Sunday, March 20, 2011

Art for a Saturday

Being in NYC is a privilege that I often forget. Recently I volunteered at a corporate sponsored arts mentoring event that made appreciate just how lucky we all are.

My work place has corporate membership for various arts institutions in NYC, the Met, Guggenheim, Whitney, Natural History, you name it. Yet how does one single employee really contribute to arts by simply walking around the exhibits? Sure, I’ve enriched my knowledge of different styles/eras/history, but I haven’t quite impacted the world too much with my knowledge. Through the volunteer/mentoring event, I was able to see the impact of my contributions.

The organization that put together the event is Free Arts NYC (http://www.freeartsnyc.org/). Our particular event was one day only, where the volunteers get paired with a child (1:1) and guide them through arts and crafts projects. At the end of the day, the child will bring home his/her creations. No cell phones, no negativity, just encouragement, art, and a lot of fun. The event was extremely rewarding.

10 Memories:

  1. picking colors and materials for all the projects. the number of items was overwhelming
  2. my buddy named one of her creations after me (a pink stuffed octopus…)
  3. a kid asked me if he could bring back an extra box of raisins for his baby sister back home. he is 3, she is 2. 
  4. my buddy showing the fun photo to all her friends (separate from the arts/crafts projects, they’ve set up a photo area where volunteer and kid can play dress up with hats and props. then the photo is printed and given to the kid as a souvenir)
  5. creating purple out of red and blue clay. beautiful color magic.
  6. sitting on glitter by mistake and flipping out…
  7. marching arm in arm to find my buddy’s group leader at the end of the day (hard to say good bye)
  8. helping clean up after projects are completed. (I was never this helpful when I was younger…clearly I was spoiled rotten)
  9. realizing that I was better at speaking/hanging out with kids than I had expected.
  10. apple juice, the kids’ drink of choice. who said I couldn’t survive without coffee?

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