at Rocking the Boat, boats build kids.”

Way to hit the nail on the head Anna!

All too often I hear the ignorant gripe, “Programming like this is waste. We need to focus on pushing math and science.” Programs “like this” teach youth responsibility, leadership, confidence, and how to collaborate on goal-orientated outcomes. Becoming a successful adult who contributes to society entails far more than acing your SAT. I have personally witnessed many teenagers participate in such projects and become be far more articulate, social, engaged and invested in their own futures (not to mention less interested in peer-pressure induced activities like doing drugs and competing for bragging rights for the most sexual partners). It’s kind of hard to study chemistry when you’re high or 13 and pregnant. Organizations like Rocking the Boat are preparing our youth be learners who have the capacity to absorb their education.

Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox. I think I’m still a little heated about all of the recent across-the-board cutbacks (from state and federal to dried up foundation funds).

Ps-I should mention that this painting was created from a photo taken specifically of another organization certainly worth mentioning: the New York City Downtown Boathouse. Next time you’re in NYC, you should definitely going kayaking on the Hudson with their all-volunteer staff of instructors (one of whom is pretty cute. I think I may have a crush).

Here is a direct link to a video of the painting in action.

This is one of my 12 interviewees for the portrait series of female clients of Kentucky nonprofits (clearly, I’m still working on a title, and ideas are welcome).  Exhibit A is a former client of the Center for Women and Families (where I just wrapped up a community art project).

I just received an email from a friend who has an honorable request. I’m happy to use my blog to reach out to those of you in Louisville who can help:

A Rwandan family featured in the Courier Journal about a year ago is once again facing devastating circumstance. After living most of their lives in refugee camps, the family was placed in Louisville via intervention by the United Nations. Three of the young women (only 17-22) have had to move out of their apartment abruptly due to family circumstances. Currently, two of them are employed by UPS, which will lay them off in two weeks because of their rotating part-time policy. The girls’ English is poor, although they are learning and improving. We are asking for your help with:

Since last summer’s Kentucky Remembers! Project, I’ve fallen in love with facilitating the creation of collaborative, community art. After returning from that youth camp, I began actively pursuing a way to continually run such projects. To make an incredibly long story short, the end result of my efforts took the form of accepting a position at the Louisville Visual Art Association as a program coordinator. The arts outreach program is called “Open Doors.” The mission of the program sounds like it was scripted specifically for me:

Open Doors is an umbrella program of classes and art enrichment experiences designed to give a voice to under-served populations including the at-risk youth, refugees and immigrants, senior citizens, victims of domestic abuse and more. Our projects are designed to pair local professional artists with groups who have limited access to the visual arts to collaborate in creating works of self-expression. Projects are tailored to meet specific needs of each population and serve to enrich not only the individual participant, but the community as a whole.

Artists who lead our programs are passionate about facilitating the realization of creative talent and offering tangible tools for communication, engagement, leadership and positive change.

So, while I’m continuing with all of my other various endeavors mentioned on my blog, I’m also overseeing an incredible group of talented visual artists bringing their expertise to people rarely exposed to the arts (much less engaged in the art-making process).

Of course I could never be tied to a desk chair as a full-time administrator. I split my time between coordinating all of the Open Doors projects and facilitating my own. Currently, I’m at the Center for Women and Families working with a small group of victims of domestic violence on an 8′ long mural that will hang in the lobby of the Center’s main office.

Introducing the women to the visual arts included meeting them at the Louisville Visual Art Association to see the Liz Quisgard exhibit. I was expecting quick drop-ins from the women, but ended up spending 2 hours with them altogether answering their questions and chatting about their reactions.

After several weeks of preparatory exercises to get them comfortable sketching and thinking visually, we starting on the canvas. I took each woman’s photograph and projected the image onto the canvas for them to trace. Next, they began filling their silhouettes with images from their sketches books.

A group decision was made to jointly create a background that symbolized unity and interconnectedness. We talked about puzzle pieces, which lead to the idea of a using a tessellation of figures. The women also decided to paint the tessellation the colors tied to domestic violence awareness (purple and teal) and the pink to symbolize femininity.

Once again, I’ve been blown over by the progress and investment in the project. I think they’ve surprised themselves just a little as well We’ll be wrapping up the painting this week and focusing on the community celebration/dedication of the artwork at the Center. I will certainly keep you posted about this event since I know these women would be overwhelmed by a strong turn out to honor their accomplishment and gift to the Center.

Do I still have any Courier-Journal writers subscribing to my blog (hint, hint)?

8″ x 10″ oil on canvas, $350 ($50 donated to the Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana)

See all artwork available for sale.

The Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana (a.k.a. Louisville, Kentucky + Southern Indiana) recently hosted a breakfast wherein their new CEO, Terry Blackwell (pictured above), gave an intriguing presentation entitled, “Change it Up! What Girls Say About Redefining Leadership.” The presentation was based on a study conducted by the Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI), which “serves as a center for research and public policy information on the healthy development of girls.”

Every generation takes societal norms passed onto them and molds them to mirror the times in which they live. This study is a thorough look into the minds of our youngest future leaders. With a fine-tooth comb, the study breaks down the definitions, predictors and aspirations that our youth assign to leadership.

A few highlights that especially caught my attention were:

• The number one reason girls resisted becoming a leader was that they did not like speaking in public.
• When categorized by race, Caucasians were the least likely to aspire to, or be motivated by leadership.
• Repeatedly in charts, boys’ positive responses were higher than girls only when the questions included mention of money, power and sports (altruism apparently is not as innately prominent in males).

But in the boys’ defense, one of my favorite quotes included in the intro of the study was by an 8th grade boy in Atlanta:

“I would like to be a leader some day so that I can change different aspects of the world, such as homelessness, poverty, and unjust happenings.”

To read the study for yourself, click here.